KUALA LUMPUR — Reports of Malaysian students with poor English and graduates unable to land jobs due to poor speaking skills in the language are by now familiar.

The Malaysian language is Malay; Malaysians also commonly use English and a number of Chinese and Indian dialects. My thanks to reader Ean Hin Ooi for pointing this out.

"Lest they forget, the Malay language has a long history and was once world renowned as the lingua franca among international traders. We should be proud that there are many words in other languages ...

Indonesian, which is rooted in Malay, has been greatly influenced by Javanese since it was adopted as the unifying language back in 1928. The original Malay is commonly spoken in Riau.

Compared to the 1970s and 1980s, the command of the language by SJKC pupils has improved. In the 70s and 80s, the passing rate for the Malay language subject in SJKC was about 45%.

The Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) politician added that at a time when some ministers and MPs are not able to converse in Malay properly, the language test should be made a priority.

Malaysiakini today launched a Bahasa Malaysia version of its news portal to become one of the first online media in the country to have a website in two languages.

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Dato' Seri Zahrain Mohammad Hashim, the Malaysian Ambassador to Indonesia, explained the Malaysian government plan to cooperate with Indonesia in creating a certain standard for ...

The Malay language, spoken by over 300 million or half of the population of Southeast Asia, should be made the official language of Asean, said socio-cultural affairs adviser to the Malaysian ...