Brief Description
Singapore started off as a multiracial country and its population was made up of a melting pot of different immigrants from different countries. Over the years, our medium of communication between the different races has been modified and peppered with numerous phrases from different languages from different dialects such as Hokkien and Malay. These phrases include “lah”, “waliao”, and “makan”. This Singaporean Slang is known as Singlish. Singlish is widely recognized by both local Singaporeans and foreigners alike, and anyone who can speak a fluent Singlish is considered a true-blue Singaporean.
Problems Involved
Singlish has been, and still is, the top favourite medium of communication in Singapore. However, Singlish has raised much controversy over the past few years. Many Singaporeans viewed Singlish as a diluted version of English, with its twisted grammar and simplistic vocabulary. The opponents of Singlish feel that “Singaporeans’ usage of Singlish has created such a bad impression of our conversational skills to foreigners when they visit us, that we are no longer remembered by our incredible evolution from a fishing village to a leading financial hub of the world, but by the slang that we speak.” (seanGng, 2010). These Singaporeans have discouraged Singlish and some even moved to ban Singlish among our society. One of the by-products of this opposition is the Speak Good English Movement, a popular campaign that encourages Singaporeans to speak accurate English. The opposition of Singlish largely feel that Singlish casts negative light on Singapore’s English standards and that if Singaporeans are unable to speak proper English, then we cannot use English as a medium of communication at an international...
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Works Cited
Koh, K. (2013, 12 8). Standing up for singlish . Straits Times. Retrieved from http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/OrderArticleRequest.action?order=&_sourcePage=/WEB-INF/jsp/user/search_type_result.jsp&month=12&year=2013&date=08&docLanguage=en&documentId=nica_NP_2013_30169579
NG, N. (2012, 12 17). Wah lao! video on singlish goes viral . Straits Times. Retrieved from http://newslink.asiaone.com/user/OrderArticleRequest.action?order=&_sourcePage=/WEB-INF/jsp/user/search_type_result.jsp&month=12&year=2012&date=17&docLanguage=en&documentId=nica_NP_2012_26455080
(2010, 05). Should We Ban Singlish in Singapore. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 05, 2010, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/Should-We-Ban-Singlish-In-Singapore-325556.html
It is interesting for Lisa Kanae to use three different voices in her book, Sista Tongue. The structure of Sista Tongue is different from standard books as if to make her words flow and become active. Her message still holds truth in today’s society. In many homes, younger generations face the inadequacy of being unable to understand their mother tongues while their parents struggle with learning English. Code-switching is natural for bilingual people and those that speak to other sub-cultures. Lisa Kanae’s different voices are similar to
Chang Rae-Lee, author of "Mute in an English-Only World," moved to America from Korea when he was only six or seven years old. He adopted the English language quickly, as most children do, but his mother continued to struggle. "For her, the English language…usually meant trouble and a good dose of shame and sometimes real hurt" (Lee 586). It is obvious, though, that his mother was persistent in her attempt to learn English and deal with her limited culture experience, as Lee accounts of her using English flash cards, phrase books and a pocket workbook illustrated with stick-people figures. Lee sympathetically connects with the audience through his mother, and forces them to make a personal conclusion when he ends the article with a lingering question in the reader’s mind; what if they had seen her struggling? Would they have sat back and watched or stepped up to help?
Chang-Rae Lee’s Native Speaker expresses prominent themes of language and racial identity. Chang-Rae Lee focuses on the struggles that Asian Americans have to face and endure in American society. He illustrates and shows readers throughout the novel of what it really means to be native of America; that true nativity of a person does not simply entail the fact that they are from a certain place, but rather, the fluency of a language verifies one’s defense of where they are native. What is meant by possessing nativity of America would be one’s citizenship and legality of the country. Native Speaker suggests that if one looks different or has the slightest indication that one should have an accent, they will be viewed not as a native of America, but instead as an alien, outsider, and the like. Therefore, Asian Americans and other immigrants feel the need to mask their true identity and imitate the native language as an attempt to fit into the mold that makes up what people would define how a native of America is like. Throughout the novel, Henry Park attempts to mask his Korean accent in hopes to blend in as an American native. Chang-Rae Lee suggests that a person who appears to have an accent is automatically marked as someone who is not native to America. Language directly reveals where a person is native of and people can immediately identify one as an alien, immigrant, or simply, one who is not American. Asian Americans as well as other immigrants feel the need to try and hide their cultural identity in order to be deemed as a native of America in the eyes of others. Since one’s language gives away the place where one is native to, immigrants feel the need to attempt to mask their accents in hopes that they sound fluent ...
Ting-Toomey, Stella., & Chung, Leeva C. (2012). Understanding Intercultural Communication. Oxford University Press. 43, 159-160.
She exhibits articulate language with confidence even from the confines of her home. From California to Cambodia, there are many distinctive cultural variations with regards to mannerisms and interactions amongst people. In Cambodia, people rarely raise their voices and they greet others with their hands together and bow (Buckley 2017). As any tourist, such as myself, may know that in California much less the United States, we almost always speak with a boisterous attitude; and in most cases, a handshake or a hug is used almost throughout the entire nation as a greeting. These tacit mannerisms and lexicons, however, can be stylistically switched off (Alim and Smitherman 2012). Jolie’s awareness of Cambodia’s cultural setting prompts her to switch tongues in order to better connect with the Cambodian citizens. By switching tongues, she is able to identify more as a Cambodian citizen and less as a white American woman because “language is one of the most salient yet least understood means we have for creating our identities” (Alim and Smitherman 2012,
There are two forms of languages; public and private. The "private" language only spoken with family and close intimate relationships. The "public" language used in society, work, and school. Both of these help form two identities, that help us connect and communicate with one another. In the essay “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and also in the article “Speech Communities” by Paul Roberts ,we will see how both private and public language demonstrate how we view, and grow from each language.
The scene is always the same: the three of us sitting in a room together, talking. I see her from the corner of my eye, glancing for only a second or two, but always long enough to notice the look on her face, the expression I’ve become so painfully familiar with over the years. I am forced to turn away; the conversation resumes. She is a few feet from us. She hears everything, and understands nothing except what she can gather from the expressions on our faces, the tone of our voices. She pretends not to be bothered, smiling at us and interjecting random questions or comments in Chinese—a language I was raised to speak, a language I’ve slowly forgotten over the years, a language that is now mine only by blood. It is an earnest but usually futile attempt to break through the invisible barrier that separates her from us, and in spite of all her efforts to hide it, that sad, contem...
‘Mother Tongue’ is a short story written by Amy Tan for American literary magazine, The Threepenny Review (Shea, n.d.). This text raises ideas around the way we speak or use language throughout our daily lives, and what truly counts as ‘proper’ English.
Have you ever been to another country, state, or even city and realized how different your accent may be? Have you been asked to repeat a word or phrase that you may say differently? Sometimes we were asked for a good laugh, but that’s not always the case. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, both authors use personal narrative to demonstrate how their lives and identity are affected by their language and culture.
A person's language can often influence success and happiness. America is viewed as a melting pot for numerous different people and their respective languages. Language is so vital in our society that a person of diverse ethnic backgrounds can face many tribulations throughout their everyday life. Many renowned writers and other professionals have expressed their personal opinion about the value of words over the last few years. Chinese-American author Amy Tan is one of the many writers who understand the importance of the simplest words in the English language.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
Journal of Cultural Diversity. Vol. 22. No. of the syllables. 3, 2015, pp.
Tan was born to a pair of Chinese immigrants. Her mother understood English extremely well, but the English she spoke was “broken.”(36) Many people not familiar with her way of speaking found it very difficult to understand her. As a result of this, Tan would have to pretend to be her mother, and she called people up to yell at them while her mother stood behind her and prompted her. This caused Tan to be ashamed of her mother throughout her youth, but as she grew, she realized that the language she shares with her mother is a “language of intimacy” (36) that she even uses when speaking with her husband.
Geographical concepts have been traced back to ancient days, geography is defining as the scientific study of the location of people and activity across earth and reasons for their distribution. It asks where and why things are where they are. Geographers organizes materials by the places they are located, thus being they have concluded that what happens in one place affects what happens in another place and can further affect conditions in the near future. Like any other subject geography has its own language and knowledge for better understanding of its concepts. Thinking geographically means learning the language, we need both geographical vocabulary and grammar in order to do this. Geography has concepts that enables us to have geographical