The Teaching of Malay in Europe, 



By R. 0. Winstedt 



It is commonly held that the best place to learn an Oriental 

 language is in the country where it is spoken. To that facile con- 

 tention Sir Charles Lyall gave an admirably considered answer in 

 a memorandum addressed to the committee appointed in 1907 to 

 consider the organisation of oriental studies in London. " In the 

 first place, it is not the view which has dictated the establishment 

 of the flourishing schools established by our commercial rivals in 

 Germany and France. These nations have been quick to perceive 

 the advantages of providing, in their own country, centres where 

 persons intending to make a career for themselves in Asia may 

 prepare themselves for their task; and, so far as Germany is con- 

 cerned, it is generally admitted that they have been strikingly 

 successful. In trade, it is found that German agents, owing to 

 their knowledge of the languages and the habits and customs of 

 the East gained at home, are liable to outstrip their English com- 

 petitors even in our own dominions. The amount of trade which 

 is carried on between India and the nations of continental Europe 

 is immense and growing; and in this expansion it is scarcely open 

 to doubt that the Germans owe much of their advantage to the 

 training which they receive in Oriental methods in their own 

 country. Secondly, much time is lost by persons, who defer until 

 they land in the East the commencement of the study of Oriental 

 subjects. Europeans require, in order to overcome the initial 

 difficulties presented by Oriental languages, the guidance and assis- 

 tance of Europeans who have already encountered and surmounted 

 those difficulties. The genius of Oriental speech is so different 

 from that of European languages that a student, if left to his un- 

 assisted efforts, is likely to waste both time and labour in approach- 

 ing his task. Moreover, so far as my experience goes, the art of 

 teaching is little understood in the East. The ordinary munshi 

 of India, at any rate, does not understand how his pupil's in- 

 telligence should be directed or stimulated, on what points stress 

 should be laid, how differences of idiom between the two languages 

 should be explained and other like matters which make the dif- 

 ference between good teaching and bad." And then Sir Charles 

 Lyall goes on to lay stress upon the personal influence of a Euro- 

 pean teacher as compared with a munshi; and again, on the value 

 of European libraries with their stores of comparative literature. 

 Every one of his points is corroborated by our experience in the 

 Malay Peninsula. 



Jour. Straits Branch 



