Culture : Asians Say: Pardon Me, Your English Is Showing : It may be the language of business. But it has no business replacing local tongues and cultures, critics complain.

English is the language of business in Asia.

When a Thai businessman negotiates with his Japanese counterparts, the deal is likely to be written in English. When a Korean trader visits Indonesia, the chances are that the negotiations will take place in English.

While French was the lingua franca of Indochina for the first half of the 20th Century, all that is left of French culture is the baguette. The streets of cities such as Hanoi in Vietnam and Phnom Penh in Cambodia are now lined with schools promoting “Streamlined English.” The motivation is clear enough: The ability to speak English is often a ticket to a well-paying job in a hotel or restaurant frequented by foreigners.

With so much going for the language, it may seem a little surprising that voices are being heard around Asia complaining about the widespread use of English and its impact on Asian culture. The loudest complaints are coming from countries that have the closest ties to Mother England.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed of Malaysia was excoriated in the press in September for speaking English--rather than Bahasa Malaysia, the country’s official language--in a television interview at the Nonaligned Movement summit in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The Utusan Malaysia newspaper has been running a series of articles by Malay literary figures demanding that the English language be banned from advertisements on national television.

Mahathir has lampooned the movement, saying that businesses would not waste their money on English speaking ads if they were not selling goods. “That is why there are no advertisements in Russian or French in Malaysia, because many people do not understand them,” he said.

English was the principal language in Malaysia before independence from Britain in 1957, but the Education Act of 1961 established Bahasa as the national language for use in schools.

A similar debate is raging in Singapore, another former British colony, which since it broke politically with Malaysia in the late 1950s has taken pride in using English as a national language.

Information Minister George Yeo complained in a newspaper article last month of a “disturbing trend” of Singaporeans speaking English at home.

“Some young Singaporeans from English-speaking homes are more familiar with Hollywood and Walt Disney than they are with the stories in ‘Xi You Ji’ or the ‘Ramayana,’ ” Yeo said, referring to two greats of Asian literature.

A nation of 3 million, Singapore is 77% Chinese, with the remainder of the population Tamil or Malay. Although it once discouraged the use of Chinese--out of fear of Chinese communism--students are now required to be bilingual in Mandarin, Tamil or Bahasa Malaysia. Other courses in school are conducted in English, but the result has been that many young people speak a concoction known as “Singlish,” incorporating parts of all four languages.

The government has been conducting an annual “Speak Mandarin campaign” designed to persuade ethnic Chinese to use the language at home. In addition to the cultural benefits, the government clearly sees an economic need for Mandarin speakers as China opens to outside investment.

A university lecturer named Teo Kar Seng gained instant notoriety by charging in a public speech that Chinese-educated Singaporeans have suffered a collapse of self-confidence because of the dominance of English in the country. He said he refuses to speak English with public servants such as workers at the post office.

A flood of letters to the English-language newspaper The Straits Times accused Teo of being a “Chinese chauvinist.” The defense of English was left to Walter Woon, an iconoclastic law professor who warned that the greatest threat to Singapore is not Western culture but racial and cultural chauvinism.

“There is no escaping the fact that English is the only acceptable neutral language for all Singaporeans, irrespective of race,” Woon said. “There is no escaping that the dominant economic and cultural influence today is Western.”

Woon maintained that Singapore is neither Western nor Asian but “cosmopolitan.”

But Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of the country and the final arbiter of many of Singapore’s cultural debates, rejected the cosmopolitan argument as simplistic and warned against totally forgetting Singapore’s Chinese connections.

Lee, who was educated at Cambridge University in England, said there is an “abiding sense of community (in Singapore) which goes back to the early days when the Chinese were immigrants.” He warned that if English culture becomes dominant and the people lose touch with their roots, “I don’t think we’ll survive.”