Does the ‘authentic’ Chinese/Malay/Indian S’porean exist?

2/28/2015 Does the ‘authentic’ Chinese/Malay/Indian S’porean exist? | TODAYonline

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BY LUKE LU (/AUTHORS/LUKE-LU)PUBLISHED: 4:05 AM, OCTOBER 17, 2013UPDATED: 4:15 AM, OCTOBER 17, 2013

(PAGE 1 OF 1) - PAGINATE (?PAGE=0)What constitutes an “authentic” Singaporeanrepresentative of his or her ethnic community?

Singaporeans usually use three criteria to categorise andevaluate an individual according to race: Where were youborn? What race are your parents? Do you speak yourrace’s language, and how well do you speak it?

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Does the ‘authentic’Chinese/Malay/Indian S’porean

exist?Does the ‘authentic’ Chinese/Malay/Indian S’porean exist?

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Conceived in this way, our diverse cultural and linguisticpractices become a dichotomy: That is either one is agood Chinese/Malay/Indian, or if one does not fulfil thecriteria, one is “not Chinese/Malay/Indian enough”.

Let us take a look at the diversities in reality, with theChinese as an example.

In 1979, a review of Singapore’s bilingual education (akathe Goh Keng Swee Report) was more concerned withthe fact that too few Chinese students were making theshift to Mandarin from other Chinese languages that theyspoke at home.

Less than 40 per cent of the pupil population managed toattain the minimum competency level in two languages.

The report proposed a series of changes that emphasisedlanguage learning in the early years of education,including academic streaming.

The first thing to acknowledge is that the Chinesepopulation in Singapore never homogeneously usedMandarin as an exclusive home language. Our lamenttoday over its “declining use” obfuscates the fact that wehad similar problems in the 1970s trying to makeindividuals learn a language they did not speak at home.

This struggle to attain high proficiency in Mandarin willcontinue, because Mandarin has always competedagainst or co-existed with other languages in our sociallives. These other languages used to be what we know asChinese dialects.

Today it is English.

A CASE IN POINT

Born in 1981, I am very much a product of the changesimplemented by the Goh report. My grandparents spokeFoochow and were hardly conversant in Mandarin. Icannot speak Foochow, because my parents never usedit with me.

However, I am blessed with a father who went to anEnglish-medium school and a mother who was Chinese-educated.

I picked up both languages naturally as both were in usein my family life. I took Higher Chinese till my O-Levelsand scored a distinction for the subject, which meant thatI was exempted from studying Chinese in junior college. Italso meant that my schooling in Chinese stopped at theage of 16.

As much as I am still effectively bilingual in speech, otheraspects of my Chinese literacy have suffered from lack ofuse.



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I can read Chinese essays and newspapers fine, but haveforgotten how to write particular characters unless I typewith a computer.

I can write academic papers in English, but will havemuch difficulty doing so in Chinese due to a lack oftechnical vocabulary. And yet, I would like to think that myMandarin and Chinese proficiency is as good as mostSingaporeans can expect to achieve.

I count both English and Chinese languages, includingbits of Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Foochow,etc, as intrinsic to my identity. I love red-date chicken (atraditional Foochow dish) as much as I do laksa andprata, though I do not see myself as territorially linked toChina where my grandparents were from.

I consequently think of myself as more Singaporean thanChinese.

Am I still ethnically Foochow? Am I too rojak andanglicised to be Chinese?

BEING COMFORTABLE

It is difficult to say if any of us constitutes an “authentic”racial-Singaporean. But one thing is certain: Thediversities that we encounter in our daily lives are muchmore complex and heterogeneous than the dichotomyposited in mainstream notions of racial identity. It just sohappens that the diversity in my own life is largely valuedin our society.

Other linguistic practices considered “unauthentic” havebecome disadvantageous and may even invokeaccusations of cultural duplicity: Peranakans who havenever been exposed to Mandarin at home; mygrandmother who only speaks Foochow; my Chinesefriends who use Cantonese and English; individualswhose parents never spoke to them in their official mothertongues for a variety of reasons.

Language use in Singapore often transcends monolingualand monocultural frameworks. It follows that our languageproficiencies, modes of learning and even identitiesshould not be measured against the yardstick of anidealised educated monolingual.

Before we think about how to stop the decline of officialmother tongues, we might be better off being comfortablewith our own forms of bilingualism, pedagogy andstandards.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Luke Lu is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Language,Discourse and Communication, King’s College London

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Jim Nigel Fernandez · · Owner at AJM

William Merchants

You started off very well; discussing the

challenges to the 3 main languages and then, it

degenerated into a Chinese pity-party.. Would

appreciate if our English media were more

inclusive or if sph could transfer the writer to a

media suitable to the writer's preference.

Reply · Like · · Follow Post · October 17, 2013 at

9:56am

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3

Sean Padman Israfil McMenamin ·

Top Commenter · Learning Designer at

Playware Studios Asia Pte Ltd

Um....as much as he's trying to look at

the larger picture, he is writing about

himself in that mid paragraph. Not as if

he can or should fake how it feels like

to be someone else. It should still

resonate, and people with similar

experiences could write in to expand

it.

Reply · Like · October 17, 2013 at 2:01pm

Ricky Lye · · Top Commenter

Quote: “three criteria to categorise and evaluate

an individual according to race: Where were you

born? What race are your parents? Do you speak

your race’s language, and how well do you speak

it?" Unquote

I would like to change the last criteria to " Do you

read and write in your race's language or dialect?"

Reply · Like · · Follow Post · October 16, 2013 at

11:59pm

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Does the ‘authentic’ Chinese/Malay/Indian S’porean exist?