ES1102 Reader Response Draft 3

Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue?

Lu (2013) discussed that there has been an increasing prevalence of English being recognised as their mother tongue in Singaporeans over the years. He also observed that there are efforts to encourage Mandarin, Melayu or Tamil learning but Singaporeans still regarded English as their sense of core identity. Sadly, he noted that such identification of the English Language by Singaporeans did not gain consensus from our local government and the international crowd. He then mentioned that the divide between older generation Singaporeans and younger generation Singaporeans is also the cause of the current linguistic and ideological segregation. He also stated that with such divide, conflicts amongst different linguistic and ideologies groups will slump progressively. He then went on to highlight that Singaporeans proved to be of a better caliber by outdoing most nations in international tests in English proficiency and literacy. To conclude, he asserted that the acceptance of English language as our mother tongue would only be feasible with the government’s recognition of the English language and the alteration of our language policies and stances to match our sociolinguistic entities. 

Growing up in a Chinese speaking family, I always pondered about the possibility of speaking or performing better in my English language if I was born into an English speaking family. I have friends who speak and write proficiently in English, and interestingly most of them are from English speaking families. There are also friends who do not have any English speaking background and yet they are adept in their English. I believed that such anomaly is due to some English-speaking influences which thus molded their English speaking and writing skills. 

With globalization, I believed Singapore has became more recognized on the world map with her rich diversity and culture, which also brought about the confusion of Singapore's language culture of being solitary. Many foreigners actually believed that Singaporeans spoke either Singlish or Chinese and it was in fact the nation's language.

On the contrary, being cosmopolitan, Singapore has a pool of different languages and it can be perplexing to determine which language actually represents her mother tongue. However, it is clear that Mandarin, Melayu, Tamil is representative of the Chinese, Malays and Indians respectively. I recalled asking my friends over leisure talk which language was representative of Singapore and the answers I got were obvious. I had answers like Singlish and Chinese. In light of this, Singlish is actually a term created due to the warp English many Singaporeans speak today.

I feel that in today's Singapore, with the influx of foreign linguistic and culture, it has slowly obscured her roots. Many Singaporeans are also gradually deviating off as they progressed with the society, a lot are moving away from Mandarin to English and they no longer value the importance of their mother tongue anymore. I have friends who feel that Mandarin is totally useless for their future and are not bothered to spend time reading anything written in Chinese at all. It is saddening that such scene is very common across teenagers nowadays. Such are the effects of globalization and I believed Singapore will not escape it unscathed. 

I feel that as Singapore develops and flourishes, she has well integrated into the diverse social practices, cultures and linguistic influences different countries bring about. However, I feel that she is ambiguous in the eyes of the foreigners. In resonance with Lu (2013), I strongly feel that Singapore should quickly establish a firm stand on our sociolinguistic reality in order to make known our local English standards and to gain recognition for it across the globe. It would also be an excellent opportunity for the locals to rethink about their roots and origin instead of going along with the globalization wave. 


Reference:

Lu, L. (2013, July 15) Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue? Today Online. Retrieved from
http://www.todayonline.com/commentary/can-english-be-singaporean-mother-tongue?singlepage=true