Mother tongue
Arresting an erosion
With more foreigners speaking their own languages and local families using English, Singapore has a tough time preserving its mother tongue. By Seah Chiang Nee
Jan 29, 2012
MORE families here are using English on a regular basis when talking to their young children, raising fresh concerns about Singapore’s bilingual future.
This has brought out a new initiative that could total S$100mil from 87-year-old former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to defend the multi-national language strategy.
Lee, now a Member of Parliament, announced that he himself would donate S$12mil while three of his children would donate S$200,000 each.
The Education Ministry will match it dollar-for-dollar up to S$50mil.
The fact that Singapore’s language future still retains Lee’s major interest in his sunset years has raised some young eyebrows, especially the fund’s ambitious size.
However, senior citizens who understand Lee’s visionary preoccupation on the issue are not surprised.
“While the Cabinet is wrestling with day-to-day matters, it is good for someone to be concerned with long-term needs,” a former teacher said.
There were now added reasons for promoting the mother tongue, she said.
Firstly, Singapore has seen a big influx of foreigners, who have brought in their own cacophony of languages and dialects that are incomprehensible to Singaporeans.
Secondly, the government is determined to transform Singapore into a global metropolis.
Lee has said he hopes he can see it before he leaves this world.
This makes consolidating the learning of the mother tongue more compelling.
Latest statistics show that the majority or 56% of homes with primary-school children speak English at home, an increase over the years.
Six out of 10 ethnic Chinese and Indian families and 35% of Malays use English at home.
The 2010 Census showed that 32% of adults in the republic spoke English.
This means families with younger children using English make up nearly twice the proportion of the general population.
The swing towards English has been dramatic for all, except the Malays – from one in 10 families in 1980 to six in 10 last year.
Singapore’s language change mirrors elsewhere; so are the repercussions.
Half the 6,500 languages in the world may die out by the end of this century, The Independent newspaper recently reported quoting from Unesco.
The danger comes from their exposure to more dominant languages (particularly English), economic and technological advances and globalisation.
More youths are switching to learning and using English on a regular basis for economic reasons.
Others leave their isolated villages and travel to cities that speak another language.
No one is saying that Singapore’s mother tongue languages, originating from three of the biggest and oldest civilisations, are facing the danger of extinction.
But serious decline in usage will likely continue.
On Jan 11, in a report headlined Chinese language crisis, China Youth Daily said 83% respondents told a survey that language usage of the people had declined.
In fact 45% said it “has dropped a lot”.
Other points: 67% say dynamic online language makes Chinese language fragmented; 67.7% think that people do not attach importance to Chinese language.
The survey also found that there had been a “foreign language fever and ignoring of the native language” in China.
Details of Lee’s Promote Mother Tongue project will be announced by the Education Ministry later this year. According to him, it will as a start fund activities for pre-schoolers and later nursery pupils.
Lee believes that if the children begin early enough, they would be bilingual by Primary Six – with a strong foundation in the mother tongue for life.
“After primary six, at age 12, they can concentrate on their master language which is English in Singapore,” he said.
He has spent much of his life on an uphill task of persuading more Singaporeans to use their mother tongue with their children, especially among the Chinese.
He once said that mastering both English and Mandarin was not an easy task for most children, including his own seven grandchildren.
Among the lot, only one preferred to use Mandarin, while the rest often answered in English when he asked them questions in Mandarin, Lee said in 2009.
The new generation appears, under study pressures, to be continuing to downgrade the language, studying it only to pass exams and then quickly discarding it.
This could, Lee fears, adversely impact the nation’s future. It could lead to Singapore losing its Asian identity if the various races – especially the ethnic Chinese – lose their mother tongue and culture.
The greatest catalyst was once China’s continuing boom with its rising job and business opportunities for foreign professionals who could speak the language.
The bilingual policy is also giving Singaporean businessmen a value-added advantage there, it was hoped.
But instead of a rush to master it, interest had been waning.
“You don’t need to be good in Chinese to succeed in Singapore,” a bilingual professional recently said. “Do you think not speaking Chinese will seriously hamper your career? In most cases, I don’t think so.”
In a local survey some years ago, about 25% of ethnic Chinese, aged 17 to 29, told a poll that they did not think it was necessary for Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin at all.
Actually, Singapore’s bilingual language policy has served the country well to firstly, maintain race harmony and secondly, promote a channel of communication, with each race keeping its own identity.
A botched effort could result in Singapore losing its “Asianness” and vastly influenced by everything Western, Lee believes.
But one writer puts it in this way: “Whether or not the Chinese language is promoted, Singaporeans will still be losing their individual cultures.
“Globalisation and the Internet are a certainty, and we are all being assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
(This was first published in The Star)
