I wrote a guest post for Hutong School‘s blog. Here’s an excerpt:
Do all Singaporeans speak Chinese?
I was once in a police station to update my residential address. As the young Singaporean Indian officer was helping me to get that done, an older Chinese man entered the police station and addressed the police officer in Mandarin. The officer’s response was: “I don’t speak Mandarin. Malay can?”. And they proceeded in Malay.
To read on, continue on the Hutong School Blog!
When I first arrived in Singapore in 2006, I would find it strange to see people jump from Chinese to English and back in just one sentence, sometimes also mixing Malay or other dialects in there. Meanwhile, I’ve picked up the habit myself. Is there no avoiding this?
Even for those brought up in a monolingual environment, such as the Chinese that have since settled here, it is common to hear sentences like:
“其实，我要去马来西亚，但还没 apply visa. 所以可能 cannot go this time.”
What happens is, we just say what first comes to mind. Knowing that the person we speak to understands both languages as well. You can say that this is just typical for the place we call Singapore, and it makes us all connect to each other. I really don’t think there is a problem with it as long as everyone is in on the conversation.
I’ve also seen this mixing happening in the context of EU officials. Coming from different EU member states, most speak 3-4 languages to some extent and will be able to understand quite a bit more than they can speak. Depending on the gr0up composition, the conversation will hang more towards English / French / Spanish / Italian / German.
So the language used is really a product of who is trying to communicate. And languages fuse when often used in combination. This is how Singlish has involved, and I can absolutely not see a problem with Singlish in a Singaporean context.
The thing is, mixing languages does become a problem when communicating with people that speak only one of the languages involved. Personally, I find it more and more challenging to stick to pure Dutch when talking with family. And even when I try to speak as well as I can, I cringe when I hear the anglicisms (literally translated idioms from English) creep in. What’s worse, my brother sometimes points out foreign influences in my Dutch that I didn’t even notice as I spoke them. I simply don’t speak my mother tongue often enough.
Do you try to avoid mixing languages at all cost? Mix languages freely? Or occasionally slip up?
I’m just back from a long weekend in Malaysia and thought I’d add a note about the language situation there. While Bahasa Malaysia is the official language in education and administration in Malaysia, English and Mandarin both play an important role.
The ethnic make-up of Malaysia, according to the CIA World Factbook is:
Malay – 50.4%
Chinese – 23.7%
Indigenous – 11%
Other – 7.8%
The Chinese are overrepresented in cities, which means that when visiting Malaysia as a foreign visitor, you’re more likely to see more Chinese around you.
Unlike Singapore, Malaysia has no deliberate policies to promote the usage of Mandarin among the Chinese; it rather propagates speaking Bahasa Malaysia (Malay). Like Singapore Chinese, the Malaysia Chinese mostly originated from China’s southern provinces and did not generally not speak Mandarin (which originates from the north).
There are many dialects that are not mutually intelligible among these groups, for example, a Cantonese-speaking person may not understand his fellow Chinese, but Hainanese neighbour. So there is the need for a unifying language, also called lingua franca. English, Malay and Mandarin seem to all have some sort of role as lingua franca in Malaysia.
Traditionally, the emphasis has been more on English (from the previous colonial power Britain) and Malay (current official language) to fulfill the role of lingua franca. Since the rise of China, Mandarin is gaining popularity in Malaysia. It is frequently heard on the streets and in everyday life and some Chinese parents choose to speak to their children in Mandarin (while others prefer speaking English, or more commonly, a mix of the two).
There is no “Singapore language” that is native to all Singaporeans. Singlish comes closest. Here is a quick overview of the languages spoken in Singapore, who uses them, and how they are used.