“Sorry, my English no good,” Buray said. “No, I’m sorry,” I replied. “You speak English better than I can speak Burmese.” Buray’s from Kachin State. He arrived 10 years ago from Malaysia as a UNHCR-processed refugee in Wollongong (80km south of Sydney). He spoke only Burmese and a smattering of Malay when he first arrived. Today, he gets by with functional English as a cleaner in a local school.

Migrants from non-English-speaking backgrounds possess what native English speakers seldom don’t recognise - the capacity to learn and speak a second or third language under extenuating circumstances.

In 20 years of teaching journalism in Australia, I have met many foreign students who unnecessarily apologise for their lack of fluency in English. “Don’t apologise,” I say to them. “You speak more languages than the locals who can only speak English.” I’ve had students from Hong Kong, brilliant professional broadcasters in Cantonese back home, who stopped short of showing off their bi-lingual eloquence when they present their class projects in English.

Bilingual skills. That’s a Malaysian strength, not a deficiency. (We should ideally be a multilingual nation where all are proficient and fluent in English, Malay, Chinese, and if ever learnable, Tamil). When placed in a dominant Anglo environment, however, we eschew our bilingual skills, and speak in muted tones our Malay or Chinese accented English.

Should we even apologise for our accent? I think not. Malaysianised accent is easier on my ears than the put-on American accent from the local FM stations.

Accented EngIish is common at international academic conferences. Non-English-Speaking Background (NESB) accents are accepted and respected in academia. What counts is the subject matter. I have also sat through many seminar hours listening to journalism students from Asia pitch their projects and research papers. ‘Asian’ accents apart, their presentations are assessed on the 4Cs - contents, context, confidence and clarity.

I assess the foreign students in context given that they are generally less eloquent in expressing themselves and communicating complex ideas in English. Content wise, they’re acceptable and fairly competitive with the native speakers.

Which brings me to the mixed reactions to Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s speech in English at the 71st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Many show no empathy with the nerves that come with public speaking, not least for a first-timer speaking at the UNGA while obviously a stranger to the nuances of the English language.

The rakyat’s reaction to Zahid’s bold attempt could have been worse - like Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif.

A petition was filed in Pakistan’s Supreme Court against Sharif’s speech delivered in English at the 70th UNGA. The Dawn newspaper (Oct 25, 2015) reported the petitioner “contends that the prime minister had flouted the Sept 8 Supreme Court verdict which directed the federal and provincial governments to use, without any delay, Urdu for official and other purposes”.

I watched two clips of Zahid’s speech, first on the refugee situation in Malaysia, and the second, read from a teleprompter.

“What’s wrong with that? Sounds pretty clear to me,” a friend said, recognising the deputy PM’s peculiar Malay-accented English. “But why didn’t he speak in Bahasa?” Why indeed. Zahid is certainly no Najib Abdul Razak, who admittedly looks more learned, cool and speaks more eloquently in the English language given his years of education at the University of Nottingham.

Zahid’s speech underscores these simple lessons: your ability to speak in basic English does not necessarily translate into eloquence and clarity in the same language; it’s best to speak in the language you’re most comfortable with if you’re communicating the country’s position on nuanced political issues on the international stage. Simply said, our leaders should be better trained in English as a Second Language (ESL).

More dignified and better understood

Zahid would certainly look more dignified and his words better understood if he had spoken in Bahasa. His original speech should have been interpreted by his staff, and translated to the six official languages at the UN: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and Arabic.

(The UN is the world’s largest employer of language professionals. English and French are the working languages. One of the most sought after positions are translators, interpreters, terminologists and editors.)

Rule 53 on the use of languages in the UN General Assembly states that: “Any representative may make a speech in a language other than the languages of the General Assembly.

“In this case, he shall himself provide for interpretation into one of the languages of the General Assembly or of the committee concerned. Interpretation into the other languages of the General Assembly or of the committee concerned by the interpreters of the Secretariat may be based on the interpretation given in the first such language.”

Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Al-Sisi, Shinzo Abe, Recep Erdogan, Hassan Rouhani, Pope Francis - all had delivered their UNGA speeches in their national languages. But it’s less about asserting pride in one’s national language. It’s more about contents, confidence, credibility and clarity in communicating critical issues at the UNGA. It’s a need to balance symbolism (like conforming to the linguistic preference of the dominant powers) and the need to be understood.

A speech is more than delivering a litany of words. Stage presence matters. One’s confidence, eloquence, articulation and audience engagement influence how the message is received.

That said, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, was ironically, criticised by his people for delivering his maiden speech in Hindi at the UNGA, when he is fairly proficient in English. A political pragmatist, Modi knew that he could give a more powerful political message and all its nuances in Hindi than in English. Zahid could have been our Modi.

ERIC LOO worked as a journalist and taught journalism in Malaysia from the late 1970s to 1986. He is now Honorary Senior Fellow in Journalism at University of Wollongong in Australia. Email: eloo@uow.edu.au