Be multilingual, youths told

Seputeh MP Teresa Kok has called upon Malaysian youth to be multilingual since Malaysia would be seeing a surge of foreign investments coming in.

“Malaysia must do more to invest and in encouraging students, youths and young adults to learn additional foreign languages, particularly one that will help them with their careers and future endeavours in their working lives, while at the same time to be masters in their national language Bahasa Malaysia.

“Multilingualism is the way forward and with such grand investments, we must take the proverbial “bull by the horns” and expedite the promotion and elevation of learning new foreign languages,” she said in a statement.

In addition to that she also highlighted that being multilingual would overcome impediments such as language barriers.

“The pandemic was most telling and an eye opener on how small the world really is. All societies are inter dependent on one another for trade and commerce.

“Languages barriers invariably becomes impediments and hence the urgent need to liberalise the study of other languages, as options in our learning institutions, for the purposes of trade, commerce and investments.”

She added that multilingualism is the way ahead as seen in Europe.

“In the case of Europe, over 65 percent of the population on the continent can speak one other language other than their native mother tongue.

“Multilingualism is fast catching up where children are taught their native language and then exposed to another language which will make it easier for them, as adults, to conduct commerce and trade, travel and communicate with their European counterparts given that the European Union recognises 24 national or official languages and EU Parliamentary documents are translated to all EU languages except those not legally binding.

In addition to that, she said that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has been luring foreign investors to invest in Malaysia.

“Since Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim took office in November 2022, he has been on a mission to lure and captivate foreign investors to make Malaysia an attractive country . He has brought in over RM200 billion in investments from his 17 working trips including the to the United Arab Emirates, United States of America, China and many others.

“Investments of this magnitude certainly needs local manpower to be able to cope, facilitate and ease communications between the parties.”