Anthropological note on Malaysia.
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I may have located a flaw in our implementation of constitutional law and our education system's syllabus for language.
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The country of Malaysia is defined by a Constitution, co-written by colonial powers, in the English language. All laws of the country, follow from this English language constitution.
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By contrast, the convention has been to treat Malay as the official language of the nation. The disconnect is thus: every time a member of this officially Malay speaking country has to do a fundamental study of law, he or she ends up referring to an English language document.
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Hypothesis*: we should decisively pick ONE official language, it should probably be Bahasa Malaysia/Melayu, we should translate all documents to that language WITH COPIOUS HISTORICAL AND LINGUISTIC FOOTNOTES, and the YDPA should sign off on the Malay versions as authoritative, and we should just bin the English versions of all laws (to the bin of lower authority).
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* I'm quite aware that this accelerates a can of worms being potential constitutional crises in the future.
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** For reference, some screencaps from the National Language Act of Malaysia.
2018-06-02 at 9:58 am
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