LANGUAGE IN MALAYSIA & UNITED STATES

Malaysia is a multiracial and multilingual country, thus languages spoken

by different races in Malaysia interspersed and creating an unique culture. With
1957's independence, Malaysia was formed with three major races which are
Malay, Chinese, and Indian. Each races were migrated from different places
and brought in their own mother tongue from the origin country to Malaysia.
Therefore, these diverse language have become part of Malaysia’s multicultural
identity and practiced by different races.

Malay, also known as Bahasa Melayu, is a member of the Malayo-

Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family (Thompson, 2017). It is
the official and national language of Malaysia. Malay language is native spoken
by the group of Malay in Malaysia. Thompson mentioned that, it is known
as Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia.  Since 1968, Standard Malay is the
official language of Malaysia. However, the language of wider communication is
colloquial Malay (Ethnologue). Malay is the official language for scientific,
administrative, legal and other official matters. The government department of
education in Malaysia uses Malay as their main teaching language. Other than
that, Malay language is also being used in the government organization such
as.

Mandarin (pŭtōnghuà, guóyŭ, huáyŭ) is the most widely spoken dialect

of all Chinese. From early 19th century, the second largest ethnic group—
Malaysian Chinese with a majority of mandarin speaker. They immigrated from
different parts of China to Malaysia made up a mix of dialect groups including
Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Cantonese, etc. They brought their mother tongue
including Hokkien from Fujian, Cantonese particularly from Guangdong and
Guangxi, Teochew from Chaoshan, etc to Malaysia and pass their language to
the next generations.

The most common Indian language spoken is Tamil. Most are

descendants of Tamil-speaking South Indian immigrants who came to the
country during the British colonial rule (Hays, 2008). Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi,
Punjabi and Gujarati are also spoken among the Indian community in Malaysia.
 English is the most spoken in the United States. It is also the official
language and used in most of the governmental functions in United States.
According to the United States Census Bureau, of the roughly 292 million
people in the United States ages 5 and older, a whopping 231 million of them,
or 79 percent, speak English only at home. However, there are a portion of
people who speak languages other than English. There are four major
language groups used in United States other than English. Spanish includes
Spanish Creole, and Ladino is one of the language group spoken by a small
part of American.

According to Camille Ryan, Spanish is one of the four major language

spoken after languages ranging from Indo-European languages, Asian and
Pacific Island languages, and all other languages. Spanish is considered as the
most spoken language after English in the United States according to statistic
shown in United States Census Bureau from the survey on Detailed Languages
Spoken at Home by English-Speaking Ability for the Population 5 Years and
Over: 2011. Survey shown that an estimate of 38 million American residents
use Spanish as their first language on a day to day basis. This was resulted
from the Spanish colonization era in which special status such as New Mexico
and Puerto Rico were given hence the increase in Spanish usage as their first
language. Spanish is also taught in many secondary school in the United
States and for some substantial Hispanic population is taught even earlier. For
many, Spanish is seen as an alternative way to further improve communication
skills after English in the United States especially when there is a rapid growing
Spanish-speaking community.

References
Hays. J. (2013) Ethnic Minorities - Chinese in Southeast Asia. [Online] Retrived
from http://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat66/sub418/entry-4307.html
[November 16, 2018]

Thompson. I. (July 9, 2017) Malay (Bahasa Melayu). [Online] Retrived from

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/bahasa-melayu-malay [November 16, 2018]

https://www.mm2h.com/languages-in-malaysia/ [November 16, 2018]

Hays. J. (2013) Malaysia - Religion and Minorities. [Online] Retrived from

http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Malaysia/sub5_4c/entry-3646.html
[November 16, 2018]

Ryan. C (August 2013) Language Use in the United States: 2011. [Online]
Retrived from https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-
22/acs-22.pdf [November 16, 2018]