English Does Not Erode My Nationalism

This is a response to an article written by bang Zul (Zulfikar Akbar) titled A Critic from a Villager critician , posted recently. I viewed that ability to speak and write English is a mean to entering the world. Being Indonesian, English is not my mother tongue, but I learned this foreign language, with a lot of difficulty in the past, with my intention to be able to communicate better with foreigners, particularly the English speaking people.

No doubt, English is becoming increasingly important, and Chinese will follow soon, I guessed. Without having proficiency in English nowadays, people will have difficulty in getting job in the international agencies. People will have also difficulty in understanding the way the English speaking people think or view on something.

To me, English is another skill that we must know and learn, as we know and learn biology, for instance, or mathematics, as not to be cheated by others. Knowing English neither erodes my nationalism, nor my respect to my own language, my mother’s tongue language.

If you happened to know how to speak other’s language, people will also respect you better. By this, you are already showing that you have reached the level that other nations have, or even higher, as the others may have not been able to speak our language yet.

The requirement for writing an article in English for a writing competition should be seen as a challenge rather than a handicap. And this could be seen as an opportunity to test our capability.

Just my thought, I hope no one is unhappy with this article.

Keep writing…