Lest we forget the Classical languages

Being a linguistic enthusiast, I am always fascinated by how much the Classical languages have contributed to our modern vernacular languages. Even more so, I lament that despite how much we owe to these languages of antiquity for enriching the vocabulary of the very languages we use everyday and take so much for granted, we choose to cast aside these forefathers of our modern tongues, denouncing them as dated.

Did anyone who watched "The Kingdom" (starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner) notice when Col. Faris Al Ghazi (played by Ashraf Barhom) said the line "... jawab soalan" (in reference to an interrogated suspect having already answered a question being posed)? If so, and assuming you, my reader, know Malay, did you instinctively note the obvious relationship between Malay and Modern Standard Arabic, both of whom have some roots in Classical Arabic?

For those of you who have visited Japan, and made a fleeting glance at the street signs, posters and restaurant menus written in kanji, has it occurred to you that almost 90% of kanji employed in the Japanese language is congruent with Chinese? For that matter, have any of you browsed through a Korean dictionary and noticed that many words and phrases are actually very similar to Chinese? That is because these two languages, despite being genetically-different from Chinese, borrowed an extensive part of their vocabulary from Classical Chinese - the only form of the Chinese language that can really claim to be common to the East Asian nations (China, Japan and Korea).

For those of you who are fortunate enough to own a copy of the Latin Vulgate Bible, have you attempted to place it alongside an English translation of the Bible, and compared a passage? If you have, you would inevitably have noted Latin words that have been inherited by English (though, not necessarily used in the equivalent verse of the Bible), e.g. principio (from which we get the English principle) means beginning (or first), verbum (from which we get the English verbose, verbatim) which means word, caelis (from which we get the English ceiling) means heaven.... etc.

Sadly, our lingustic education today makes little (if any) references to their Classical ancestors, thus depriving the students of the appreciation of their etymology. For understanding the etymology of the word affords the student more dynamism and flexibility in the use of the word, and a greater appreciation of any other related languages that share a common ancestor.

I got this quote from Wikipedia, by Edward Sapir in Languages (1921):

When we realize that an educated Japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of Chinese resources, that to this day Siamese and Burmese and Cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the Sanskrit and Pali that came in with Hindu Buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of Latin and Greek [in schools] our arguments are sure to be studded with words that have come to us from Rome and Athens, we get some indication of what early Chinese culture, Buddhism, and classical mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history. There are just five languages that have had overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. These are classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. In comparison with these, even such culturally important languages such as Hebrew and French sink into a secondary position.

Malaysia could do with a good railway system

I truly marvel at the railway systems in European countries. Having visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway in late-2005 on business trips, and spending the leisure time in between travelling around the countries by train, the extensiveness of the railway network (meaning that even if any particular line is down, you still have options to travel via another route), the punctuality of the trains (down to the minute!), and that there are always enough seats on-board for everyone, never fails to impress me. This is the kind of matured public transport system that the public has come to know and rely on.

Contrast that with Malaysia's LRT（Light Rail Transit) system - and this I can attest to, being a daily commuter. There really are only two main lines serving Kuala Lumpur's city centre, and they are both independently-operated. If ever any line is down, you are stuck. And yes, I have been stuck at the KLCC station after work no less than five times last year. The ticket vending machines reject my money once every four times on average (and, let it be added, I use new banknotes).

And this is the part that really grinds my teeth: The LRT system was really supposed to be the answer to Kuala Lumpur's traffic and public transport woes. Why, then, Mr. Ex-Transport Minister, did you guys build a light system of only two carriages, instead of going the whole hog with a proper 4-5 carriage train system? Did you not envisage the volume of people who would use this as their daily means of transportation in and out of the city? Have you actually tried boarding the LRT at 7:45am on a weekday- where there are, on average, ten persons queuing up at each of the four entrances to the train, and when the train finally arrives, it is so jam-packed that only one person can squeeze his way in?

Instead of spending millions of our taxpayers' hard-earned money on one return trip into space, I suggest you spend it on expanding the railway and public bus networks.

And, if I may add: Mr. Prime Minister, please do not chastise us by doing a dog-and-pony-show trip on board our trains, lamenting on the headlines that the train system is pathetic and that you promise to do something about it... and then retire in March this year. In the first instance, why do you hire a Transport Minister, and then have yourself - instead of him - to ride the trains and experience the Hell we go through everyday?