KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 — Cuisines and cultures of 10 countries to promote multiculturalism were presented at the launching of the “Francophonie” month in Malaysia on Friday.
The event, held at a shopping complex, was organised by 10 embassies in Malaysia.
“Experience Francophonie” festival was held in conjunction with the 2023 French language month in Malaysia and was opened to the public on Saturday.
The countries involved are Belgium, France, Guinea, Laos, Mauritius, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and Vietnam – representing member states and observers of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).
This international organisation of French-speaking countries represents one of the biggest linguistic zones in the world.
In his opening remarks, Chargé d’affaires of Ukraine in Malaysia Denys Mykhailyuk mentioned that the OIF’s mission is to embody the active solidarity between its 54 members, seven associate members and 27 observers, which accounts for a population of 321 million French speakers. He also quoted a poem written by famous Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, translated into French.
Ukraine and Poland are observers in the OIF.
“In Malaysia, thanks to the commitment of the Ministry of Education, acting in favour of multilingualism, the number of students learning French in government secondary schools has tripled during the past 10 years. Today, French is taught in more than 130 public schools to 15,000 students and nearly 3,000 of them sat last year for the official French exam called DELF scolaire (which ranks Malaysia 6th in the world in terms of the number of candidates),” said a statement.
In addition, since the beginning of the 1990s, Malaysian French language teachers have benefited from a high-quality training course, partly held in Besançon, France, the statement further said.
