Syrian student wins third place in the international competition for reciting poetry in Malay language
Kuala Lumpur (ST) – Syrian student, Roaa Muhannad Al-Hamad, won third place in the international competition for reciting poetry in Malay. The competitions took place at the National Bahasa-Malay Language Council in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The charge d’ affairs of the Syrian Embassy in Malaysia Minister Counselor Muhammad Ghiyath Ibrahim, said to SANAthat, a workshop to introduce the participants and auditions preceded this competition. 12 countries from around the world participated in this competition, including Syria.
Ibrahim indicated that the competition is about reciting poetry in the Malay language, the spoken language of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei. The competition coincided with the opening of an international conference to make the Malay language a global one spoken by 400 million people.
He explained that the final qualifiers began on the 21st of this month at the Malaysian Language Complex, or the so-called Malaysian Language Diwan, in the presence of the head of the Diwan and a large number of intellectuals, poets, and writers. There was also the poet and Malaysian language specialized judges, and a number of embassies representatives of the participating countries.
Ibrahim pointed out that the competition was transmitted on social media. The 12-year-old girl, Roaa, took third place among the top participants whose mother tongue is Malaysian.
Roaa was with her father in Syrian folk dress. Her family has been in Malaysia for 7 years, where her father works as a teacher in the Malaysian schools. She mastered her new language at the age of six and participated in many competitions.
The Syrian Arab Republic embassy in Kuala Lumpur participated in this ceremony represented by the cultural attaché, along with diplomats of a number of countries.
The Malay language, known as “Bahasa Melayu”, is the official language of Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore.
The Malay language uses the Latin alphabet for writing, and there is another system that uses the Arabic alphabet in writing called Jawi.
Najla Khoury