KUCHING: Sarawak is adopting English in official use together with Bahasa Malaysia for practical reasons, says Tan Sri Adenan Satem (pic).

The Chief Minister said his decision on the preference of English as the primary language of the state administration was a matter of “being realistic and accepting the fact that it is used globally”.

He said English was the language of trade and commerce as well as learning, science and technology.

“We are a trading nation. We buy and sell with the Japanese, the Koreans, the Americans and so on. I don’t suppose all Americans and Japanese can speak Malay.

“It’s very unrealistic, so we have to be practical,” he said at the Sarawak Chamber of Commerce and Industry annual dinner here on Friday night.

Adenan said the state administration would continue to use Bahasa Malaysia while raising the level of both languages.

“That is why I said official correspondence in the government now can be written either in Bahasa Malaysia or in English,” he said, referring to the decision he announced at the state civil service day on Wednesday.

He pointed to Singapore as an example of a country that prioritised English while maintaining Malay and Chinese among its official languages.

“But you know what the principal language is in Singapore, everybody speaks English. They take the practical way,” he said.

Adenan also said emphasising English was not about accepting colonisation as some critics had charged.

“Don’t listen to those so-called pseudo-nationalists who say that English is the language of the Anglo-Saxons, people who used to colonise us.

“English has become more than the language of the Anglo-Saxons. It has become an international language. Even Mongolia wants to learn English,” he said.