ES1102 Reader Response Essay Draft 1

Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue?

Lu, L. (2013, July 15) observed that there has been an increasing prevalence of English being recognised as their mother tongue language in Singaporeans over the years. Despite efforts to encourage Mandarin, Melayu or Tamil learning, it had become predominant that Singaporeans have regarded English as their sense of identity. However, such identity was not able to gain consensus from our local government and the international crowd. On the contrary, Singaporeans have proved to be of a better standard by outdoing most nations in international tests in English proficiency and literacy. As Lu (2013) alleged, the acceptance of English language as our mother tongue would only be feasible with government’s recognition. Our language policies and stances should also be altered to match our sociolinguistic entity to convince the international crowd.

Growing up in a Chinese speaking family, I have 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 still friends who are good in English, yet they are not from an English speaking family. However, they are the minorities and I believed some point in their lives they must have came across a certain English-speaking influence. As a result, it molded their English speaking and writing skills. This also brings me to a particular point highlighted in the article by Lu (2013) – “The notion “native speaker of English” is tied to particular nationalities and ethnicities — that is, Anglo-Saxons — and this is still prevalent throughout the world.”

Personally, I felt a certain degree of stereotype present in this particular notion and I am rather bemused by it. Meaning to say, if someone who does not originate from that particular nationality, they are not considered to be native speakers of English even with high level of proficiency in the language? It is pretty saddening that the notion of “native speaker of English” is tied to specific nationalities and ethnicities. As quoted from Lu (2013), “Those who argue that Singaporeans lack intelligibility in spoken English must not have heard the British in their “Cockney”, “Geordie” or “Brummie” dialects.”, there are still thorns among the roses and yet they represent the native speakers of English and Singaporeans are condemned for not being proficient enough. Such presumptions are biased and can be unfair to English practitioners who may have spent most of their life trying to master the language. As such, is there a definite circumference to determining who belongs to this pool and who does not, and who defines these circumferences? I have always believed that English is a very complex art and anyone can master English and called it their first language. However, once you put a definition into it, it can be controversial and sensitive.

Being a cosmopolitan country, Singapore has a pool of languages and therefore it can be tough to determine which particular language represents her mother tongue. I recalled asking my friends over leisure talk which language is representative of Singapore and the answers I got were pretty obvious. I had answers like Singlish and Chinese. However, if we were to think about this, Singlish was actually a term we came up with due to the warp English many Singaporeans spoke today. So could we actually confidently claim that English is our mother tongue language? Surprisingly, the answer would be no. As we all know, Mandarin is representative of Chinese, Melayu is representative of Malay and Tamil is representative of Indian, so what about Singapore? Isn’t it understandable and reasonable that English is representative of Singapore?

If we were to go out on the streets of Singapore and observe the language spoken by most Singaporeans, I would definitely place my bet on English. I feel that it is pretty obvious that as Singapore became more globalized and recognized on the world map, she have grown and changed so much. With the diverse social practices, cultures and linguistic influences different countries bring about when their countrymen set foot in Singapore, Singapore should quickly establish a firm stand on our sociolinguistic reality in order to make known our local English standards and that Singaporeans are actually pretty adept in our English language. It is quite sour to actually hear foreigners commenting that Singapore is just a “Rojak” country with rich diversity. As much as it adds color to our country, it can be affecting down under. It is especially so for people who are studying overseas and are looked down upon for their language inferiority. As the future pillars of the country, many students have definitely done a lot, worked really hard and went far. It is really unfair that these students are already not getting recognized for such efforts, yet getting criticized by “native speakers of English” or by the Caucasian population. Shouldn't we start doing something in our homeland and change this perception the world has on Singaporeans students? For me, I will do so by going back to the basics to hone and perfect my English skills.


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