Malaysia is ethnolinguistically diverse. According to Ethnologue, for a population of over 30 million, 134 languages are spoken within its territory, of which 112 are indigenous and 22 non-indigenous. Against this backdrop of ethnolinguistic vitality, only some of these languages figure in the formal education system either as the medium of instruction (as in the case of Malay and, for some time, English) or as a subject within the school curriculum (as in the case of Iban, Kadazandusn, Tamil, Chinese and Arabic). This edited volume, which is published under the Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education series, provides an overview of the “positioning of these languages” within the education system, “for the purpose of integration of the Malaysian peoples” (p.1). In this regard, the “positioning” of languages within the education system is ostensibly political in nature, and is tied closely to Malaysia’s postcolonial responses to the project of nation-building, of developing national unity with a population that is linguistically and also culturally and socially diverse. The book is organized in 10 chapters, each authored or co-authored by key researchers in the area.

中文翻译：

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马来西亚教育系统中的语言：多语言环境中的单语系

马来西亚在民族语言上是多种多样的。根据Ethnologue的统计，在其3000万人口中，其领土上使用134种语言，其中112种为土著语言，22种为非土著语言。在这种民族语言活力的背景下，只有部分语言在正规教育系统中作为教学语言（例如马来语，有时是英语），或者是学校课程中的一门学科（例如（例如伊班，卡达赞丹，泰米尔文，中文和阿拉伯文）。这本编辑后的册子在《亚洲教育Routledge批判研究》系列下出版，概述了“为了马来西亚人民的融合”在教育系统中“这些语言的定位”（第1页）。在这方面，语言在教育系统中的“定位”从表面上讲本质上是政治性的，与马来西亚对民族建设，在语言上，文化上和社会上多样化的民族发展民族团结项目后殖民主义的回应紧密相关。该书分为10章，每章均由该地区的主要研究人员撰写或合着。