Is Standard English Causing Deculturation in Singapore?
According to the Singapore Department of Statistics, the literacy rates in Singapore have improved drastically over the past decades, in tandem with the creation of compulsory education children in Singapore for primary level and the increase in courses available for Singapore citizens to enroll in to upgrade their education level (2014). The increase in literate citizens of Singapore can be seen among the resident population aged fifteen years and over rising since the year 1990 to the year 2000, where there was a significant increase from 89 percent to 93 percent. And in the previous year 2013, the percentage for literate resident population aged fifteen years and over has a significant increase to 96.5 percent. However, along with the trend of increasing literate resident population, there is a markedly slow increase (or decrease) in the literacy levels for native languages – otherwise known in Singapore’s education system as “Mother Tongue”. Along with campaigns and new education systems being implemented in schools, the increase in effort to maintain the native languages of the resident population in Singapore suggests how literacy in English Language will continue to increase and may lead to a significant decrease in literacy in native languages. Hence, understanding the increase in literacy in Standard English in Singapore is crucial to the maintenance of culture and identity that is linked to one’s native language as deculturation through language loss is known otherwise as linguistic deculturation. Linguistic deculturation can be understood to be a process of language shifting that is a consequence of switching from one’s ethnic language or native language (substrate...
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...for their casual conversations with fellow Singaporeans. Every country has their own accent in their language, and the impending replacement of a localized accent for a western accent sees the vital need for the government and the people to settle at a compromise to find an area where they are able to speak Standard English without compromising the Singaporean identity. Therefore, the key to ensuring maintenance of Singaporean culture and identity is to allow everyone to adapt their communication styles accordingly to different situations in Singapore. In tandem, Singaporeans can capitalize on their ability to be bilingual and not actively reject their ethnic or native language. Moreover, the government should actively engage campaigns and strategies to prevent the loss of Singapore’s culture and identity through regular surveys and reviews on the education system.
“Standard English was imposed on children of immigrant parents, then the children were separated from native English speakers, then the children were labeled “inferior” and “ignorant” (Hughes 70) because they could not speak Standard English. In addition to feeling inferior about their second language skills, these students also felt inadequate in regard to speaking their own mother tongues” (qtd in Kanae)
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
The word “literacy” alone has a huge impact to my unperfect or as you can say informal English. Many would criticize and laughed at native speakers but did anyone every thought of the struggles of balancing two different languages with various different style within the language. As Amy Tan. the author of Mother Tongue, had mentioned, “that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English. And this makes me think that there are other Asian- American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described a ‘broken’...” Tan is describing the struggles that Asian- American students faced in America (4). In addition to Tan’s statement, I can relate back to my daily life; learning the formal English in school, speaking Vietnamese at home, and listening to the limited English
Flynn, K. & Hill, J. (2005). English language learners: A growing population. Mid-Research For Education And Learning, 1-11.
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The statistics of those not speaking English could lead to the idea that English is diminishing in certain sections of the United States. An example of this is shown in the article “Why the U.S. Needs an Official Languag...
Language is a means of communication and it varies from one community to another. Everyone has a mother tongue which depended on the family’s upbringing. A second language can be learned along the way. There are also instances where a person is born in a community that speaks two languages and therefore, had to learn both languages. The quality of the languages learned will be affected by how well the community speaks both languages. This can later develop into a new form of language. The essay describes the frustration of the author who felt rejected by different groups for speaking a different form of language. Her essay aims to gain sympathy from readers by seeing the issue from her point of view. Anzaldua attempts to achieve this in her essay by raising issues on identity and discrimination. She wanted to highlight that language is not determined by a country’s physical borders.
The cultural difference between Canada is huge. Both the countries are multicultural but Canada is more western in culture whereas Singapore are mostly dominated by Chinese, Malay, and Indian culture. According to the Greet Hofstede Model,
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Malaysia has cast an illusion to other countries for its multilingual nations. Everyone here at least can converse in three languages, while some even speak five languages. However, it is sad to say most of us, don’t really master these 3 languages, especially English. In many occasions, an English conversation is often polluted, mixing with our own mother tongues and dialects. This is how Malaysia English, aka Manglish, is generated. Some of us even feel proud of it, claimed that Manglish represents our own identities and uniqueness. Here is a typical example of a daily conversation.
Tan, P. K. W. (2005). The medium-of-instruction debate. - English as a Malaysian language? Language Problems & Language Planning , 50. Retrieved from http://www.factworld.info/malaysia/news/debate.pdf
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