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DE’ UNITE: SHE 101 – HIMPUNAN LAPORAN TEKNIKAL PROJEK PELAJAR

Chinese Language

Chinese language, also called Sinitic languages, Chinese Han, which is the principal language group
of eastern Asia and it belongs Sino-Tibetan family. Now mandarin has earned itself greater world status
which become one of six official languages used by United Nation. In mainland of China, they called
Mandarin as their “Pu Tong Hua”, which means the common language of Han nationality people. In
Taiwan and Hong Kong, they called it as “Guo Yu”, the national language of their countries whereas
Singapore and Malaysia often called as “Hua Yu”, the Chinese language. Mandarin is generally spoken
by the Chinese in Malaysia, which is the second majority language in Malaysia. Besides that, Chinese
dialect also usually spoken by Chinese. For instance, Hokkien is biggest Chinese dialect in Malaysia,
followed by Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Fuzhou, Hainanese and Foochow. Hokkien is mostly spoken
in Penang and north of Perak and Kedah whereas the Cantonese is mostly spoken in Ipoh, Perak and
Kuala Lumpur. For East Malaysia like Sabah and Sarawak, the Chinese people usually speak Foochew
and Hakka. There are a few of people from Sandakan, Sabah ale to speak in Cantonese. In a nutshell,
many Chinese could able speak more than one Chinese dialect.

Indian Language

Languages spoken in India country, generally classified as belonging to several languages like Indo-
Aryan languages (the Indo-Iranian branch in particular) as the major one and followed by Dravidian,
Austro-Asiatic as well as Sino-Tibetan. Out of hundreds of languages spoken in India, the Eight Schedule
of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages which has given recognition, status and official
encouragement by government.

Assamese, Bengali (Bangla), Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Ori
ya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, and Urdu belongs to Indo-Aryan group. Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and
Telugu belong to the Dravidian language. In Malaysia, majority of Indians are Tamil and they speak
Tamil as well as the other Indian language like Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati.
Nowadays, the new generation of Indians started mixing Malay and English with their respective Indian
dialects. Besides that, some Indians able to speak Chinese to help them with businesses.

PROBLEMS OF RESEARCH

Day after day, we tend to forget about the essence of importance of learning or the benefits of
learning another language. Fundamentally for university students, by mastering more than one
language not only opens up more opportunities and greater future ahead for success but also makes
them highly qualified, respected and able to interact with many people. On the other hand, we as the
next generation need to redefine back the purpose of learning if we only think that knowing more than
one language can only benefit us for occupation. Nonetheless, here are some problems or challenges
that students face in mastering more than one language.

1. Do not have time to study and do not know how to get started.
2. The students have lack of understanding of other languages and culture of other religion.
3. Thinking a foreign language is too difficult to understand.
4. The majority students and lecturers in Polytechnic Port Dickson are Malays, thus Malays is the
main language for communication and not much opportunity to learn other languages like
Chinese and Tamil.
5. The percentage of Malay ethnic group is more than 80% compare to Chinese and Indian ethnic
groups.
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