KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 29 — A survey by global pollster Pew Research Center found that 79 per cent of Malaysian respondents said speaking the country’s main language is very important to “truly” belong to Malaysia.
In the report titled “What makes someone ‘truly’ belong in a country?”, 8 per cent of respondents said it was not at all or not very important to speak Bahasa Malaysia in order to be truly Malaysian.
“Globally, large majorities say speaking the country’s most common language is at least somewhat important for true belonging.
“And in many countries, large shares see this as very important,” the firm said in the report released earlier this week.
Similar responses were also seen from surveys conducted in Malaysia’s neighbouring countries such as Thailand (78 per cent) and Indonesia (83 per cent) with Singapore being the one notable exception.
“Only about a quarter of adults there say it is very important to speak Mandarin in order to be truly Singaporean,” it said, adding that Singapore has three other official languages besides Mandarin (English, Malay and Tamil).
In the survey, almost two-third of Malaysians (64 per cent) also see birthplace as a very important aspect of national identity.
Additionally, 58 per cent of Malaysians said that sharing the country’s customs and traditions is very important for being truly Malaysian.
In Malaysia, 1,005 adults were randomly polled over the phone from January 5 to May 22, 2024.
