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[Melissa Perez-Heydrich]

Could you please take me off the email list? Thanks
Melissa Perez-Heydrich



On Tue Mar 22 08:55:35 EST 2005, "Harold F. Schiffman"
<haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:

> Dear Paul,
>
> I'm glad to see that it's possible to update and correct some of
> the
> listings in Ethnologue.  I just did a check on Malaysia, to see
> what it
> says, and the following statement I find a little strange:
>
> 	"Languages of Malaysia
>
> 	[See also SIL publications on the languages of Malaysia.]
>
>         National or official language: Malay. 21,410,000 (1998
> UN). Also
> 	includes Burmese, Western Cham, Chinese Sign Language, Malayalam
> 37,000,
> 	Eastern Panjabi 43,000, Telugu 30,000, people from Indonesia,
> Pakistan,
> 	the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, United Kingdom.
> Information mainly
> 	from S. Wurm and S. Hattori 1981. Deaf population 31,000 (1980).
> Deaf
> 	institutions: 5. Data accuracy estimate: B, C. The number of
> languages
> 	listed for Malaysia is 140. Of those, 139 are living languages
> and 1 is
> 	extinct. Diversity index 0.75."
>
>
> This is fine as far as it goes, but it lists small Indian
> language
> populations like Malayalam and Telugu, but fails to mention the
> over a
> million Tamil speakers.  True, the next page does mention the
> 1,060,000
> Tamil speakers [or people of Tamil descent who declare it as
> their
> 'mother tongue'], but it seems strange that Eastern Panjabi and
> Telugu
> get more attention than the dominant Indian language. Then, on
> the next
> page (Peninsular Malaysia) it does go into further detail but
> then ignores
> Panjabi and Telugu etc.  Is this deliberate, or an oversight?
>
> Hal Schiffman
>
>
> On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 Paul_Lewis at sil.org wrote:
>
>>
>> Many thanks to Anthea for pointing out the inaccuracies in the
>> Ethnologue
>> reporting regarding the national / official languages of
>> Singapore. The
>> Ethnologue is a continuing research effort and we appreciate all
>> contributions aimed at making it more accurate and complete.
>>
>> The error (at least regarding Bengali) has been corrected in the
>> 15th
>> edition which is now available in print (from
>> Academic_Books at sil.org) and
>> will soon be available on line.
>>
>> All users of the Ethnologue website (www.ethnologue.com) should
>> be aware
>> that the site is an online version of the last released print
>> version of
>> the Ethnologue. As such, the data is increasingly dated over
>> time as the
>> website is NOT generally updated until the next printed volume
>> is released
>> (about every four years).
>>
>> We welcome all corrections and comments and will evaluate all
>> communications that we receive with our sources and others we
>> deem to be
>> knowledgeable.  We attempt to acknowledge all such
>> communications but may
>> not necessarily notify a correspondent when we have changed our
>> database to
>> reflect their input.  Even when we have done so, the website
>> will not
>> reflect a change or correction until the next printed volume is
>> published.
>>
>> We recognize that this is frustrating to those who have
>> submitted new and
>> corrected data but it is an artifact of the limited number of
>> personnel we
>> have available to maintain both the database and the website.
>> Our hope is
>> to improve the timeliness of the online data, but for the time
>> being we are
>> where we are.
>>
>> With best wishes,
>>
>> M. Paul Lewis
>> Editor, Ethnologue
>> Editor_Ethnologue at sil.org
>> (972) 708-7432
>> (972) 708-7589 (Fax)
>> www.ethnologue.com
>> www.sil.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>              "Anthea Fraser
>>              Gupta"
>>              <A.F.Gupta at leeds.
>>        To
>>              ac.uk>
>> <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
>>              Sent by:
>>        cc
>>              owner-lgpolicy-li
>>              st at ccat.sas.upenn
>>   Subject
>>              .edu                      facts, Stegemann and Gupta
>>
>>
>>              03/21/2005 05:56
>>              AM
>>
>>
>>              Please respond to
>>              lgpolicy-list at cca
>>               t.sas.upenn.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Stegemann seems to think he has facts and I have assertions.
>> Census
>> evidence ALWAYS needs interpretation and an assessment of the
>> direction
>> of error. We ALWAYS need to know the source of statistics.
>>
>> I lack imagination  ("Anthea's inability to imagine a society
>> without a single unifying national language"). J'accuse
>> Stegemann of
>> lacking an understanding that in language planning there are no
>> easy
>> answers. There are difficult decisions to be made in the light of
>> political, ethnic, linguistic, and pragmatic complexities. I
>> would
>> understand what he thinks better if, instead of rubbishing
>> Malaysia,
>> Hong Kong and Singapore, he told us instead what he thinks does
>> and
>> would work better.
>>
>> S seems to be holding up Switzerland as a shining example.
>> Switzerland
>> has also had to make difficult decisions and the choice made is
>> not
>> without its problems either. In Switzerland (as in India and
>> Nigeria)
>> there is a regional element to language, which makes regional
>> differentiation possible in a way that it would not be in a
>> city-state.
>> And it has to be remembered that the education system of
>> Switzerland is
>> intended to ensure that any two Swiss people meeting will be
>> able to
>> communicate in at least one of the official languages (and in
>> English
>> too). That seems to me like a unifying policy.
>>
>> One of Singapore's main concerns is the prevention of too much
>> inter-ethnic tension. I happen to think that there is still too
>> much
>> ethnic separation in Singapore and would (as I said) like to see
>> more
>> cross-ethnic language learning, but the balancing act is a
>> difficult
>> one, and there have not been race riots since the 1960s, which
>> suggests
>> government's decisions have not been foolish.
>>
>> S says:
>> >Firstly, with the exception of the Ethnologue data that relies
>> on a
>> > variety of sources of varying dates, all of my census data is
>> > far more
>> > recent than Anthea's 1994 book _The Step-tongue
>>
>> The critique in my 1994 book is just as valid applied to the
>> 2000 census
>> because the language question was the same (as it probably has
>> to be --
>> otherwise there could not be comparison across the years). Only
>> language
>> use within the household is classified (we do not know what
>> language 50
>> year olds speak to their children unless the children live in
>> the same
>> household); families are classified as a collection of 'dyads';
>> responses are for main language used only.  I don't want to
>> revisit the
>> critique, but I must defend myself against the out of dateness.
>> In 1990
>> 27% of those born in 1961-1970 claimed to speak mainly English
>> to their
>> spouse (Gupta 1994:31). They were the youngest married age-group
>> in
>> 1990, and would therefore include a relatively low proportion of
>> the
>> highly educated. The most highly educated groups would be even
>> more
>> likely to be chatting to their boy/girlcfriends at the time/ In
>> the 2000
>> census, the figures supplied are much less detailed, and give
>> only the
>> (next to useless) figure of main household language, but even
>> so, in the
>> same age group, 26% claimed English as the main household
>> language.  So
>> even on the kind of figures S seems to like, in a quarter of
>> families
>> English was claimed as the main language in a majority of dyads.
>>
>> In the 2000 census, 65% of the 'resident' population claimed to
>> be
>> literate in English (defined as the ability to read a newspaper).
>> Singapore is carrying the legacy of the past: in the UK there
>> has been
>> near-universal education in the medium of English for over 100
>> years,
>> but in Singapore this has been the case only for the last 30
>> years. In
>> those aged 15-24 97% claimed literacy in English, a figure very
>> similar
>> to UK or US figures, and probably near the possible maximum.
>>
>> The Ministry of Education asks parents for the most used and
>> second most
>> used language at home for incoming students. On 'most used'
>> language
>> Mandarin is the lead language, and English a close the runner
>> up. In
>> some years (though not 2000) the second most common language is
>> also
>> released revealing the prevalent pattern of domestic use of two
>> languages, with one of them being English, in all ethnic groups.
>> Here
>> are the results for the censal years ('Dialect' means other
>> variety of
>> Chinese):
>>
>>
>>              Dialect           Mandarin          English
>>   Others
>> 1980         64.4              25.9               9.3
>>    0.3
>> 1990         5.6               67.9               26.3
>> 0.2
>> 2000         2.2               53.8               43.2
>> 0.8
>>
>> Language spoken most frequently by Chinese Primary One pupils at
>> home
>> (Education Ministry, ST Weekly, October 21 2000)
>>
>> A browse around the Ministry of Education website will find you
>> the
>> figures from other years, and ministerial comments on them.
>> <http://www.moe.gov.sg/>.
>>
>> All of these statistics are subject to the usual warnings about
>> self
>> report and question asked. However, they are better, and more
>> explained
>> data than what Stegemann is offering us. The figure on
>> Ethnologue cannot
>> be taken seriously, as we do not know their origin (though I can
>> work
>> out most of them -- mostly old and misunderstood census data or
>> respectable but ancient social surveys).
>>
>> I will give an example of something I hope even S will realise
>> is an
>> error in Ethnologue. Ethnologue gives this information: for
>> Singapore as
>> "National or official languages: Bengali, Mandarin Chinese,
>> Malay,
>> Tamil, English." NO WAY is (or ever has been, or ought to be, or
>> in even
>> the most patriotic Bengali's wildest dreams might be) Bengali a
>> national
>> or official language of Singapore. I have attempted to correct
>> this (and
>> other) gross errors in Ethnologue many times over the last
>> decade.
>>
>> Another figure S might like to find from the Ministry of
>> Education's
>> site relates to the percentage passing Primary School Leaving
>> exams (97%
>> in 2004) and GCE O-Level exams at the end of secondary school. I
>> think
>> he will find that the proportions compare well with figures for
>> similar
>> educational stages in (for example) the UK.
>>
>> I would urge anyone out there who has not been to Singapore, and
>> seen
>> for themselves that practically everyone speaks English, to do a
>> bit of
>> webwork. Do a search for .sg websites and read a variety of
>> texts.
>> Listen to some radio stations, especially those with call-ins.
>> You could
>> start at:
>>
>> http://www.catcha.com.sg/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?url=http://www.catcha.com.
>> sg/content.phtml?17&111&&liveradio.sg
>>
>> Of course S may have a different idea of 'good English' from me.
>> I do
>> not regard English as monolithic, but welcome dialectal
>> variation. I
>> also know that there is nowhere in the world where everyone
>> develops
>> high level skills in the same Standard variety. Even with a
>> normative
>> stance, though, I would argue that figures such as censal
>> literacy rate,
>> and standardised tests in English indicate that the proportion
>> of the
>> Singapore population under the age of 40 (since English medium
>> education
>> became near universal) who can perform Standard English is
>> similar to to
>> proportion who can perform Standard English in countries such as
>> the UK
>> and US.
>>
>> Must get on with my life.
>>
>> Anthea
>>
>> REFERENCE
>>
>> Leow Bee Geok (ed).2001.  Census of Population 2000. Statistical
>> Release
>> 2@ Education, Language and Religion. Singapore: Singapore
>> Department of
>> Statistics.
>>
>>
>> *     *     *     *     *
>> Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
>> School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
>> <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
>> NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
>> *     *     *     *     *
>>
>>
>> ForwardSourceID:NT0007C792
>>
>
>
>



Melissa Perez-Heydrich