[lg policy] Singapore: Singlish as she is spoken

[Harold Schiffman]

Singlish as she is spoken
INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH
By SEAH CHIANG NEE


A beauty queen shocked Singaporeans with her poor diction in English,
triggering a storm of online debate that indirectly reflected on the
city state’s education system.

EDUCATED Singaporeans who consider their spoken English as
world-ranking have been jolted by a controversy over a beauty queen’s
interview. The centre of the storm was 19-year-old Miss Singapore
World 2009 Ris Low, who shocked Singaporeans by speaking in dismal
English, with poor diction as well as mispronunciations. More
controversy: Low has now sparked a debate about the state of English
in Singapore.  Ironically, it coincided with the government’s annual
Speak Good English campaign that began nine years ago.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew believes that Singaporeans need to speak
standard grammatical English to allow them to plug into the global
economy. In her interview, Low spoke in a mix of local pidgin English
that was splattered with slurred or mispronounced words. She would say
“preens” instead of prints, “rad” (for red), “pis” (piece) and
“begini” (bikini), and used a distorted word “boomz” to describe a
glamorous outfit. Critics also say her answers were contradictory and
of low quality, leading to calls to stop her representing Singapore in
a televised international event. (Low, however, will not compete for
world glory in South Africa, where she would have to face tough
questions in a live worldwide broadcast. She withdrew after her
conviction for credit card fraud became public.)

“Her English is atrocious. She can’t even speak a proper sentence,”
said one of the 100,000 viewers who watched the recorded interview
online. “It will disgrace our country. The world will think that all
Singaporean girls speak like that,” said another critic. The angry
discussions soon took on a national dimension. A reporter wrote: “(It)
triggered a storm of online debate, complete with hand-wringing over
Singapore’s education system (and) the state of intelligence of
today’s youth ...”. Some writers rallied to her defence, saying the
criticism was overblown. Low, they say, is no more than a product of
Singapore’s education system; she talks the way many educated
Singaporeans do, including graduates.

She has a very Singaporean background. She hails from a
Mandarin-speaking family, grew up in the heartland and attended a
neighbourhood school. Now, her mangled English and poor communication
skill have became a national issue.  Goh Eck Kheng, chairman of the
Speak Good English Movement, told The Straits Times that Singaporeans
should be the last people to be mocking her. “How many people are you
laughing at, if you laugh at Ms Low?” he asked. Another official,
Jennifer Yin, reportedly said: “Lots of Singaporeans speak this way.
She is not unusual.”

So, if many of the nation’s youths, even graduates, speak like Low,
why single her out?  Singaporeans were last week like a community
looking at itself in the mirror and seeing one problem: deteriorating
language skills in a place that is renowned for its education
standards. “Most of us are competent in neither English nor Mandarin,”
said a com­munity representative. “We have become a nation of half
buckets, as the Chinese saying goes.”  “We only have to open our ears
in food centres, shopping malls and school canteens, and we get a
constant aural assault of sub-standard English and Mandarin,” one
letter stated. While the republic’s secondary schools rank top three
in the world in Science and Maths, its level of English is below par.
Many teachers and students speak a casual, sub-standard language.
Misspellings are widespread.

“I often hear train station employees, TV presenters and newscasters
stumbling over their sentences and digging themselves into holes of
garbled grammar,” a newspaper reader observed. This has been
aggravated by two factors. First, the extensive use of short handphone
messages or email that routinely ignore capital letters, drop verbs
and shorten words — a virtual sub-language.  Second, the massive,
rapid inflow of foreigners from different countries who bring with
them their own languages (and dialects) has diluted Singapore’s own.
The demographic changes are causing a dent not only on Singapore’s
English-speaking skills but also on the national language policy
itself.

This calls for the use of English as the common lingua among the races
as well as for business and work, but the various mother tongues —
Malay, Mandarin or Tamil — are encouraged to be used at home. Many
Singaporeans speak a local patois of ungrammatical English with a
sprinkling of Hokkien and Malay words that foreigners cannot
comprehend.  Many people are against eradicating Singlish because it
is a part of Singapore’s identity but concede that it should not be
used when dealing with foreigners or in business. “I need Singlish to
express a Singa­porean feeling,” said Catherine Lim, a prominent
novelist who switches easily from one level of Eng­lish to another.
For the broad majority like Low, however, who lack the basic
grounding, switching is almost impossible and they are stuck with a
half-baked language.

http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?col=insightdownsouth&file=/2009/10/10/columnists/insightdownsouth/4871022&sec=Insight%20Down%20South
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