The topic of bilingualism is back. The Prime Minister has urged Singaporeans (particularly the Chinese ones) not to lose their bilingual edge. As always when the Prime Minister says something, everyone has an opinion. There are those who think that Singapore’s “bilingual” policies are a failure and think we should stick to doing things in English and English only (probably parents with kids who can’t pass Chinese – I used to be one of those kids) and a few letters that pointed out the obvious – namely the importance of being multilingual in a world where growing economies are not necessarily English speaking.
I shrug whenever I see both arguments. I flunked the Singapore system because I couldn’t make it in Chinese. My parents spoke English at home and the only real Chinese I spoke was Cantonese with my paternal grandmother and the nanny (Which isn’t a bonus because Singapore is ferociously anti-Chinese dialect). My early childhood was a failure because of my poor command of spoken Chinese and nonexistent command of written Chinese. I only blossomed academically when the family moved to Spain and I no longer had to learn Chinese.
So, I sympathise with kids who struggle with Chinese. It is not an easy language to learn, especially if you are tone deaf. A single word changes meaning the moment you get the tone wrong and the Chinese script is challenging especially if you do not have a visual memory (I don’t). Struggling with the language is especially challenging when you have to deal with everything else in Singapore’s ultra-stressful education system.
Learning Mandarin is challenge for many of us who, while ethnically Chinese, grew up in a non-Chinese speaking environment. The Mandarin that has evolved in Singapore’s daily vernacular is similar to Singlish (a particular form of English spoken in Singapore – though the English are kinder about our version of English than the Chinese). Our bilingual policy is blamed for creating a situation where our local population does not speak good English or good Mandarin. There is, as they say, no such thing as a pure language. In Singapore, it is possible to speak several languages in a single sentence. When I take a taxi, I tell the taxi driver where to go in Mandarin and yet I end up telling him to turn left or right at certain junctions in English.
Having said all of that, I believe it’s wrong to not teach kids the “mother-tongue.” Ironically, I look back at my youth in Europe to understand how people view bilingualism. My Nordic and Dutch friends work on the principle that you are not truly educated if you can’t communicate in more than one language. All my Nordic and Dutch friends speak, read and write in English as well as their mother tongues. How is it such the Nordic countries and the Netherlands have succeeded in producing multilingual people, while we struggle with it.
OK, to be fair to Singapore’s Chinese and Tamil populations, there is a larger difference between Chinese/ Tamil and English as opposed to understanding both Swedish and English. The Asian languages have a different written script and in the example of Chinese, each character represents an actual thing as opposed to the Western alphabet system, where each alphabet represents a sound. Handling an Asian language and a Western one requires you to have a cultural mindset as opposed to two European languages. Then, there’s the issue of spoken tones in Chinese, which doesn’t really happen in European languages.
Yet, that shouldn’t be a reason to give up on bilingualism. The Dutch and Nordic nations realized that they were small and few people outside their borders would speak their language. So, they learnt other languages and have prospered. The Dutch ran an empire that competed with the British Empire, even though the Netherlands is smaller than the UK.
This has become even more crucial in the modern age, where the growing markets are in places like China and Indonesia, which may not necessarily be English speaking. I think my 70-year-old Dad who learnt Thai when he moved to Thailand. His argument is simple, “I want to live in Thailand, I got to learn Thai and not expect them to learn English to accommodate me if I want to live here.”
I take a similar view with Mandarin. It’s not a language I’m comfortable with but when my big spender is from PRC, I speak find the ability to speak Mandarin. Incidentally, that’s the language I communicate with my wife in.
Bilingualism cannot be forced and I do think the Singapore government needs to lose its hostility to Chinese dialects. Yet, Singaporean Chinese should accept that knowing Mandarin is a good thing and should embrace it. Look, if a Sino-Phobic US President can get his granddaughter learning Mandarin, why can’t the rest of us?
I shrug whenever I see both arguments. I flunked the Singapore system because I couldn’t make it in Chinese. My parents spoke English at home and the only real Chinese I spoke was Cantonese with my paternal grandmother and the nanny (Which isn’t a bonus because Singapore is ferociously anti-Chinese dialect). My early childhood was a failure because of my poor command of spoken Chinese and nonexistent command of written Chinese. I only blossomed academically when the family moved to Spain and I no longer had to learn Chinese.
So, I sympathise with kids who struggle with Chinese. It is not an easy language to learn, especially if you are tone deaf. A single word changes meaning the moment you get the tone wrong and the Chinese script is challenging especially if you do not have a visual memory (I don’t). Struggling with the language is especially challenging when you have to deal with everything else in Singapore’s ultra-stressful education system.
Learning Mandarin is challenge for many of us who, while ethnically Chinese, grew up in a non-Chinese speaking environment. The Mandarin that has evolved in Singapore’s daily vernacular is similar to Singlish (a particular form of English spoken in Singapore – though the English are kinder about our version of English than the Chinese). Our bilingual policy is blamed for creating a situation where our local population does not speak good English or good Mandarin. There is, as they say, no such thing as a pure language. In Singapore, it is possible to speak several languages in a single sentence. When I take a taxi, I tell the taxi driver where to go in Mandarin and yet I end up telling him to turn left or right at certain junctions in English.
Having said all of that, I believe it’s wrong to not teach kids the “mother-tongue.” Ironically, I look back at my youth in Europe to understand how people view bilingualism. My Nordic and Dutch friends work on the principle that you are not truly educated if you can’t communicate in more than one language. All my Nordic and Dutch friends speak, read and write in English as well as their mother tongues. How is it such the Nordic countries and the Netherlands have succeeded in producing multilingual people, while we struggle with it.
OK, to be fair to Singapore’s Chinese and Tamil populations, there is a larger difference between Chinese/ Tamil and English as opposed to understanding both Swedish and English. The Asian languages have a different written script and in the example of Chinese, each character represents an actual thing as opposed to the Western alphabet system, where each alphabet represents a sound. Handling an Asian language and a Western one requires you to have a cultural mindset as opposed to two European languages. Then, there’s the issue of spoken tones in Chinese, which doesn’t really happen in European languages.
Yet, that shouldn’t be a reason to give up on bilingualism. The Dutch and Nordic nations realized that they were small and few people outside their borders would speak their language. So, they learnt other languages and have prospered. The Dutch ran an empire that competed with the British Empire, even though the Netherlands is smaller than the UK.
This has become even more crucial in the modern age, where the growing markets are in places like China and Indonesia, which may not necessarily be English speaking. I think my 70-year-old Dad who learnt Thai when he moved to Thailand. His argument is simple, “I want to live in Thailand, I got to learn Thai and not expect them to learn English to accommodate me if I want to live here.”
I take a similar view with Mandarin. It’s not a language I’m comfortable with but when my big spender is from PRC, I speak find the ability to speak Mandarin. Incidentally, that’s the language I communicate with my wife in.
Bilingualism cannot be forced and I do think the Singapore government needs to lose its hostility to Chinese dialects. Yet, Singaporean Chinese should accept that knowing Mandarin is a good thing and should embrace it. Look, if a Sino-Phobic US President can get his granddaughter learning Mandarin, why can’t the rest of us?
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