English in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia is a country with three main ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese, and Indians), each with its own language and dialects. English was first introduced to the country through the trading operations of the British East India Company and spread through religious and educational activities from the early nineteenth century on. Until the country achieved her independence from British rule in 1957, the greatest social and economic advantages came with the learning of English, so that the most ambitious and far-sighted of each race sent their children to English-medium schools for a Western-type education. This has resulted in a fairly large section of the population knowing English, although with varying degrees of proficiency. At the top are those who look upon English as their primary language and who use it with near-native-speaker proficiency. Lower down the scale are those not so fluent in the language but who nevertheless have an adequate command of it for basic communication purposes. All in all though, the standard of English in Malaysia has in the past been among the highest for any EFL country, with the standards of correctness being those of educated native-speaker British English.KeywordsCultural CommunicationConsonant ClusterLocal DialectCountable NounEnglish GrammarThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.