The language holding Malays, Tamils and Chinese together

by Ted Torrent, Asianomics

THOUGH it is not uncommon to find a small country with more than one official language, Singapore is still an unusual case. Among four official languages, Malay is the symbolic national language, English the working language, and Mandarin the language representing the island’s ethnic Chinese, even though it is not the "mother tongue" for most. Clear?

Singaporeans & Malaysians Once Upon A Time

Add Tamil as the fourth official language, a range of Chinese languages and ‘Singlish’, the distinctive creole that blends elements of official languages along with a number of other tongues, and you have the recipe for a tasty linguistic soup. All the more interesting for existing in a country of fewer than 5m people once derided by a Taiwanese deputy foreign minister as "only as big as a piece of snot".

As with many things Singaporean, language is an area that has been subject to tight government control. At the recent launch of his latest book, "Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going", Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and now "minister mentor", outlined how English, then a minority language, came to be the city-state’s working tongue:

We decided to opt for English as a common language and it was the only decision which could have held Singapore together. If we had Chinese as a common language, national language, we would have split this country wide apart, and we would be foolish to have Malay or Tamil.

Mr Lee argues that placing language policy at the centre of nation-building—demanding that English was to be learnt by all students, along with their “mother tongue”—was, and remains, central to the Singapore’s survival. In the bland modernity of today’s Singapore, it is easy to forget that its independence was preceded by violent race riots, and that the choice of a neutral language as a common tongue was needed for a new state with pronounced divisions and few natural advantages other than its location.

... And Malaysians under son of Iskandar Kutty's two decades of racist and corrupt rule.

But a corollary of this thrust for unity and economic benefit was that the government targeted Singlish and Chinese languages, like Hokkien and Teochow. These were considered to interfere with learning Mandarin and Standard English, and their use in the media was consequently heavily restricted. As a result, while Singlish, Hokkien and others may continue to be used in informal or family settings, or in the popular podcasts by mrbrown—and may even be used by officials or in government campaigns—their usage has fallen. One in five Chinese Singaporeans now speak non-Mandarin Chinese at home, compared with almost 80% 30 years ago. With English and Mandarin shaping up as the dominant tongues of the 21st-century, Singapore’s language policy may be proven right, but could still cost it one of the richest parts of its identity.