To put Malaysia first, put Malaysian second – Paul Si

I got this article by Paul Si in the Malaysian Insider.....quite an interesting piece of writing.....

------------------------

It’s all in the grammar. Specifically, in adjectives and nouns. I realise that language skills have declined significantly over the years, and that decline has something to do with people not wanting to learn, and the authorities shifting the goalposts to suit the people’s wishes.

But I hope you will bear with me on this because it is important, because it is the root of the problems Malaysia is beset with.

Back to basics. A noun is a thing, an object. It could be a tangible thing or an intangible thing. “House”, for example, is a noun. “Idea” is also a noun, albeit an intangible thing.
An adjective is a modifier or enhancer of that thing. “Big”, for example, is an adjective.
So, you have a house. What kind of house? A big house. The house is the thing, and big tells us more about your thing. See, it’s not that hard.

Ah, but there are words that are nouns, that are also used as adjectives. An example is a mountain bike. A bike is certainly a thing, but so is a mountain. Used in this context, though, the mountain is an adjective that describes the bike. So, the bike is still the thing and the mountain tells us what kind of bike, or thing, it is. As opposed to, say, a road bike, or an exercise bike.
And so to the problem with Malaysia, where the population thinks of itself in terms of Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian Indians and, well, just Malays.

Gramatically speaking, Malaysian is a noun, and so are Chinese, Indian, Malay, Iban and Kadazan, and all can also be nouns functioning as adjectives. So the phrase Malaysian Chinese is grammatically correct, as is Chinese Malaysian. But they mean different things.

In a nicely written article headlined “Proud to be a Malay Singaporean” published in The Malaysian Insider today, Khartini Khalid tells us why she is proud to be a Singaporean. A Malay Singaporean.

Likewise, we now hear a lot about Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, and so on. Not, mind you, American Chinese, or American African.

The thing about English is that the noun, the really important thing, comes after the adjective or descriptor. So, you know that a person is a Singaporean or an American, or Indonesian, or Australian, and he/she is of African or Chinese descent. He/she could also be a tall American, or fat American or ugly American, but still an American.

We, meanwhile, are Chinese, or Indians, or Others, who happen to hold Malaysian citizenship. We have the Malaysian Indian Congress and the Malaysian Chinese Associations. These are groups of people who are Indians and Chinese, respectively, who happen to live in Malaysia.
If they were Malaysians who happened to trace their roots to India and China, respectively, then the bodies would the Congress of Indian Malaysians and Association of Chinese Malaysians, again respectively.

Of course, the relative placement of noun and adjective is reversed in Bahasa, as well French, Spanish and many other languages. So, we have “rumah besar” instead of “big house”. Could this explain why these groups are so named?

Ah, but Persatuan Cina Malaysia and Kongres India Se-Malaysia tell us that this naming convention is not a simple transliteration that gives rise to confusion. No, it is deliberate and intentional.

So, there you have it. 1 Malaysia is a nice idea, even a noble goal to aim for. But day-to-day reality, conscious or sub-conscious, is very different, and it is all because we put “Malaysian” ahead of our ethnic or cultural background.

For that nice idea to become the new reality, we have to be Malaysians first, which means we put Malaysian second, after Chinese/Indian/Dayak. Are you confused yet? I know I am.

From HERE