The Singlish Controversy by Professor Lionel Wee: Chapter 1

The chapter provides the background of Singapore's language policy.

When Singapore gained independence, the founding leaders of the country decided to adopt a policy of bilingualism. This meant that the education system would equip pupils with knowledge of two languages: English and a mother tongue. The policy persists today and is a cornerstone of the education system in Singapore.

The rationale behind the teaching of English to all pupils is that English is the international language of business. Singapore does not have natural resources or vast amounts of land, so the only way for it to do well economically is by harnessing its human resources to perform high-value jobs, which would then attract multinational corporations to set up shop in the city, bringing in foreign investment. For this to happen, its labour force must be conversant in English so as to be able to communicate with colleagues and bosses from around the world.

But the founding leaders worried that if only English was taught, the population might become Westernised. They did not want that, because it did not align with their values at that time. They wanted Singapore to be rooted in the fact that it is an Asian city. So they made it compulsory for pupils to learn a mother tongue language alongside English. Through this mother tongue, the idea was that pupils would be reminded of the culture that they come from.

Pupils are assigned their mother tongue language based on their ethnic group. The three major ethnic groups in Singapore are the Chinese, Malays, and Indians, and each has a corresponding official mother tongue: Mandarin for the Chinese, Malay for the Malays, and Tamil for the Indians. Eurasians have no mother tongue assigned to them because of their mixed heritage, and they are allowed to choose which mother tongue language they want to take up for the purposes of formal schooling. Many choose Mandarin because they hope to tap into the growing economic power of China, or Malay because it is easier to learn as it uses the same alphabet as English.

The three official mother tongues are also official languages of Singapore, and English is the fourth official language though it is not an official mother tongue. This is deliberate. By keeping English neutral, it can be used to bring the different ethnic groups together without one community having an unfair advantage over the others. This is significant because one of the key reasons why Singapore split from Malaysia to become independent was because the Malaysian government adopts a "Malays first" policy which the Singapore government of the day disagreed with. Under the Malaysian government's approach, Malay is given a higher status than other languages, and policies are crafted to prioritise the interests of the Malay community. In contrast, no ethnic group is prioritised by the Singapore government.

Trends in language use

An increasing number of families are using English rather than their mother tongue at home. The Singapore population is now largely conversant in English, but standards of the three official mother tongue languages are slipping. This is because people have taken the government's message to heart and regard English competence as more important to their future success in life, leading them to put more effort into learning it and practising it as often as they can with family and friends. In this way, using English in everyday life has become a habit for many Singaporeans.

The government has had to admit that the bilingualism policy is not producing people who are competent in both English and their mother tongue. They even had to create a lower-level 'B' syllabus to cater to the growing number of pupils who could not cope with the regular mother tongue syllabus. There is, on the other hand, also a 'Higher' syllabus for elite pupils who demonstrate native-speaker mastery of their mother tongue.

Given the rising prominence of English and the population's preference for English over the mother tongues, the government's insistence on keeping English at arm's length is odd. The government seems to regard English as something that must be exploited purely for pragmatic reasons, namely the economic benefits that it unlocks. They do not want to view English as part of Singapore's heritage, because to do so risks Westernising Singapore, and they will have none of that because Singapore is, according to them, Asian.

Ironically, the same government has, in modern times, taken pains to portray Singapore as a cosmopolitan, globalised city, as this makes the state more attractive to foreign investment. Immigrants are welcomed with open arms, and this has thrown the ethnic composition of Singapore's population into flux. In turn, the status of the mother tongue languages has been diminished further, and English has gained even more importance as it is the only language that connects an increasingly diverse group of people crammed into a small island. For these reasons, the government may eventually be forced to rethink the way it sees English. English may no longer be just a practical skill, but a vital aspect of the societal fabric.

English education in Singapore: What is "good" English?

When Singapore was under British rule, the colonial government gave the Peranakans and Eurasians intensive instruction in English to create an elite class of English-educated workers. The Peranakan and Eurasian communities became wealthier than the other ethnic groups because they held better jobs for which a command of English was essential. Seeing this, the other ethnic groups strived to learn English too, so as to move up the socioeconomic ladder.

Even after independence in 1965, the teaching of English focused on getting pupils to emulate British English. You were good at English if you could accurately reproduce the way a British person would speak and write. For example, you had to pronounce words using the Received Pronunciation accent, which announcers on the British Broadcasting Corporation use even today.

In the 1990s, younger and more progressive teachers and principals spurred greater acceptance of local lingo in schools. The Ministry of Education (MOE) began including texts by local authors and playwrights in the curriculum. These texts contained Singlish expressions. But they were confined to the teaching of drama and literature and were not used in English language classes, showing that MOE was far from accepting Singlish as a "legitimate" type of English.

At the turn of the millennium, the government swung back to a flat rejection of Singlish, unleashing the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) which aimed to eradicate the local variety of English entirely in favour of "standard" English. Until today, "standard/good" English is defined by looking outside of Singapore. The only difference is that now, American English and not British English is increasingly used as the example of what is "ideal" due to America's status as a superpower.

The government justified its disgust towards Singlish by explaining that it was a contaminant that, if allowed to flourish, would cause Singaporeans to be unable to speak "proper" English, which would in turn result in Singapore losing its economic competitiveness.

We cannot be a first-world economy or go global with Singlish... The fact that we use English gives us a big advantage over our competitors. If we carry on using Singlish, the logical final outcome is that we, too, will develop our own type of pidgin English, spoken only by three million Singaporeans, which the rest of the world will find quaint but incomprehensible. We are already halfway there. Do we want to go all the way?

~ then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the 1999 National Day Rally

The government also does not accept Singlish as being part of Singapore culture.

In 2016, a major disturbance arose when the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which is a highly respected resource for determining what is "standard" English and what is not, added over 500 Singaporean terms including "angmoh", "sotong", and "shiok" into the official dictionary. Given that the stance of the Singapore government is that the West has the final say on what constitutes "good" English, this tacit acknowledgement and approval of Singlish by OED ruffled some feathers and stirred up considerable anxiety about the future role of Singlish. Seeking an expert opinion from Professor Wee, a reporter asked if there will come a time when Singlish is made an official language of Singapore. (For the record, Professor Wee declined the interview.)

The debate

Ordinary Singaporeans disagree on Singlish. Some are on the same page as the government, denouncing Singlish for not being "proper". Others support it, usually on the grounds that it forms part of the Singaporean identity that they are proud of. But even these supporters of Singlish usually admit that it would not be appropriate to use the local variety in certain settings such as the workplace, reserving it for informal environments such as family gatherings instead.

From the government's perspective, it is insufficient to teach pupils "good" English in school, because if Singlish persists on the street, the pupils will lapse back into it once they leave the classroom. In 2012, founding Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew recounted an observation he made on a trip to Jamaica that convinced him of this:

I was in Jamaica in 1975. Most Jamaicans are descended from West Africans brought to the Caribbean as slaves. They learned, first Spanish, then English from their slave masters. Yet, apart from those at the top of their society, they spoke not English, but Jamaican Creole, which I could not understand. It hit me like a sledgehammer: despite learning English in school, they were back to pidgin Creole once out of school.

Singlish is the local equivalent of Creole, so the government thinks that it is necessary to eliminate Singlish altogether to prevent a repeat of what was happening in Jamaica.

Things boiled over thanks to Phua Chu Kang, a very popular sitcom character who spoke Singlish. He struck a chord among Singaporeans with his down-to-earth nature, especially when contrasted against his on-screen sister Margaret who spoke "standard" English and was snobbish. Local television viewers appreciated Phua's use of Singlish because before he came along, they had had to contend with locally produced shows in which the characters spoke with an outlandish American accent. But the government fretted that the portrayal of Singlish in mainstream media would end up making Singlish seem more legitimate, encouraging people to use it even more.

Then-Prime Minister Goh suggested that Phua should be sent for English lessons, and the television operator, which is owned by the government, duly obliged, toning down Phua's use of Singlish. A flurry of letters and articles appeared in the press, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of Singlish. The government launched SGEM during this period in the official response to the debate: it clearly signalled that Singlish would not be tolerated by the authorities.

MOE revamped the English syllabus to reinforce the teaching of grammar. Schools began issuing fines to pupils who were caught using Singlish.

Although it has since softened its anti-Singlish rhetoric, SGEM in its early days was so fervent in its opposition of the local variety that it engaged in what could be counted as discriminatory or stereotyping behaviour. In a 2001 publication, it claimed that the "use of Singlish can be a problem because it gives the impression that the speaker is unprofessional or poorly educated". In one of its lessons on "good" English, it uses two fictional characters in its examples. Simon, who speaks "good" English, comes across as having a "steady and mature" personality, is rich, and has his own car. Gary speaks only Singlish and he is poor, childish, and irresponsible, asking to borrow Simon's car despite being uninsured. Reflecting on the lesson, a Singaporean who had knowledge of the matter wrote:

Texts that reflect prejudices stigmatize less able speakers as not only linguistically deficient, but also culturally and intellectually deficient. Using such a strategy to compel people to learn a language is, quite simply, hitting below the belt.

Supporters of Singlish are fighting back against efforts to wipe out the local variety. Singlish dictionaries are being written and updated actively, YouTube videos are being produced to teach people how to speak Singlish, and there is even a Speak Good Singlish Movement (SGSM) which directly opposes SGEM.

The Singlish Controversy by Professor Lionel Wee: Introduction

You know what is Singlish, right? If you're Singaporean or lived here long, long time, I'm sure you do lah.

Singlish is the unique type of English that's used in Singapore. The sentences above are in Singlish, so they might look and sound a little odd if you're not exposed to a lot of it.

Crucially, though, the sentences are comprehensible, even to someone who's never encountered Singlish before. They may need a little more time to figure out what the sentences are trying to say, but they will be able to get the gist of the meaning after a while since the words used are English words.

The Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) is a government-supported organisation that campaigns for the use of "standard" English in Singapore. One of the key arguments it uses to promote its aims is that if we Singaporeans use Singlish, foreigners will not be able to understand us, and we won't be competitive on the world stage, for instance in getting jobs overseas or attracting foreign investment to our shores.

Indeed, SGEM has recently been placing large advertisements in the only printed English daily broadsheet newspaper in Singapore, The Straits Times, such as the following:

Seen in The Straits Times page C1 on 19 June 2019.

The implicit message behind this advertisement is that a speaker of "good/standard" English will be understood equally well in the Singapore town of Lakeside and the British city of London, whereas a speaker of "bad/broken/nonstandard" English may not.

And although this particular advertisement doesn't explicitly say so, Singlish is viewed as "nonstandard" English by SGEM. It has made many attempts in the past to stamp out the use of Singlish.

The underlying assumption, then, is that Singlish is "less useful" than "standard" English because it's not widely understood around the world. So it is of great importance that Singaporeans be versed in "standard" English because it is beneficial for them. For example, they will be able to go to London and look for a job without being hindered by communication difficulties caused by language barriers. Those who fail to master "standard" English and rely only on Singlish will lose out.

What happens if Londoners come to Singapore? Well, SGEM worries that, if we don't practise our "good" English enough, we won't be able to use it properly to communicate with the Londoners. The Londoners will have a hard time, and they will leave Singapore with a bad impression. Most horrifyingly (to the ever-pragmatic government, at least), they will take their money elsewhere. In this way, Singlish is construed as a threat to the economic wellbeing of the state.

But we must critically ask: Is it necessarily true that Singapore and Singaporeans will suffer, economically or otherwise, because of Singlish use? Are there any faults in logic behind such thinking? Is such reasoning based on unsound beliefs of how language works?

The book

In his 2018 book The Singlish Controversy, Professor Lionel Wee from the Department of English Language and Literature (ELL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) deconstructs the debate surrounding the use of Singlish which flares up occasionally in the national media.

Source: Website of NUS FASS ELL.

On one side, the government, SGEM, and opponents of Singlish want to put an end to Singlish while on the other, proponents of Singlish point out its merits and want it to remain.

Professor Wee doesn't take sides in his book, although it's clear that he isn't impressed with SGEM or its agenda, instead focusing on breaking down the linguistic factors underpinning the entire issue.

This series

My intention for this series of posts is to make the contents of the book accessible to laypersons.

By this, I don't mean that I'll leak the full text of the book here by copying and pasting chapters of the book onto this blog. That wouldn't help laypersons at all, because the book is written for an academic audience and you must have some knowledge of linguistic concepts in order to understand it.

I'm not a linguistics student, but I have enough linguistics knowledge (thanks in large part to the fantastic Dr Nala Lee and the exceptional Associate Professor Joseph Park whose lessons on sociolinguistics that I attended were comprehensive and effective) to be able to decode Professor Wee's writing and rewrite the key takeaways in a manner that everyone can understand.

And that's precisely what I'm going to do in this series of posts. There are seven chapters in the book, and I will write one post for each chapter. Each post will summarise the corresponding chapter's most important points and explain them in plain English.

Note that I won't be covering every single thing that Professor Wee writes, just the ones that are key to understanding the issue of Singlish. I'll cut out most of the dry, boring parts where Professor Wee expounds at length about linguistic theories or highlights an area where academics are in contention over some ideological construct. This means that occasionally, I might use certain technical terms loosely in a way that will make a true linguist cringe, but if it aids clarity, no harm no foul.

I also won't quote extensively from the book, except for the amusing anecdotes that Professor Wee included which I really like.

Of course, any mistakes are mine alone, and Professor Wee is not responsible. Heck, he doesn't even know this series exists.

Please don't use this series as a reference for research projects. This is not an academically rigorous text. Like I said, I'm not even a real linguistics student. I read and interpreted the book my way, which may or may not be the linguistically sound way. If you're doing a research project, read the book yourself. I will not be liable for you losing any marks.

If you want the book for yourself, perhaps to follow along with reading the original text and my chapter summaries at the same time or as source material for your research project, you can download the e-book from the NUS library database for free using your NUS login details. If you're a member of the general public and don't have access to the NUS library database, drop me a message on Twitter or Reddit and I will try to help you.

"Why are you doing this?" I hear you ask. Simple! To paraphrase Carly Rae Jepsen, I really really really really really really like the book. It's my favourite nonfiction book of all time. And I want more people to be able to enjoy it even if they don't have the prerequisite knowledge to digest it. Additionally, I am interested in the sociolinguistics of English in Singapore, so writing this series is not only fun for me, it also allows me to consolidate my own knowledge about the issue.

Interlude: My "grandmother" story

(In Singapore, the term "grandmother story" is used in a derogatory way to describe a story, often a personal recount, that is longwinded and has no important point. Hopefully this one isn't like that, but you're welcome to skip this section if you want to.)

At this juncture, I find it pertinent to tell a personal story. I used to be a so-called Grammar Nazi, someone who would go out of his way to correct people's language errors. This was probably motivated by my view of myself as an expert in English, as I had consistently won awards for the English language subject from primary through secondary school. In fact, my Primary 5 English teacher (a cheerful Sikh woman who was called Madam Kaur like almost every other Sikh female) would often consult me openly in class when difficult questions arose from the other students. So I, somewhat arrogantly I admit, thought I had a God-given right to police other people's English use.

If the purpose of education is to open one's mind and bring enlightenment, my linguistics classes at NUS certainly educated me. They inspired me to abandon my Grammar Nazi ways. Why? Famous sociolinguist Rosina Lippi-Green put it succinctly: Grammaticality does not equal communicative effectiveness.

In other words, the reason we humans developed language was to transmit information from one person to another. Language exists to enable us to tell one another stuff. When we open our mouths or raise a pen, our goal is to get our message across to someone else. Does it really matter if the language we use isn't "perfect"? If I write "I going zoo", the meaning is quite clear: I am going to the zoo. No need to be pedantic about missing conjunctions and the like.

Besides, who defines what constitutes "good/perfect/standard" language anyway? Take English for example. Very often, we look to the British for answers, because the English invented English after all, right? But there are a few problems with this.

First, the English didn't actually invent English. Nobody did. English is the product of many languages, including French, Germanic, and Latin, mixing together. So the English don't have some special claim to the language over everyone else.

Second, how do you reconcile the fact that increasingly, the world also accepts American English? A common ditty goes "I say toe-may-toe, you say toe-mah-toe", so how is it that both pronunciations of the word "tomato" can be "correct" at the same time? If we're willing to let American English also be "correct" English, then why can't Chinese English or Indian English or Russian English also be "correct" English? The line is hard to see, because it's so arbitrary that it practically doesn't exist.

Third, Lippi-Green also observed that: All spoken language changes over time. In other words, what was considered "wrong" thirty, fifty, or a hundred years ago may now be accepted. For example, Singapore was a British colony until the 1960s, so our early English influence was solely British. During my parents' time in school in the 1960s to the 1980s, "standard" English meant you had to speak in what linguists call Received Pronunciation (RP), which is the kind of English you hear when you tune in to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio station.

But by my schooling years in the 2000s and 2010s, the popularity of American media had caused many young Singaporeans to adopt a somewhat American-tinged accent. The education system no longer expected RP from students during assessments such as oral examinations, accepting alternatives such as what is labelled by linguists as General American (GenAm) or even the Singaporean accent which had had time to develop and mature over the decades, as long as it wasn't too strong.

So I realised that it's unhelpful to get hung up on little "errors" because most of the time, they don't have any negative effects whatsoever on the comprehensibility of the overall message. Being a Grammar Nazi is annoying to everyone: the Nazi gets annoyed at the litany of language errors he encounters every day, while the people who get corrected by the Nazi get annoyed because nobody enjoys being made to feel stupid. So it's better not to be a Grammar Nazi.

These days, I embrace "imperfect" English. And that includes Singlish. Singlish may not be "standard" or "accepted" in Britain or the United States, but what matters is that here in Singapore, it is widely used, it is widely accepted, and so in my eyes, it is the standard English for us.

There is a twist in this tale: My soon-to-be boss is the chairperson of SGEM. Yes, that's the organisation that opposes Singlish. How coincidental it is that he and I should both be so vested in this issue, but with diverging viewpoints.

Right, let's get started on the book...

The Introduction, which isn't a proper chapter but more of a prologue, kicks off the book by observing that Singlish is not a unique phenomenon. When English travels outside of England and comes into contact with other languages, it gets altered. So there's Singlish in Singapore, but also Manglish in Malaysia, Chinglish in China, and Spanglish in Puerto Rico.

Each of these are varieties of English. A variety is a "version" of a language that is used by a particular group of people. Singaporeans, a term which describes a group of people who live in Singapore, use the variety of English called Singlish.

Singlish has been a divisive issue, somewhat like the prickly, smelly durian fruit. You either love durian or hate it; you are either for Singlish or against it. There's hardly any middle ground in the debate.

People who are against Singlish say that its existence damages Singaporeans' ability to learn "standard" English, and having a populace that is unable to use "standard" English will be detrimental to Singapore and Singaporeans in the long run, for reasons I've already explained above.

People who are for Singlish say that we can be conversant in both "standard" English and Singlish, calling on their opponents to have more faith in Singaporeans' ability to determine which variety to use in which situation. For example, we might use "standard" English at a dinner with business partners, and Singlish at a dinner with family. This act of using different varieties at different times is called code-switching.

Having set the stage, the Introduction goes on to, well, introduce the rest of the book by outlining each chapter. I shall not cover this here because otherwise I'll end up repeating myself in subsequent posts.

But there's one more bit of text that I thought was interesting in this section, and it deals with the notion of there being such a thing as Standard Singapore English. I shall use it as a springboard to introduce you to the basics of Singapore English, so that we're all on the same page going forward.

Singapore English

This is not in the book, but first let me recap a bit of history and link it to how Singlish came to be.

Before the arrival of the British, this island was primarily inhabited by Malay villagers. The British came, and brought English with them. When the British opened a big trading port here, lots of Chinese immigrated in, and some Indians too. So there were many languages intermingling: Malay, English, and the numerous dialects of the various Chinese and Indian subgroups.

English was the language used for official communications, of course, so its vocabulary was widespread. But people don't easily forget their native languages, especially the syntax, which is how words and sentences are arranged in a particular language.

This gave rise to a curious phenomenon. People were intending to speak English, and indeed they were using English words, but they were arranging those words in the way they would have if they had been speaking their native language. For example, the sentence "You want what?" consists of English words, but is arranged according to Chinese syntax. The sentence means "What do you want?" and in Chinese it is "ni (you) yao (want) shen-me (what)".

And this is basically the essence of what Singlish is. It is English words, arranged in a special pattern that takes inspiration from a blend of Chinese, Indian, and Malay languages, and sprinkled with borrowed words from those other languages too.

The tricky part is this: Some linguists think that there is such a thing as Standard Singapore English (SSE). They contrast SSE with Colloquial Singapore English (CSE), which is just a fancy name for Singlish.

To them, Singapore English exists on a spectrum. SSE is "high-end English", like what you would use when talking to your boss. CSE is "low-end English", like what you would use at the marketplace. Most of us wouldn't spend much time at either end of this spectrum. We would instead be moving up and down as we encounter different situations in the course of a day.

But, as the book states, SSE "is spoken of with far greater tentativeness than Singlish. Many Singaporeans in fact appear unsure that Standard Singapore English actually exists, even considering such a notion to be chimerical. In contrast, the idea of Singlish has struck a much bigger cultural chord and enjoys a much more robust cultural reality, so much so that supporters of Singlish celebrate its existence even as its detractors consider it a clear and present national danger."

Why do we find it hard to believe in SSE? The book doesn't go on to deal with this question because it, too, seems to think that there's no such thing as SSE and so dismisses the issue out of hand. But I think it could be because we have been brought up by the state's education system to adopt an exonormative approach to language. We grew up learning that correct English is British English or American English. Someone else always has the answer when it comes to "standard" English. Our English here in Singapore isn't "good enough". That's why it's "impossible" for there to be a Standard Singapore English.

Linguistically, it's also very slippery to parse out what features constitute SSE and what features constitute CSE. For example, Singaporeans tend to drop the "t" and "d" sounds at the ends of words. So it's common to hear "heaven" when a Singaporean means "haven't". Is this a feature that's only present in CSE and not SSE? Whichever way the decision goes, the justification behind it will be pretty contrived. The whole exercise smacks of arbitrariness.

Rounding up

Here's what we've learned so far:

• Singlish is English vocabulary arranged in a special pattern inspired by Chinese, Indian, and Malay grammar, with some words from those languages also thrown in.
• Singlish is not unique. Whenever English travels to a place where other languages exist, new varieties of English will form when the other languages mix with English.
• Opponents of Singlish want to eradicate it because they think it hinders Singaporeans' ability to learn "standard" English. This will render them unintelligible to foreigners. Foreigners won't want to hire Singaporean workers or do business in Singapore, and this will have a negative impact on the Singapore economy.
• Proponents of Singlish rebut that Singaporeans can be good at both "standard" English and Singlish, and know when it is appropriate to use which variety.
• Some have proposed that there is a Standard Singapore English, but the idea has not gained acceptance in either the linguistics community or broader Singapore society.