Malaysians Are Multilingual ?

It is so often that when Malaysian come to have ice breaking introduction with Taiwanese or Chinese from mainland, the conversation will go like this :

TW/CN : Where are you from ?

MY : Malaysian

TW/CN : O...Malaysian..so you speak 5 languages then ?

I came to realize that ever since my years in England that Malaysians are reputable as multilingual. And I realize how important it is for you to master a few different languages. Malaysian in general speaks 3 languages. We should be thankful that there is at least freedom for us to speak our mother tongue as well as few different dialects. As for me myself, I do have 5 languages under my belt. Foo Chow as my mother tongue, english, malay, mandarin and cantonese.  Knowing an extra language has always been an advantage for us especially when we are overseas. I may not realize the usage when I was little, I used to question the usage of learning Malay. I questioned how many country in this world that speak Malay. Now that I'm wise enough to operate my poor brain, I fully aware that you dare not freaking call yourself a Malaysian if you cannot speak the national language. 

I do have a feeling that my mother tongue is going to stop at my generation. I highly doubt my children is going to communicate in Foo Chow. My younger brother does not speak Foo Chow that fluent as he converse in Mandarin with my parents. This is a sound example that our mother tongue have been taken over by Mandarin and English. The next generation will be encouraged to learn Latin languages like Spanish, Italian even French. It is pretty much me myself to play the role of rotating our mother tongue down to my next generation.

May God Bless Our Mother Tongue.