Standard Four pupils in Chinese schools are supposed to start writing Jawi beginning next year.
Lim Kit Siang supports this new move by Maszlee, at the same time giving a half-assed (typical of LKS) argument that learning Jawi does not make one less Chinese.
BELOW: “Learning Jawi did not make me any less of a Chinese” — Lim Kit Siang
ABOVE: Little chihuahua puts on his running shoes
Meanwhile, Standard Five pupils of a Chinese school in Seremban recently sang our national anthem in Mandarin because they do not know how to sing Negaraku properly in bahasa Melayu, konon.
“… when the students sang Negaraku in their own mother tongue, they would have a better understanding of the content and meaning of the song,” Sin Chew deputy executive editor-in-chief Tay Tian Yan wrote in his Dec 9 column headlined ‘Patriotism phobia’.
So! This seasoned Sin Chew newsman is saying that the non-Malay pupils have a weaker understanding of Negaraku’s content and meaning if the song was not sung by them in Chinese.
Let’s gauge the Malay language competency of these 11 year olds (Std 5).
Negaraku comprises altogether only 17 words in its verses one and two. (Its verse three is merely a repeat of verse two.)
Its lyrics comprise such simple concrete words as “negara”, “tanah”, “darah”, “rakyat”, “Tuhan”, “raja” and 11 other words. Our national anthem is really a very short song (see below).
The 11 year olds in Chinese school – we’re being told – may not gain a fully satisfactory understanding of Negaraku if they only sang it in BM. We’re talking here about linguistics in a classroom setting and in no way implying that the innocent children, their teacher/headmaster or school itself had breached the law.
These simple Malay words – “negara”, “tanah”, “darah”, “rakyat”, “Tuhan”, “raja” – are written in Rumi or Roman alphabet, and still a bunch of Chinese 11 year olds are ostensibly encountering difficulty in grasping their meaning.
What more when younger 10 year olds (Std 4) are required to write Jawi, a script totally alien to them, and to learn to pronounce vowels and consonants in yet another tongue that is not native to them. Don’t forget what the Sin Chew top editor just said about how reliant these Chinese kids are on their mother tongue.
Tulisan Rumi pun bebudak semua nih tak reti, apatah lagi nak diajak belajar Jawi.
It’s no surprise then that Dong Zong, Jiao Zong and Hua Zong are opposing the Maszlee initiative (but a move which receives Kit Siang’s tacit blessing). Mahathir is proud of you, Uncle Kit.
Negaraku
Tanah tumpahnya darahku
Rakyat hidup
Bersatu dan maju
Rahmat bahagia
Tuhan kurniakan
Raja kita
Selamat bertakhta (x2)
Helen Ang 
There is a saying attributed to Mao that the older a person gets, the more stupid he becomes. The old – and dead communist made a joke out of that old bit of Chinese gem that the older a person gets, the wiser he is, that he would have taken more salt (“wisdom”) than rice into his system than any younger person – something perhaps more dangerous than “wise”.
While Chinese health science may be reliable old wives’ wisdom to some Chinese, it is not quite what it is quacked out to be to others. But then, you never get two Chinese to agree what whatever is at any time – and that includes what a Chinese is.
Whatever a Chinese is, you can’t leave it to Lim Kook Siang to decide for you. We can’t even determine if he is “Chinese” – or even if he is Lim Kook Siang, Lim Khat Siang, Lim Kau(dog) Siang, or Lim Kutty Siang… He seems to be different things at different times, or different things at the same time – rather like what some Brit angmohs would say of their weather “four seasons in one day”, maybe a rojak of contradictions in one carcass, in the old tokong’s case.
However. one thing is clear – and maybe even “transparent” about the old chameleon of the Lim Lynasty, the older he gets the more cranky, weird, and bizarre he is. Lim Kid Some becomes more and more like himself with each days passing, he sure tries to fool you like he fools himself.
For decades, ye worshipful tokong’s career, stock in trade, reason for existence have been everything and more to make himself a thorn up the butt hole of the Snake Pharaoh M for Monster. In recent year, he has become just the butt hole of the Snake Pharaoh, a lowly running dog as the Chinese would call the despicable piece of shifty shiite.
Who is the old codger no class longkang confuse-us “Confucius” to tell any Chinese what “any less Chinese” is? What would “any less virgin” mean to the old political harlot?
Why has the old running dog appointed itself to tell the Chinese that learning khat would turn their children into brain surgeons, rocket scientists, IT wonders, and designers of flying coffins… all while being more Chinese?
Our children are already machines on black shoes having to learn plenty of stuff from our fcuked up “education” on the way to being unemployed and unemployable – and third class citizens, why cripple them with having to learn a script they may only be interested in decorating our flying coffins with? Can’t learning that be left to leisure or spare time activity next to learning math, physics, the piano, the violin, K-Pop, Cantopop, and wailing in Taiwanese?
Our children are already thoroughly confused writing BM in “English” and writing “English” in BM, most think to write in BM, you only need to spell English words badly, and Ah Lee’s yer uncle! All else is every other language (Indian, Indonesian, Arabic, Persian…), and even Hokkien (wtf is bihun, teh, Jepun, mee, tauhu, kau kau..?!)
It is all well and good being “patriotik” learning to write undecipherable prescriptions like a doctor – but that is not the same as learning to be a doctor, which, if the running dog knows, is what every other Chinese parent would want his child to be. Nearly no Chinese would want his child to do graffiti in Jawi or Jawa, Dato Tua Peh Kong forbids.
I have to confess I don’t know the words of our anthem, I know those for Mamula Moon better. That’s because I never had the chance to croak anything, I don’t like to hear myself sing all like the next person who is forever hard up the rest of the world should hear him wail for his dead mother in a karaoke. But knowing and maybe even remembering the words for Mamula would work if I “sing” them every morning before I brush my teeth. And every evening after I’ve taken the holy toddy…
Patriotism is something alien to most youngster, you’ve got to have it craftily instilled in them, they are more interested in speaking and singing Korean than anything in BM. It is more useful knowing in depth the latest Samsung handphone than how far our flying coffin call drop. We’ve got to be realistic, it is not a simple case of Lim Kook Siang telling our Chinese learning Jawi is better than being patriotic with the next computer language, khat is “better” than the Java script… that Mah Chee Lee should have stopped being brilliant after working out black shoes are better than going barefoot or shuffling in slippers to the madrassah.
There is nothing all that “wrong” or being a “traitor” not being “patriotik”, patriotism is of the heart. You can teach a parrot to sing an anthem but it would know nothing about snapping to attention once that is played for “patriotic” reason. You can teach a monkey to stand to attention to any anthem but it won’t know what being “patriotik” is about.
What about “patriotikism” being about not going to a distant land and fighting and dying for some country or cause else than our own?
What about putting up with and loving our fellow citizens and patiently educating them to be half-awake when our anthem is played, to profoundly admire those Chinese who handle BM better than its native speakers, to respect and love those who make big contributions to society (pay a lot of tax, for instance) who may know little else of anything than go round hunting for the best Bah Kut Teh.
You just can’t expect all “pendatangs” to be created more than able or equal like a running dog fake Chinese like Lim Kutty Siang – like just how can you expect any “pendatang” to be half-awake about anything “patriotik”?
You treat a citizen like a “pendatang”, you can’t expect him to behave like running dog Lim Kau Siang.
Btw, be careful what you wish for, if you make the Chinese too interested in anything, they can become really good, even better than you! Here’s just one example of those “ambidextrous types”, one from a tradition from them old times when those in the Middle East came all the way to China to consult with Chinese scholars of the Koran…
The Chinese like to do things “the other way round”, here’s someone who brings Chinese into Arabic scholarship, maybe using this approach would even get more Chinese converts to Islam than other converts to Christianity..?
The words of La Marseillaise have stirred the Chinese since the late 20s. Here it is in Chinese:
No country else kicks up any fuss over its anthem sung in other languages, it is very flattering, as a matter of fact.
Here’s the Russian anthem in Chinese Urraaaah..!!!:
Here’s even the anthem of occupied Palestine sung in Chinese!:
Singing our anthem in Chinese may just work, after all, Mamula Moon is sung in Indonesian, Jepunese, even Cantonese – and long before there appeared an eerily “similar” version in BM (which I like better):
Hammering into or just glibly talk anything into stubborn Chinese like Tokong Lim Kook Siang does would only get the Chinese to go nowhere in the end – all just like where the DAP (Diu Ah Piu/”fcuked bastards” in Cantonese pun) is destined!
Now, make me that nice Tua Lang Pah (aged Oolong), will you..? (Tokong Lim Kook Siang won’t know what that means, he’s got none of that to be “castrated” – and he’s no Chinese!)
Sorry, this is La Marseillaise in Chinese:
Enjoy!