DBKL'S lousy English greeting US President Barack Obama gets flak!

DBKL @ DEWAN BANDARAYA KUALA LUMPUR or the KUALA LUMPUR CITY HALL ia again in the proverbial hot soup for screwing up on the greeting for visiting American President Barack Obama  which has been displayed prominently on the ITIS signboards at our capital city's major roadways.

As we can all see clearly, the words used by DBKL to greet President Obama is obviously incorrect and doesn't really convey to him, that we are welcoming him to Malaysia, our beloved nation.

Instead, DBKL's sign says 'WELCOME TO THE PRESIDENT OF USA BARACK OBAMA'.

Hehehehe.. We can all become fault finders and gleefully poke fun at the ones who are in charge of the capital city of our country, Kuala Lumpur.

For example, we can ask the following, tongue in cheek sarcastic question:

Hello? Who is DBKL to welcome readers to The President of the USA, Barack Obama?

knowing that in the US of A, there are legions of LGBT practitioners who would simply jump at the chance to have a go at Obama!

They have made lots of parodical videos which they have posted on You Tube making Obama out to be a royal stud or something

America glorifies their so called freedom to insult and make fun of just everything and everybody.

Even their country's leaders are not exempt.

Even The White House regularly holds the 'Roast' of its Presidents where the incumbent Head of State is made fun of publicly at these gala events.

Even President Obama indulges in such tomfoolery.

Back to the main issue here, DBKL simply have shot themselves in their proverbial foot by not engaging the services of Writing & Editing professionals 

like yours truly here.

Here's my response in the form of a comment which I posted in the Facebook thread uploaded by the New Straits Times online:

CLICK ON THE SCREENSHOT TO VIEW IT BETTER

It's just a simple mistake on the part of DBKL but when it reflects very badly and exposes the atrocious poor command of English of our country's capital city's administrators!

The blatant error in welcoming the most powerful and influential leader of the current world's # 1 superpower by DBKL's ill choice of words will be a laughing stock of the American media and talk show hosts.

Please don't be a cheapskate DBKL! I won't charge you much! Hehehehe.

Malaysian's appalling level of English due to Government Error.

When I started schooling way back in 1965, Jelutong English School, Penang was still educating us in proper British English.

We were in a way being taught to speak in the Queen's English. Speaking for myself, I developed a fine level of being able to read and write as well as speak very well in English. I was also and still am quite proficient in Bahasa Melayu as well for Iv grew up in a Malay kampong @ village in East Jelutong, Penang.

Being quite well versed in English and Malay serves me well to this very day. I can also speak very well in Tamil and a fair grasp of the local Penang Hokkien Chinese dialect. I can't however read and write any of the above stated languages apart from my major languages of English and Malay.

I understand a bit of Japanese, Hindi and Arabic as well but can't read or write in them either. 

From my observation, after 1970, the Malaysian Government decided to change the education system to be taught in Malay. As a result, many of our nation's students started to lose their ability to interact well in English, the world's major lingua franca.

It is not that we do not respect our National Language which is Bahasa Melayu, being a Malay nation but when it comes to business transactions and further study in the field of science and technology, most of the major universities do teach in English.

If we are to excel in any chosen field especially in any international level of studies where the resources are in English, then we would need to achieve a certain level of prowess in the language itself and any poor grasp of English will hinder our ability to excel in the subject due to our insufficient understanding of the said subject for literary reasons.

Malaysia needs to set it's education system right by reverting to the way things were back in the 1960s.

Only then will our academic institutions gain the highest standards of achieving academic excellence as we once did. Look south of the Malay Peninsular at Singapore. Their universities are today ranked as amongst the highest ranks amongst the world's premier universities due to the fact that they teach in English.

Our political representatives apparent low levels of academic qualifications also expose a downwards spiral of oratorical skills especially in English and also in Bahasa Melayu which often portrays our Parliamentarians to be of a level best suited to debate at the local coffeeshops.

Very poor command of English and even Bahasa Melayu which is our official and national language. What a shame! 

It's such a ridiculous situation where the so called Members of our Malaysian Parliament are so rude, arrogant and uncouth during the process of debating motions of enacting of laws that are to be used to govern our nation.

Other countries MP's are able to express their views in a more dignified and eloquent manner using proper words and sentences. 

So, it all goes back to the way our schools are teaching our students. Starting from even the primary school levels. In many cases, we find uneducated incompetent persons teaching at the kindergartens causing our impressionable young children being taught wrongly by people who are not supposed to even teach them the alphabets because these very persons can't even articulate those alphabets well in the first instance.

Malaysia really needs to scrape all these inappropriate shoddy systems that are currently in place. It goes back as to who calls the shots at Putrajaya?