Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Unduk Ngadau vs Mother Tongue

I spent most of my time in front of a computer not because of addicted to it but my job requires me to do most of my work facing the computer screen. When at home i do the same thing but mostly not related to work but browsing through the internet looking for articles, blogs etc. Since the month of May is the Kaamatan festival i search for Unduk Ngadau and landed to one interesting web regarding mostly of the showcase of Unduk Ngadau representing their district to the state level beauty contest. What caught my attention was the forum section where discussion about the failure of the younger generation to speak their mother tongue. A quite number of them blame the surrounding where they live, like living in the urban areas and living abroad when they were still small. Surprisingly, they never blame their parent totally about their inability to speak the language but the environment where they were raised from toddler until their teenage years. If they defended their parents failure to teach them the language and blame it on the surrounding i think that would be debatable.

Parents should speak to their children in their spoken language ie KadazanDusun regardless of where they're staying, urban or rural environment. Does that mean to say that if we want our children to speak the language then we have to send them back to the kampung to learn the language.

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