Malpractice

Satu petang tu budak2 Internal Medicine pegi masuk dewan untuk lecture.

Ari tu Dr. Shahir Samrah yang bagi lecture.

Sebelum start biasela die bermesra2 ngan budak2 ni, so die pun tanye la kat budak2 yang rounds kat Hospital Basma :

Dr Shahir : Amcam rounds okay ke?

Budak2 : Tak ok langsung, dr2 kat sane layan patient teruk lah, kitorng tak dapat pekdah ape pon

Dr Shahir : Takpe, at least korang dapat belajar ape itu malpractice ye

Loanwords as social history

By Rachel at http://idlethink.wordpress.com

I went to a fascinating seminar some time back at the Asia Research Institute in Singapore, given by Dr Uri Tadmor on the subject of Malay and Indonesian loanwords. Loanwords, by their nature, can often be strong evidence of sustained cultural interaction — ephemeral contact is often not enough to stimulate widespread borrowing — but they can do more than allow us the rather facile conclusion that, for example, Persians and Indians were, once upon a time, in contact with Malays. What Tadmor was really concerned with was to showcase the potential of linguistics, in particular the study of loanwords, for investigating the social history of a region, sometimes even against the grain of received (or convenient) wisdom.

One could look at the type of words that are borrowed: in particular, what Tadmor called their ’semantic fields’, which is to say, the general intended function of these words, such as ‘religion’, ‘clothing’ or ‘law’. This can say a lot about what exactly Indians or Persians were doing in Malaysia; for example, one might draw conclusions about the fact that many Persian words in Malay are to do with important cultural practices, like marriage, which is kahwin in Malay and kawin in Persian. Tadmor points out that in most languages, just as you would expect, words least likely to be borrowed are those from semantic fields governing qualities common to all human beings: words of spatial relations, movement, sense perceptions, quantity. Yet even at this basic level, social factors can prevail. Take quantity. The Malay-Indonesian word for ‘three’, tiga, is from the Sanskrit trika, which means ‘trinity’. One might rightly, Tadmor says, wonder why Malay-Indonesian would need to borrow a word for such a basic number, when there already existed telu, the Javanese and Old Malay word for ‘three’. His rather amusing conjecture, which I find entertaining enough to pass on with a pinch of salt, is that the Sanskrit word was poached in cultural embarrassment. The word telu sounds uncomfortably similar to the Malay word telur, which means ‘egg’, but which Tadmor points out was also a common euphemism for ‘testicles’. One, two, testicle! Better to bung in the more lofty Sanskrit when speaking to important people. And apparently, it stuck. There’s a huge amount of Sanskrit in Malay, including such basic words as those for ‘head’, ‘light’, ‘because’, ‘all’ and ‘when’.

But one could also look at how a word gets imported, and what morphological changes occur along the way. Note how the unvoiced consonant in the Sanskrit trika, the hard ‘k’, has become the voiced consonant, the ‘g’, in Malay tiga. Tadmor says that this form of morphological change very commonly takes place when Indo-Aryan words (Sanskrit) are imported into Dravidian languages; for example, Tamil. Can it be, then, that Sanskrit words are being relayed into Malay -Indonesianthrough South Indians? Sure enough, there’s an astounding number of Dravidian-origin loanwords in Malay. To name just a few: Tamil’s kappal for Malay’s kapal, or ’ship’; Tamil’s taman for Malay’s teman, or ‘friend’; Tamil’s katai for Malay’s kedai, or ’shop/market’. Most interestingly, the word for ’shop’ in Indonesian is not kedai but toko, which is a word of Hokkien Chinese derivation — perhaps giving some indication of the early social landscape in Malayan and Indonesian towns and cities, and in particular, who were the ones keeping shops. Finally, through some pretty intense morphological analysis, Tadmor shows that most words of Arabic origin in Malay and Indonesian were ultimately borrowed via Persian — even, I believe, aspects of Jawi, the Arabic written script adapted for Malay.

One can also, metaphorically speaking, carbon date loanwords; that is to say, get some sense of approximately when a given foreign word entered a language. For example, there seems to be good evidence suggesting that Dravidian loanwords in the Malay Archipelago can be traced back to Old Tamil, which scholars date variously between 300 BC and 700 CE. An example would be the Malay word nelayan, for ‘fisherman’; according to Tadmor, this comes from a Tamil word ulayyan [sic?] that no Tamil speaker today would recognize, because it’s been out of use for centuries and is only found today in ancient Sangam period literature. This suggests that there must have been Dravidian, specifically Tamil seafarers in the Malay Archipelago more than a thousand years ago.

And it seems it wasn’t only Tamils living on the peninsula a thousand years ago. Tadmor intimated that this aspect of Austronesian linguistics is almost entirely understudied: Malay contains an astounding number of Khmer loanwords. Some of these words have been borrowed through Thai; for example, the word for ‘census’, which is bonci in Khmer, banchii in Thai, and banci in Malay. Some of these words are the same in all three languages: the word for ‘recognize’ or ‘remember’ is cam in Khmer, Thai and Malay. But some Malay words are different enough from their Thai or Khmer versions that we might wonder whether they were really so related: the word for ‘candle’, for example, is thien in Khmer and thian in Thai, but dian in Malay. And here’s where the carbon dating comes in: the present Khmer form of ‘candle’ is thien, but its form in Old Angkorian Khmer (roughly, 9th century to 13th century) is exactly the same as that of present day Malay: dian.

I do think all this, conjectural and thin in the way only archaeology can be and still maintain its academic reputation, is nonetheless rather interesting in particular for Malaysia, whose official history maintains a studious, almost desperate disinterest in pre-Islamic history of the peninsula. This is, I think, a product of some deep insecurities about the place of Malay and the Malays in history, and the cultural defensiveness that comes with such complexes; it’s a set of concerns that I think Indonesia doesn’t share to quite the same extent. But in the face of the unmistakable traces of Ancient Khmer, Old Tamil, Urdu, Sanskrit and a distinctly Persianized Arabic in the very language that you utter your denials of pre-Islamic-Malay history in — this is masterful hypocrisy. Also, failing to acknowledge the deeply porous character of the Malay language (nearly a third of the Malay-Indonesian language is loaned) might blind us to the way in which two of the most salient ’semantic field’ vacuums in Malaysia, over the last century, have been and are still today being filled by non-Malay terms: science and politics. No prizes for guessing what the words for those in Malay are: sains and, yes, politik.

Paintballing!!

Amman, Sunday - A big gunfight broke out between the forces loyal to the warlord Abdullah Bey and the Jungle Squad in the mountains northwest of Amman, yesterday. The Jungle Squad, working on information obtained from torturing the locals, finally managed to find and encircle Abdullah Bey's field command post. The result of the 1 1/2 hour battle is total defeat for Abdulla Bey, where he along with his loyal fighters were taken prisoner. Here are some details about the battle.


2 pm : The battle started. Abdulla Bey, with Lt Ramsy as his 2nd-in-command, led his men valiantly to break the tightening enemy noose with an uphill assault on an enemy post. Halfway up the hill, the attack broke down and Abdulla Bey ordered a retreat.

2.25 pm : 3 soldiers of the Jungle Squad made a suicidal charge right through the defences of Abdulla Bey's camp shouting Allaahu Akbar!! but they were cut into pieces just before they could grab Abdulla Bey's flag.

2.35 pm : A friendly fire incident happened when Sgt. Halfi mistakenly shot Lt Ramsy who was retreating from the advancing enemy. Luckily Lt. Ramsy didn't suffer any life threatening injuries and he was back fighting at the front lines in no time.

2.45 pm : Being pushed back deep into their own territory, Abdulla Bey's forces were finally forced to flee the base and head to their last outpost. The Jungle Squad secured the newly captured territory and searched for intel. They shot all the wounded who were left behind. Barbarians!

2.55 pm : Abdulla Bey's forces are now defending a hilltop position. But the Jungle Squad had placed a sniper on a communication tower nearby, making any movement of Abdulla Bey's forces susceptible to the sniper's fire. Abdulla Bey lost a couple of good men just to this sniper alone. Later the sniper was identified as S Sgt. Izham.

3.10 pm : The battle rages on. 3 assaults from the Jungle Squad was beaten back, but at the same time, attempts by Abdulla Bey to break out were also stopped with heavy casualties. Abdulla Bey himself was hit in the face but miraculously he survived to command his troops to the bitter end.

3.15 pm : A couple of heroic actions by Pvt 1st Class Nazirul together with Pvt Nadzeem ,Pvt Halim and Pvt Afiq managed to hold back the enemy for some time before they could regroup and plan another attack.

3.25 pm : A final assault by the Jungle Squad brought the battle to an end. The men of Abdulla Bey were so exhausted that despite all the encouragements given by Abdulla Bey, they just couldnt take it anymore. The white flag was flown at 3.30 pm GMT +2.

Prisoners of War

With Lt Ramsy

With S Sgt Izham

With Lt Sameeh of the Jungle Squad. Notice the hit around Abdulla Bey's right mandible

Moments before the execution of Lt Ramsy

Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris

Dahulu saya pernah sekali melihat rancangan Dogfights(pergaduhan anjing dalam BM..maksud sebenar adalah pertempuran udara antara kapal terbang pejuang,bukan antara kapal terbang pejuang menyerang kapal terbang pengebom,itu namanya intercept), maka tukang cherita(narrator) itu sedang mencheritakan bagaimana salah satu daripada pesawat yang berperang itu telah mendaki(climbed) terlalu tinggi sehingga dia hilang halaju udaranya yang cukup untuk mengekalkan daya angkat(lost sufficient airspeed to maintain the lift) sehingga pesawat itu tidak lagi mampu terbang akibat tidak cukup laju dan jatuh ke bawah(stall).

Semasa saya sedang menonton,memang di fikiran saya terlintas perkara2 yang tertulis di atas. Jika kita menggunakan BM sepenuhnya dalam Sains dan Math, ayat2 seperti berikut tentulah akan dijumpai kerap-kali.

Actually there's nothing wrong with it, and to be honest, I find it quite elegant.

this

or this

Now on to the topic.

I have read the arguments from both sides, and I've got to say both have valid points.

I love to look at this issue from a purely objective point of view. Put Nationalism or whatever sentiments aside. Language evolves. The Malay language is not purely Malay. No offense,but for those who is overly proud of Malay, they should realize that they are actually proud of the ability of our forefathers to take words from other language and somehow make it a unique language,which is actually not a bad thing. I'm not saying that we cant be proud of our language, just don't overdo it. And even English took many words from other languages. So we can say that Malay and English are almost the same in the context of acquisition of loan words and vocabulary,but with English having a far more established pool of scientific words. Maybe Malay too has it own unique scientific words, but they are not as famous as the English ones, or sound 'uncool' to the majority of it speakers, who knows?

Jikalau mereka yang berkata, pengajaran dalam BM adalah salah satu cara untuk memartabatkan Bahasa Melayu, adakah period sebelum ini(iaitu sebelum implementasi PPSMI) telah berjaya memartabatkan BM?Atau adakah selepas PPSMI BM jatuh martabatnya?Honestly saya sebagai rakyat biasa di jalanan(bukanlah ahli pemikir atau intelek) tak nampak pun beza sebelum dan selepas. Bagi saya, martabat sesuatu bahasa bukan diukur dengan berapa luas penggunaanya, tetapi ia diukur dengan pencapaian para petuturnya. Jikalau orang-orang Melaka tidak hebat pada zaman kegemilangannya, adakah Bahasa Melayu akan menjadi lingua franca? Maka bahasa bergantung pada petuturnya, bukanlah petutur bergantung kepada bahasanya. Apapun, Bahasa Melayu memang sentiasa di hatiku.

Membandingkan penggunaan English dengan negara2 lain yang lebih maju(or in some cases lebih mundur) adalah tidak relevan. Mereka mempunyai sejarah(long established scientific traditions),budaya dan banyak lagi faktor yang berbeza dengan Malaysia(contohnye on average orang Melayu pemalu dan segan tak tentu arah). Kalau nak tengok negara Arab ajar dalam Bahasa Arab, tak maju pon diorang.Haha. We have to do what is best for us. Its not about the language. Its about the system. And the will of the people. Which IMO is severely lacking among us.

So at the end of the day, kita haruslah buat keputusan berdasarkan kemaslahatan anak2 kita yang belajar, bukanlah kepentingan kita yang dah tua yang masing2 mempunyai agenda masing2, baik dari kedua2 belah pihak. Anak-anak kita juga akan suffer dengan orang2 tua mereka yang pening2 untuk buat keputusan.

The current PPSMI looks like a failure. I agree. So lets find a solution.

Saya rasa tiada masalah mengajar didalam BM, tetapi berdasarkan keperluan pada masa kini, haruslah diikuti dengan English yang mantap. Adakah orang Melayu ini terlalu lemah untuk menguasai paling kurang pon 2 bahasa sahaja? Bukan nak suruh cakap macam slang orang Ireland, tapi at least a working knowledge lah. Nak kata kita tak diexposed, tengok cerita sume English, paper pon English, news TV3 Nightline pon English.(Maybe lately banyak yang tgk korean or japanese kot haha). Bangsa lain ok pulak? Mana lemahnya kita? Genetics? Tak juga, sebab Melayu ni sebenarnye adalah a mix of other races. So should be better lah from a scientific point of view. So, ini semua masalah sikap, and the environment that we were brought up in.

“I Speak Spanish to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to My Horse” -Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, 1500–58

That said, tak salah kita nak cuba membantu rakyat kita. So dalam konteks isu ini, saya rasa ada dua cadangan. Pertama ialah menggunakan English, tetapi bukan dengan perlaksanaan sekarang ini. Kenapa saya cakap English?Ada yang berkata bahasa lain juga banyak melahirkan saintis2 hebat dan akan mengambil alih English sebagai bahasa Sains, but will it happen in the near future?Honestly I dont think so. Not in our lifetime. All those researches in foreign language will eventually be translated into English no doubt about it. Lagipon memang dari dulu lagi ramai saintis dari Europe that are non-English, but English is still the most widely used language in the scientific community. English will remain the scientific language for quite a long time, just as Greek was the scientific language during the Classical Period, and Arabic during the Middle Ages.

And its not just about sciences, its about to how project yourself internationally. Like it or not, English is also an important language in a huge number of fields, including entertainment, law, and diplomacy(Remember Zainuddin Maidin on Al-Jazeera?That guy was a joke and total embarassment.haha).

So lets talk about how to implement it. We cannot change the system abruptly. My idea is that we start to train a new batch of teachers how to teach fully in English. Which will take around 4-5 years,corrrect me if I'm wrong. In the mean time, we let the current teachers teach in BM(assuming they dont have that good command of English) and at the same time retrain them in English. 4-5 year is enough I think to train an experienced teacher some basic concepts of English.It's not like English is totally foreign to them anyways. And mind you, these 4-5 years the teaching will all be in BM.

After we have produced the first batch of teachers fully capable of teaching in English, and at the same time the old timers have been retrained, then we are ready to proceed to the next level. Teach Science and Mathematics fully in English, and wait for the results.

Yeah it takes a lot of effort and money, but hey I think we could muster a couple of bucks if our politicians are not so busy dealing with their own interest and stuffs like that you know what I mean?haha.

Atau cara kedua. Tak perlu semua orang pandai English. Macam agama, bukan semua orang faham Arab untuk faham agama. Orang Arab sendiri pon banyak x paham agama.haha. Merepek plak. Ok kita boleh teruskan mengajar didalam BM, tapi pastikan subjek English itu sendiri comprehensive dan menyeluruh.Its not just about science, English will no doubt help you to compete in the real world. Dan saya cadangkan buat entrance exam ke universiti untuk subjek2 yang perlukan English lebih susah dan lebih strict. That way, bagi mereka(dan ibu bapa mereka) yang benar2 mahu berusaha, akan brush up on their English semenjak kecil lagi. Saya tidak ambil MUET maka tak tahu bagaimana ia dijalankan, maka ini terpulang la pada orang yang familiar tentang perkara ini. Apa yang saya dapat lihat dari keadaan ini adalah hanya golongan berpendidikan sahaja yang akan dapat menguasai English dengan baik.(Itu tak termasok golongan2 remaja uptown haha)

Tapi dalam masa yang sama, penekanan terhadap BM harus dikekalkan juga. Pada hemat saya, BM penting dari aspek jati diri bangsa dan sebagainya, dan English penting(sekarang ini) untuk memajukan bangsa. Saya tak kata BM tak boleh majukan bangsa, tapi agaknya masing2 boleh nilai sendiri kot. Maka kedua2 penting. Mana yang perlu lebih diberi penekanan?BM kita cakap hari2, baca hari2, manakala English pula boleh dikatakan kurang lagi exposure dari BM, maka mana yang perlu lebih ditekankan demi mencapai keseimbangan terma?

Tapi the best is to change our education system. Dont spoon feed. Make it more interesting. And make it in a way that it will produces lions, not sheeps. Thinkers, not people who follow blindly. Students who understand how things work, not just memorize how they work.

One more thing, for us Muslims, having a good command of English will help us tremendously in our Dakwah.

Kalau salah tolong tunjukkan. Semoga isu ini akan berakhir dengan baik. Semoga generasi akan datang akan lebih hebat dan mengambil iktibar dari kekalutan generasi kita sekarang(cewaahh cakap macam orang tua plak haha).

Selamat.

Kanak-kanak bermain salji

I was browsing old pictures when I came across this funny(at least for me) video.

That was in Ajloun, when we were in the first year. Here is the list of famous people in the video :
Acap(me), Hazim, Afiq, Mun, Bro Fird, Abg Rahmat , Sopee, Abg exchange dari UIA x ingat name(sape ingat tolong bgtau) dan unknown cameraman.

:)

Of Pattani and Palestine

Right now I am trying to keep my eyes open so that I can finish reading Nelson. But I couldnt. So I have decided to write some of the things that have been in my mind lately.

Last week, there was a conference held in Irbid which involved delegates of Malaysian students studying in the various Arab countries. They call it PERTAMA. So this conference was supposed to be about how the 'mahasiswa' can be more mature, more proactive and aware of the issues happening around the world. You guys can read more about it from the website itself.

So pada hari kedua, ada satu kejadian yang berlaku yang menarik minat saya. PERTAMA ini diadakan di dewan Al-Kindi, Universiti Yarmouk, dan ianya dibawah penyeliaan pegawai-pegawai universiti itu. Pada masa rehat tenghari, para mahasiswa telah set-up booth-booth untuk menjual pelbagai barangan antaranya barang-barang dari Palestin(ini adalah perkara biasa memandagkan semangat orang Melayu terhadap isu ini). Apabila pihak universitesi dapat tahu bahawa mereka menjual barang-barang Palestin(walaupon hanya souvenir bukanlah poster Hamas atau lain2), mereka telah mengarahkan supaya dewan ditutup dan PERTAMA dibatalkan untuk hari itu.(Alhamdulillah pihak penganjur berjaya menjalankan juga program di tempat lain hasil kebijaksanaan mereka).

Reaksi dari pelajar kita sudah tentulah "Hey terok betol la arab ni!", "Sengal la arab ni", "Tak gune nye arab!" dan lain2 lagi yg sewaktu denganya. Di sini saya ingin mengetengahkan beberapa points untuk kita sama2 fikirkan.

Pertama, sejauh manakan kita faham tentang politik dalaman Jordan?Kita mendakwa hendak membahaskan isu-isu internasional, tetapi apakah tahap pemahaman kita terhadap isu-isu tempatan?Adakah suara rakyat sama dengan suara kerajaan?Isu Palestin di negara ini adalah amat sensitif. Tahu sejarah perang 48?Perang 67?Black September?Tahu tak Syria pernah nak cuba menyerang Jordan ketika Jordan dan PLO sedang bertempur di Amman?Dan kita harus faham bukan semua orang melihat isu ini dari kaca mata Islamik. Ada yang melihat isu ini sebagai isu Nasionalistik Arab, dimana campur tangan orang luar tidak dialu-alukan. Lihat sahaja reaksi Liga Arab terhadap kritikan PM Turkiye Erdogan dalam isu Gaza. Lagi-lagi isu ini adalah isu panas(baru sahaja berlaku).Kerajaan Jordan dah cukup ditekan oleh rakyat mereka, will they appreciate us(foreigners) meddling in their internal affairs?Ada diantara kita yang kata inilah masanya untuk kita berjuang untuk Palestin(yakni defy kerajaan Jordan), I say to them, they(kerajaan Jordan) will not give a d*mn to what we say or do. On the contrary, they could easily tell us to pack our bags and take the flight home. To my brothers, I say, pick your battle carefully, and be patient, kerana this is not our playing field *yet*, dan masa yang betol akan tiba ensyalla. Our mission here is to complete our studies, and a good soldier will always try to complete his mission, even if it means he has to go stealth atau elak dari bertemu musuh.

Jadi how come kita agak ignorant tentang keadaan dalaman Jordan?Maybe ada beberapa sebab, tetapi yang utama adalah saya rasa sikap kita kurang ambil tahu dan kurang minat. Ini berpunca dari sikap kita yang kurang bergaul dengan masyarakat setempat, which in turn adalah hasil sikap kita yang suka duduk sesama kelompok Melayu kita in our own comfort zone. Maka demi kebaikan kita haruslah kita lebih aktif ye rakan-rakan. Seperti motto negara Turkiye, Yurtta Sulh, Cihanda Sulh yang bermaksud 'Peace at home, peace in the world', memahami keadaan setempat adalah langkah pertama dalam usaha kita untuk membawa perubahan kepada dunia.

Kedua, kita mengkritik kerajaan Jordan kerana tidah bertindak untuk saudara kita di Palestin. Tetapi sudah lupakah kita dengan apa yang berlaku dengan saudara2 kita di Pattani(dan juga masyarakat Islam lain yang tertindas di Asia)? Kalau nak ikutkan,bukankah tanggungjawab kita untuk membantu mereka adalah lebih besar dari tanggungjawab kita terhadap orang2 Palestin kerana meraka adalah jiran kita. Tapi kenapa kita tidak begitu bersemangat bila membincangkan hal Pattani?Tiada demonstrasi jalanan, tiada ceramah-ceramah, tiada rancangan untuk membebaskan mereka?Are they less Muslim from the Palestinians? Apa kerajaan Malaysia telah lakukan untuk membantu rakyat Pattani(tindakan yang significant)?Ada orang cakap ini isu politik,sebab tu tak boleh nak buat ape. Gotcha!Maka samalah juga kita dengan Jordan ni ye kawan-kawan.

Harap apa yang saya tulis ini dapat memberi sedikit sebanyak manfaat. Bukan niat untuk menyalahkan sesiapa, just a few points for us to ponder upon. Kalau salah sila betolkan. Salamat.

Pergaduhan antara Melayu dan Arab

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