N

ov. 29, p6

Following President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s presentation in Beijing, my Twitter, Path and Facebook timelines were flooded with arguments and discussions about his performance at the CEO Summit of the Asia and Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

Many of the netizens'€™ contemptuous comments focused on the inadequate or even '€œembarrassing'€ English coming from a leader representing Indonesia on the international stage.

As a Surabayan with a thick Javanese accent working in Jakarta, I can relate to that experience. Often times, I received similar derogatory remarks when speaking in English. (By Rezia Usman, Jakarta)

Your comments:

Politicians have made English expression too biased and too complex to understand. We need to simplify it and start speaking English in such a way that everyone can understand accurately.

Fussioon B

The writer seems to be intent on making excuses for poor grammar, syntax and convention, and hiding under the rather silly umbrella of accent and regions. No one can debate that a privileged few have better access to schooling and therefore language skills. But that does not change the fundamentals.

'€œNow that the 2013 National Curriculum no longer requires English at the elementary level, the economically deprived children in urban areas will learn and speak English as needed from the media and the Internet.'€  

As if this is a good thing?  The reality is that Indonesians will still be at a significant disadvantage to their regional peers in the international marketplace By way of example; the international arm of my company continues to recruit Indians and Philippine nationals, as the English skills of an Indonesian graduate are appalling by comparison.

Rusty Nails

If a head of state can'€™t speak English well, it is better to use the native language and get speeches translated. Who cares? I remember Hugo Chavez giving some brilliant speeches at the UN purely in Spanish, yet still receiving a thunderous applause. You'€™ll notice that only Indonesians are mocking the poor guy over this. Most of them are probably totally oblivious to how awful their own English is.

Loro Blonyo

I simply can'€™t get over the hilarious irony of Indonesians tweeting comments that seem perilously close to defending the purity of English language, which, considering the fact that the real Old English barely covers a quarter of the current vocabulary and the rest of it comes from various other languages, has never existed in the first place. English is a global lingua franca. Its greatest value lies in its functioning as a bridge. Nitpicking about absolute grammatical adherence or fancy vocabulary will defeat the purpose of using it.

Ligare Corvo

Most interesting to notice is that it is the local upper-crust (or so they believe they are) who were quick to criticize. Most probably, for people sitting in the audience during Jokowi'€™s speech, it was just perfect enough to get his message across.

Also, it should be noted that Jokowi was speaking freely without the use of a teleprompter or reading from a speech prepared by some high-spirited ghostwriter. Of course he'€™s no Steve Jobs, but that was not expected anyhow. His speech was easily understood and with that it fulfilled its purpose.

Winnie

It may seem '€œpowerless'€ for someone who is called president to give a presentation at such a level. However, Indonesia is not one of the countries who should be '€œroaring'€ in the eyes of the international world. Not yet. We don'€™t have that much power to roar just yet, let'€™s be honest about this.

However, his presentation was powerful because it exhibited a picture of a president who truly cares about his nation and his people and will fight to improve the nation and give his people a better life. He embraces all his imperfections and is resigned to doing what needs to be done. That is how a president should be, and that is the very reason why Jokowi has been celebrated by international society. They respect him because they see him as a man of the people, and we should regard him that way too.

Veily Intan

Language can be a barrier if you haven'€™t had the privilege of living or studying abroad. But it is one thing to speak with an accent, and yes, no one should be discriminated against for sounding non-native.

It'€™s another thing if your diction and sentence structure obscures your point such that it becomes unintelligible. As someone who works with bilinguals, I have no problem if someone sounds Javanese. My real concern is if something makes absolutely no sense, structurally or diction-wise, in Indonesian, English or other languages.

Yes, Jokowi does not deserve the criticism for sounding plain. In fact, sounding plain and simple is the best way to get your point across. Our politicians could learn to lose their verbosity and abstractness and focus on getting their points across. There is no better demonstration of intelligence than that.

Ngukzilla