The Big Read: Is Singapore becoming a monolingual nation and is that a boon or bane for national identity?

According to Dr. Tan of NTU, it is not unexpected that today’s children are more indifferent to perceived social loss due to a stronger connection to English or a perceived loss of cultural competency. &nbsp,

Monolingual speakers of English does not think that they have lost everything because English is greatly valued in Singapore, and&nbsp, individuals may be judged more for bad English&nbsp, as compared with other language, she added.

” I do n’t blame kids these days for saying,’ I’m perfectly okay with English because I’ve got friends from different ethnic backgrounds, and we all speak English together’, because there’s also a sense of building national identity ( in that )”, said Dr Tan.

She also warned that Singapore’s language diversity may ultimately be lost as a result of such a mindset.

Every language reduction is a tradition loss, according to Dr. Tan, if we accept the notion that languages are cultural repositories.

” If you have three different languages, you really get glimpses into three different kingdoms. But if we are multilingual, therefore we actually have a multilingual worldview”.

According to Dr. Goh of NIE, having fewer skilled bilinguals may lead to a lack of nearby skills in fields like education, media, and entertainment that require mother tongue expertise.

It is common to hear nearby respondents speak in literal interpretations of their mother tongue from English, according to Dr. Goh, who uses mother tongue in street interviews.

It has the potential to affect conversation in mother tongue languages and cause imbalanced fluent development as the general public gets used to these expressions.

Finally, linguistic and cultural richness is “at the base” of the Malaysian identity, said Dr Xu from SUSS. &nbsp, A multilingual society is likely to be uniform, probably perpetuating inequalities like as favouring English-speaking majorities over mom tongue-speaking minorities.

The family tongue, which as an educational strategy is often associated with one’s second language, “holds the key” to one’s cultural identity, said Dr Goh.

” However, this has no issue with the regional identity, as Singapore is a multicultural and cultural expat community. Being able to communicate in more than one vocabulary was historically seen as a manifestation of the community nature.

He added that speaking some of the mother tongue languages during various event occasions for various tribal communities would give some examples of this community spirit, as well as greeting people in the mom tongues of different races and demonstrating regard and acquaintance, he continued.

Fair to say that some young people continue this exercise. Mr Liow the bachelor, for one, is learning Malay so she can interact better with her Malaysian buddies.

” I&nbsp, started with Malay because it’s also the national language and most similar to English, through Duolingo and some Youtube videos. Therefore when I told my Asian buddies, they were very excited and tried to help me learn the language”, said Ms Liow. &nbsp,

She trusted me enough to reveal her thoughts about the Singaporean Muslim area, and that sparked further discussions ( with a companion ).

Although she might had told me that, I believe it makes people feel more at ease with you and like you are really trying to get to know them.

This narrative first appeared in Now.