Thursday 5 May 2011

Should Singlish be recognized as an official language in Singapore?

Singlish is a very widely used language in Singapore today. But should it be recognized as an official language? Below, I'll be presenting my views on why Singlish should not be recognized as an official language in Singapore.

Firstly, what exactly is Singlish? Well, it is a mix of Chinese, Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese and many more languages which Singaporeans often use, thus getting its name of Singlish. So what so bad about having this language? Well, for one, it would definitely worsen relationships among different races. Because Singlish is a mix of language, different races might mistake one another for what they’re saying easily. Wouldn’t this therefore, worsen the relationship the social cohesion among the citizens of Singapore, which is totally against what the government is promoting?

Secondly, besides having internal communication problems, communication with citizens from other countries would be even worse. Giving an example here, imagine going to England and saying, “Eh, I want one chicken rice, more sauce ah” at a chicken rice store, the owner would either not understand him at all or give him chicken rice with lots of chili sauce instead of black sauce which he intended. Furthermore, if you were to go to a university in Singapore and because you were so used to using Singlish, you might start to blur it out unknowingly. How would your English friends there interpret and understand you then? Wouldn’t this in turn leave a bad impression on the English man, having them think that our standard of English is poor instead of them understanding that it is our language?

Some of you might argue that Singlish as an official language would help in improving the citizen’s national identity of being a Singaporean. No doubt, that would be the case. But what would the use be if the communication amongst one another be degraded to such a state whereby citizens can’t understand each other? Furthermore, it is a universal fact that if you were to adapt very comfortably to Singlish, it would be very hard for you to use proper English as words and pronunciations would just be blurted out without you knowing. If communication cannot be mastered properly, what use is there to speak for our national identity?

Thus, I would re-emphasize my point and state that Singlish should NOT be recognized as an official language in Singapore.

3 comments:

  1. Furthermore, there would be what I like to call "divided singlish", for Chinese would tend to speak Singlish with more Chinese. Malays would tend to speak more Malay in Singlish.
    Therefore there is a major communication breakdown.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with both Chester and Wei Kiat. I would like to add on that recognizing Singlish as Singapore's official language would worsen other people's impression of us. Foreigners already have a bad impression of english spoken by Singaporeans, we cannot afford to make it worse. Although there is British English, American English and Australian English, official records state that their national language are all English.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I disagree with the point on worsening social cohesion. I feel that with this mix of languages, people of different races would then be able to understand each other better. Regarding Chester's comment, I feel that it in turn would help each Singaporeans to learn languages of different races, as it would allow us to have greater exposure to other languages.

    ReplyDelete