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forkedtongues2012-03-08 12:52 am
delfinnium) wrote in forkedtongues2012-03-08 12:52 am
singlish, language, dialect, and code-switching.
sort of cross-posted from my journal on the recommendation of dhobikikutti
The other day I'd met my friend from JC, and amongst other things (catching up, finding out he's practically a professional photographer OMG), he's a teacher now, in primary school. Woah, what's THAT? People my age are teaching primary school now!
Anyway, we'd ended up talking abotu English and the thing about Singlish in schools, teaching and all.
One of the ways you can tell if someone's a Singaporean/Malaysian is the inflection of their Singlish/Manglish slang, and the ... for lack of a better word, tonality. Just based on tones (expression) phrases can be approving, disapproving, joking, serious, angry, stern, about to pick a fight. And based on tone (again, something to do with Chinese languages. Inflection?), the word can change meaning, and it also can pick out whether someone is a foreigner or not. It's especially obvious when the speaker is an ang-moh, like one of my friends who's from NZ and is now working in Singapore. He's trying to pick up Singaporean slang to fit in, and the... tones, the way words have that chinese tone (you know, mā má mă mà for Mandarin Chinese, and more for Cantonese, Hokkien and etc), he doesn't quite get it.
Anyway, besides THAT, we also can code switch. Kids at lower primary don't know how to. And that could be a problem, if their parents don't know how to speak perfect English in the first place, or only spoke Chinese/dialects, communicating in Singlish is probably the only way they know how to approximate English. But for us , my peer group, we can code switch easily, and know when to use Singlish and when to use English. For us, it's a separate language, with different rules. It's not a corrupted English language (says me, and my friend) but maybe it's a dialect, though he did say that English WAS pretty much a corrupted language that stole from every other language, hardly pure. It is extremely ironic and kinda hilarious to hear English speaking westerners go on about how they need to preserve the perfection of their language.
It's not quite so funny when our own politicians want to eliminate Singlish.
But back to the kids – they don't know how to code-switch; they dont know how to use English versus Singlish. If I remember correctly, Children pick up different languages and the different rules easily in multi-lingual homes, but before a certain age, they use the different languages interchangably and don't realise it until they get old enough to be able to switch slightly more consciously. So yes there has to be a part where Standard (... British?) English is taught, so that the kids grow up with more of the different rules. But my friend the teacher doesn't enforce 'Speak English only!' outside of English class. I guess it teaches students the circumstances they are allowed to speak Singlish and when not to.
I still think that the government is going the wrong way about it, tryign to stop everyone from speaking Singlish at all (the latest 'correct our english' campaign is funny, but trying too hard, and. Well. C'mon, even in America and UK they use different 'short-hand' for 'press for green light' or whatever, and if we can understand it, they can damn well understand our not-entirely-standard English.) Singlish is going to become part of our national identity. If the government wants to create that, then they can jolly well stop trying to stomp it out.
***
Talking about dialects and languages – when does a dialect become a language? Chinese is a particularly poor example, because dialects aren't really dialects, not as we know it. Cantonese is as related to Mandarin as German is to English, probably less so – Mandarin Chinese was actually just one of the languages that had existed and then was picked to become the standard language. Most of the languages in China don't actually derive FROM Mandarin.
Studying languages in China probably is very headache inducing.
With English, it is easier to see. But how come American English and UK English get the nod when American English is barely different – it's not considered a dialect, but Singlish and Manglish are considered corruptions?
Nnn.
****
Met one of my lab-mates yesterday. When I asked her what her name was, and which 'Lan' it was, in Chinese, she told me it was 'lan hua' (orchid) and then was very surprised and happy to find out I could speak Mandarin.
Uuuuh. She thought that I couldn't, because one of our other labmates said I couldn't (I can't ask for help in 'how to make the printer work!', my Mandarin is not that good), and because I'm Singaporean, and the other Singaporean in our lab can't speak Mandarin either (he's either malay or peranakan), she was under the impression that Singaporeans can't speak Mandarin.
Uuuuuuuuuuh .
Well a lot of Singaporeans younger than I am actually have poor grasps on Manadarin, yes. Teaching styles and so on, it's not conducive to proper chinese education. (I can go on all day about how Chinese education is very BAD in Singapore, because whoever came up with how Chinese/mother-tongue was to be taught were clearly not language instructors.) People my age-group and older? More of them are bilingual, mostly because their PARENTS had been.
Just... a random thing, I guess.
dhobikikutti The other day I'd met my friend from JC, and amongst other things (catching up, finding out he's practically a professional photographer OMG), he's a teacher now, in primary school. Woah, what's THAT? People my age are teaching primary school now!
Anyway, we'd ended up talking abotu English and the thing about Singlish in schools, teaching and all.
One of the ways you can tell if someone's a Singaporean/Malaysian is the inflection of their Singlish/Manglish slang, and the ... for lack of a better word, tonality. Just based on tones (expression) phrases can be approving, disapproving, joking, serious, angry, stern, about to pick a fight. And based on tone (again, something to do with Chinese languages. Inflection?), the word can change meaning, and it also can pick out whether someone is a foreigner or not. It's especially obvious when the speaker is an ang-moh, like one of my friends who's from NZ and is now working in Singapore. He's trying to pick up Singaporean slang to fit in, and the... tones, the way words have that chinese tone (you know, mā má mă mà for Mandarin Chinese, and more for Cantonese, Hokkien and etc), he doesn't quite get it.
Anyway, besides THAT, we also can code switch. Kids at lower primary don't know how to. And that could be a problem, if their parents don't know how to speak perfect English in the first place, or only spoke Chinese/dialects, communicating in Singlish is probably the only way they know how to approximate English. But for us , my peer group, we can code switch easily, and know when to use Singlish and when to use English. For us, it's a separate language, with different rules. It's not a corrupted English language (says me, and my friend) but maybe it's a dialect, though he did say that English WAS pretty much a corrupted language that stole from every other language, hardly pure. It is extremely ironic and kinda hilarious to hear English speaking westerners go on about how they need to preserve the perfection of their language.
It's not quite so funny when our own politicians want to eliminate Singlish.
But back to the kids – they don't know how to code-switch; they dont know how to use English versus Singlish. If I remember correctly, Children pick up different languages and the different rules easily in multi-lingual homes, but before a certain age, they use the different languages interchangably and don't realise it until they get old enough to be able to switch slightly more consciously. So yes there has to be a part where Standard (... British?) English is taught, so that the kids grow up with more of the different rules. But my friend the teacher doesn't enforce 'Speak English only!' outside of English class. I guess it teaches students the circumstances they are allowed to speak Singlish and when not to.
I still think that the government is going the wrong way about it, tryign to stop everyone from speaking Singlish at all (the latest 'correct our english' campaign is funny, but trying too hard, and. Well. C'mon, even in America and UK they use different 'short-hand' for 'press for green light' or whatever, and if we can understand it, they can damn well understand our not-entirely-standard English.) Singlish is going to become part of our national identity. If the government wants to create that, then they can jolly well stop trying to stomp it out.
***
Talking about dialects and languages – when does a dialect become a language? Chinese is a particularly poor example, because dialects aren't really dialects, not as we know it. Cantonese is as related to Mandarin as German is to English, probably less so – Mandarin Chinese was actually just one of the languages that had existed and then was picked to become the standard language. Most of the languages in China don't actually derive FROM Mandarin.
Studying languages in China probably is very headache inducing.
With English, it is easier to see. But how come American English and UK English get the nod when American English is barely different – it's not considered a dialect, but Singlish and Manglish are considered corruptions?
Nnn.
****
Met one of my lab-mates yesterday. When I asked her what her name was, and which 'Lan' it was, in Chinese, she told me it was 'lan hua' (orchid) and then was very surprised and happy to find out I could speak Mandarin.
Uuuuh. She thought that I couldn't, because one of our other labmates said I couldn't (I can't ask for help in 'how to make the printer work!', my Mandarin is not that good), and because I'm Singaporean, and the other Singaporean in our lab can't speak Mandarin either (he's either malay or peranakan), she was under the impression that Singaporeans can't speak Mandarin.
Uuuuuuuuuuh .
Well a lot of Singaporeans younger than I am actually have poor grasps on Manadarin, yes. Teaching styles and so on, it's not conducive to proper chinese education. (I can go on all day about how Chinese education is very BAD in Singapore, because whoever came up with how Chinese/mother-tongue was to be taught were clearly not language instructors.) People my age-group and older? More of them are bilingual, mostly because their PARENTS had been.
Just... a random thing, I guess.
no subject
True! :D
I don't know many Singlish speakers offline but I've always assumed it's a "world English" (language) more than a dialect because (I think?) it has different grammar even for the same vocab? Whereas Cockney had some very divergent-from-RP vocab but basically the same grammar so it was definitely a dialect.
But what counts as a dialect and what doesn't? I believe that I read soemwhere that even the term 'dialect' is fraught with problems, global colonization issues and other things. :| Still, I can see your point - that Cockney and other... uh, English-English dialects are probably the same grammar, while stuff like Singlish, Spanglish etc have wildly different structures, and sometimes even different vocabulary.
I agree English is (like) a creole (Middle English was mostly of English/French with a seasoning of Latin). When academics talk about the language of the future becoming Mandarin or Spanish then I usually wonder if it's not more likely that we'll mostly speak creoles more like Spanglish and Manglish.
If they're 'just' extrapolating from the numbers of people who are speaking the language, then yeah, Chinese, maybe one of the Indian languages, might be the language of the future, just by sheer numbers. But as to whether it would be THE language? I'm not sure. English is certainly the language NOW, but there are other things, I guess. Other factors.
It would be very interesting if a creole like Singlish became the world language. >D
I understand that many people want their children to learn USian English because it's the most valuable world English NOW but how long will that last? Singlish could be more like the language of our futures.
In Singapore, largely due to our colonial past, our main English-English is British English, especially since our main exams are all from Cambridge (GCE Os and As). All our centres are spelt, well, centres. We use -t forms for certain words in past-tense, and it really drives my brain crazy that American-English is quickly becoming the norm of the internet, and sometimes a mix of it. My brain cannot handle mixed up things!
In any case, I wish we could LEARN Singlish, or at least, not put it down. :| But it might be hundreds of years off.
no subject
Depends which "expert" you listen to, hee! Extreme cases are always easier to decide than marginal ones.
It would be very interesting if a creole like Singlish became the world language. >D
I honestly think it'll happen (and it's sort of happened already with English). I'm cheering for Spandarin because that's obviously the best name! ;-) Maybe a Spandaringlish creole is more likely.
In Singapore, largely due to our colonial past, our main English-English is British English
You, us, the anglophone Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. Hmm, we should move the British Isles south and round the globe a bit. We promise not to steal all the extra "u"s! ;-)
I wish we could LEARN Singlish, or at least, not put it down.
I understand. Mixed identities are complicated. Good luck!
no subject
And now I'm imagining you click-dragging the british isles and crazy waving it around the globe going WHEEE.
I have NO idea what spangdarin is going to be like, but it'd be HILARIOUS. Though Singlish is less Mandarin infused and more so-called Chinese dialect and malay and all the fun stuffs.
hm.
no subject
YES!
WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!
no subject
Now I wanna do that. But google earth won't let me rearrange the world!
WOE.
no subject