COMMENT | Should local doctors be able to speak Bahasa Malaysia (BM)? Indubitably.

Should they have to sit for six Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) papers in order to undertake house officer training?

A good primer on the whole case has been helpfully published by Malaysiakini.

It seems that as of Wednesday, even our Cabinet has seen that such a requirement would be silly, and has paved the way for the individuals involved to sit for just the BM paper, without having to sit for the other five core SPM subjects. Good for them.

It may be worthwhile to examine the context of this issue, and discuss the role of language in our social and political fabric.

Avoiding the politics of language

That language becomes politicised is neither particularly good nor particularly surprising.

Since Malaysia’s political faultlines are ethnically defined, issues like language usually dredge up the usual suspects (for example, Ibrahim Ali) invoking the same old racial sentiments.

If we set aside these tired old warriors following the tired old scripts about how we must defend the dignity of our race from erosion et cetera, perhaps a meaningful discussion about language can still be had.

Malaysia is quite unique, regionally. With the exception of Singapore perhaps, which shares our heritage and colonial past, almost all of our neighbours differ substantially with regards to national language.

In Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines for instance, competence in the national language can safely be assumed of anyone walking in the street. In most instances, it is a first language, or a very competent second language.

In Malaysia this is considerably less so. It is true that almost everyone has some basic grasp of BM, but presumably, the average level of competency in the national language is lower than that of our neighbouring countries...