Why don't Singaporeans try to speak proper English?

Hello everyone. Jiat pah buay? Recently there was a controversial piece that had gone viral on Quora: Why don't Singaporeans try to speak proper English?  Now it was the reply by Grace Teng that has been widely circulated on social media, but I can't help but feel that whilst Grace is clearly extremely eloquent and very highly educated, I just cannot get past the defensive tone in her piece. The fact that she started her post with, "Oh wow. You're spoiling for a fight." already tells me she was preparing for a counterattack. Grace does make many valid points, mostly in defence of Singlish and also she points out that in all languages, there is a wide spectrum ranging from colloquial regional dialects (eg. Glaswegian English) to a generally upheld standard of proper speech (eg. BBC received pronunciation). When I was young, I actually thought the next generation of Singaporeans would just grow up speaking American English because of the influence of TV programmes, films and pop music and that Singlish would eventually die out - how wrong was I?  Hindsight is 2020, so please allow me to offer my own answer to this rather controversial question.

What is wrong with the way we talk?

1. Because they don't need to. 

Whether or not you need to speak standard English (as opposed to Singlish) depends on your personal circumstances. If you were representing your company internationally, attending major sales meetings in New York, London and Sydney, then you need to be able to communicate clearly in a way that best represents your company - if you are in this position, then hell no, you can't speak Singlish to foreigners who will not understand you. But if you are selling laksa in a hawker center in Ang Mo Kio, then Singlish will serve you just fine - the odds of an American, British or Australian tourist finding their way to a hawker center on Ang Mo Kio street 61 is extremely slim, so why the hell would that laksa hawker need to speak proper English (or even any English at all)?

Okay, perhaps the example of the laksa hawker in Ang Mo Kio is a little extreme - but how about my sister then? She is very well educated, a graduate from NUS and she works in a Singaporean company in a very senior position. Her team are all Singaporeans - the language they use to communicate in the office is Singlish; I note that she tends to avoid using Mandarin as there are Indian and Malay colleagues. In any case, she is perfectly understood when she speaks Singlish with her colleagues and it does not in any way impede communication. Heck, if I were to work in that Singaporean company with my sister, I would end up speaking epic Singlish everyday with the rest of them too. There are plenty of Singaporeans in my sister's position, they may be very well educated and professionals in their respective fields but have little need to speak a more international form of English that is more easily understood by non-locals.

Your laksa wan hum or not hah?

2. The Singaporean education system does not demand it.

I was brought up through the Singaporean education system - I went to a Singaporean primary school, secondary school and then did my 'A' levels at a JC. All that time, my English teachers would frown upon any use of Singlish in our written English, but there was virtually no effort to try to change the way we spoke (with a very strong Singaporean accent). As a humanities scholar at VJC, apart from my Chinese and PE teachers, the rest of my teachers were white expatriates yet none of them made any effort whatsoever to try to change the way the local students spoke. Why? I suppose they just accepted, "well, this is the way Singaporeans talk and they are happy with that, so why bother trying to change it?" Indeed, many local teachers also speak with a very strong Singaporean accent, so to put it bluntly, it is a case of the blind leading the blind when it comes to learning how to speak proper standard English. The result is that most Singaporean students can produce grammatically correct sentences because that was demanded of them for the exams, but when it comes to speaking English, they tend to lapse into Singlish as a matter of habit. In short, nobody at the ministry of education seems to really mind or care about the issue of accents or Singlish.

This reminds me of the way I pointed out to my sister that she tend to turn her 'TH' digraph into a D, T, F or V.  When I taught her how she ought to pronounce the 'TH' digraph, she was able to do it instantly but then remarked that she works amongst Singaporeans and if she were to change the way she pronounces the 'TH' then she would sound different from them. Would my sister start changing the way she speaks after I corrected her? No, she wouldn't - she doesn't want to. Thus if you actually asked a Singaporean to speak English to say an American person, then chances are, s/he will make an effort to code switch if the occasion demands it. However, if you were to simply wander onto the MRT and eavesdrop on a group of Singaporean friends chatting in Singlish, the fact that they choose to speak Singlish to each other doesn't mean that they are incapable of speaking standard or proper English. In fact, if they are given the chance to train with a speech coach like Angmohdan, they would probably be able to change the way they speak to a more standard form of English quite quickly but peer pressure makes them lapse back into Singlish eventually.

3. They don't know the difference and don't know any better. 

Oh I know I have told you this story before so pardon me if you have heard this before. When I was in Singapore earlier this year, my nephew asked my mother, "Can I say this during the oral exam?" And my mother's reply was, "Can can!" I resisted the urge to correct my mother there and then as I know she hates me correcting her English, she thinks she will 'lose face' if I correct her in front of my nephew. But good fucking grief, she doesn't even realize she is speaking Singlish - in her mind, using the word 'can' instead of 'yes' is perfectly acceptable. In fact, when I hear the word "can-can", I think of the French burlesque-cabaret dance. Perhaps it is a matter of pride, but many Singaporeans who speak what I can only describe as 'non-standard colloquial English' are completely oblivious to just how terrible their English actually is and they are in fact incapable of constructing grammatically correct English sentences.

So for example, my mother might construct a question like, "You got close the light in the room or not?" (Did you turn off the light in the room?) To my ears, she is speaking in Singlish but in her mind, she is actually speaking English. The fact that I understand my mother perfectly is more a reflection of the fact that I do speak Singlish (along with Mandarin, Hokkien and Malay) - thus I do not bother correcting my mother and she goes on having the wrongful impression that she is speaking English when she is actually speaking Singlish. Do note that people like my mother are trying their absolute best to speak English and you have to remember that the quality of education that my mother had back in the 1940s and 1950s was a far cry from the kind of education available in Singapore today - thus it is very unfair to fault people like my mother for speaking non-standard English.

4. Peer pressure (and soft peer pressure)

Now in my interview with Angmohdan, he pointed out that despite the best of his efforts to change the change the way his students pronounce certain words like 'tuition', they tend to revert back to the Singlish pronunciation because they are afraid of sounding different from their peers and possibly being mocked as a result. Now that kind of peer pressure to speak Singlish is perhaps a bit extreme, the case of my sister is a more typical example of soft peer pressure. Her Singaporean colleagues all speak Singlish, so subconsciously, she wants to fit in and thus she ends up speaking Singlish just like them. Nobody is mocking her or bullying her into speaking Singlish, rather it is a choice that she has made without evening thinking about it and after many years in this environment, speaking Singlish becomes intrinsic and natural. My sister's experience with Singlish is quite typical: when millions Singaporeans subconsciously fall into this pattern of behaviour because of soft peer pressure (like my sister), then the cycle reinforces and sustains itself.

5. There is virtually no discrimination against Singlish and local accents.

This is the big difference because the UK and Singapore - in the UK, the moment you open your mouth to speak, people will pass judgement on what kind of social class you belong to based on the way you speak. In short, your accent defines you in the UK and that is why I am very careful about the way I speak, especially in the world of business. Indeed, I find myself often mirroring and mimicking the accent of the person I am speaking to because British people inadvertently feel more comfortable dealing with someone from their own class background.  In Singapore however, the situation is totally different - you have everyone from politicians to CEOs to even English teachers speaking Singlish (and English with a very strong Singaporean accent) and that is completely acceptable. Nobody seems to mind or care - quite unlike what happens in the UK. 

Let me give you an example - earlier this year, I comment on my blog that the Workers' Party's Low Thia Khiang spoke English rather badly. Just to clarify, I'm not attacking the Workers' Party here - plenty of PAP MPs also speak English atrociously, such as former MP Seng Han Thong who got into big trouble over his comments, ironically about MRT staff speaking English. However, many Singaporeans jumped to their defence and berated me for daring to criticize them. I was told that these people that people like Low and Seng were educated in Chinese schools, so it was unfair of me to expect them to speak standard English; that whilst their English may be imperfect, they were fluent in Mandarin and were able to connect with the Mandarin and Hokkien speaking older voters. The bottom line was that many Singaporeans really didn't mind if their politicians spoke English badly - so the message is simple: you can speak English atrociously and still become a successful politician in Singapore, den try so hard to talk like Angmoh for what?

So there you go, that's my explanation as to why so few Singaporeans make an effort to try to speak standard English without being so utterly defensive about the validity and value of Singlish. What do you think about this issue? Why don't more Singaporeans speak standard English? Is Singlish here to stay for good, or will it evolve into something quite different in the next few decades? How do you feel about Singlish? Do you have any other explanations to add to the argument? Please let me know your thoughts and leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading, kum siah!