Myth 1: Singaporeans are
not native speakers of English
Adam Brown
This claim is often made by some Singaporeans as apology for the
nature of their variety of English and their general proficiency.
The implication is that Singaporeans do not speak English well
because they do not have the advantage of being native speakers of
the language.
In order to examine this claim, it
is necessary to explore the term native speaker. It is a
term which many people use in everyday discourse, but which few
people, when pressed, would be able to give a rigorous definition
for. But even linguists find this a difficult term to define. The
definitions used in this chapter come from Richard et al's (1985)
Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics.
Native language, first language and mother
tongue
A native speaker is defined as 'a person considered as a speaker
of his or her native language' (p 188). This begs the question,
considered by whom?: by the person him- or herself, or by others?
Leaving this issue aside (but it is not a trivial question), we
need to define native language.
A native language is '(usually)
the language which a person acquires in early childhood because it
is spoken in the family and/or it is the language of the country
where he or she is living' (p 188). By these criteria, many
Singaporeans are native speakers of English. Increasingly,
Singaporeans are acquiring English in early childhood. The national
census of 2000 shows that 23% of the population report that English
is the most frequently spoken language in the home. It is certainly
a language of the country - one of the four official languages
alongside Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
'Sometimes, this term [native
language] is used synonymously with first language'
(p 188). We therefore need to define first language. A
first language is '(generally) a person's mother tongue or the
language acquired first' (p 106). And now we have another term that
needs definition: mother tongue. In fact, Richards et al
equate the three (native language, first language
and mother tongue), but with some hedging
(usually, sometimes, generally, often). The abbreviation
L1 is often used for first language, although, if this is taken to
be synonymous with native language and mother tongue, it ought to
be usable as an abbreviation of these too.
Further complications arise:
The native language is often the first language a child acquires
but there are exceptions. Children may, for instance, first acquire
some knowledge of another language from a nurse or an older
relative and only later on acquire a second one which they consider
their native language. (p 188)
A similar caveat is contained in the definition of first
language:
In multilingual communities, however, where a child may
gradually shift from the main use of one language to the main use
of another (eg because of the influence of a school language),
first language may refer to the language the child
feels most comfortable using. (p 106)
That is, the word first in the phrase first
language may refer to first in chronological order of
acquisition, or first in terms of proficiency and importance.
By now, it should be obvious to
the reader that these terms are not a clear-cut as they may appear
at first glance. For this reason, writers have proposed differing
terms for the status of a language in a particular situation.
English as a native, second and foreign
language
A traditional division in the applied linguistics circle is
between English as a native, second or foreign language (ENL, ESL,
EFL). Unfortunately, there is a distinction between the use of
these terms in Britain and America. In America, both foreign
language and second language are often used
to refer to a language which 'is usually studied either for
communication with foreigner who speak the language, or for reading
printed materials in the language' (p 108). In Britain, however, a
distinction is maintained.
A foreign language is a language which is taught as a school
subject but which is not used as a medium of instruction in schools
nor as a language of communication within a country (eg in
government, business, or industry). ...A second language is a
language which is widely used as a medium of communication (eg in
education and government) and which is usually used alongside
another language or languages. (p 108)
France, Japan and China are cited as EFL countries, while Fiji,
Singapore and Nigeria are called ESL countries.
You may have noticed a subtle
shift in the entity being describe as ENL/ESL/EFL. This was clear
in the definition for the term native speaker which
cited both 'the language of the country'. That is, do these terms
refer to the languages spoken by people, or rather in contexts
(countries)? It is the second criterion (the use of a language in a
country) that is included in the definition of ESL. However, in the
case of ENL, it is not clear. There are, for example, many speakers
in ENL countries (the USA, UK, Australia, etc) who do not speak
English natively (eg Hispanics in the USA).
The three circles
A similar model, proposed by Kachru (1992; see McArthur 1998),
uses three circles to group countries as shown in Figure 1.1. The
inner circle comprises the world's primary native-speaking
communities (the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand),
sometimes also called Old Englishes. The outer circle
contains post-colonial English-speaking communities (also called
New Englishes), and includes Singapore. Finally the outer
circle, which is the largest of the three, comprises the rest of
the world.
Further considerations
Two other terms are often encountered:
nativised and indigenised. These are used to
refer to outer circle situations where English is not the
historical language of the country, but where it is widely used in
official contexts, and where a local variety of the language has
become established and has gained recognition. There are people who
are 'native' speakers of this historically 'non-native'
variety.
A further complication arises from
the fact that, in Singaporean educational circles, mother
tongue is often used synonymously with second
language to refer to Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. That is,
the medium of school education is English, and therefore all school
students receive instruction in English and need to be proficient
in it for their other subjects. However, the bilingual policy means
that all students must also take another language, known as the
mother tongue, but also often called the second language (English
being the first). The mother tongue is taken to follow from the
student's paternal ethnicity, ie Chinese students take Mandarin,
Malay students take Malay, and Indian students take Tamil. In other
words, the mother tongue is in fact the father's native language.
Any departure from this scheme requires permission from the
authorities.
Richards et al mention another
feature which might be taken as a criterion for native speaker
status: 'In generative transformational grammar, the intuition of a
native speaker about the structure of his or her language is one
basis for establishing or confirming the rules of the grammar' (p
188). Nowadays, many linguists would argue with this point of view.
The advent of large computer corpora for linguistic analysis,
especially for the compiling of dictionaries, has in fact shown
that many of the intuitions that native speakers hold about their
language are not borne out by observed facts. That is, we think we
behave in a certain way in our native language but in fact our
intuitions may be biased by stereotypes and we actually behave in
rather different ways.
If we accept that intuitions can
be taken as a mark of native speaker status, then it has to be said
that few Singaporeans seem to have strong intuitions about English.
Beliefs about English seem to be influenced heavily by the kind of
myths that this book attempts to investigate and dispel. And, as we
say in several places in this book, those beliefs are often
perpetuated by teachers, and are often wide of the mark.
Learners
A final term which might be discussed before we close this
chapter is learner. This word may be somewhat ambiguous.
Learners might be though of as people who learn things because they
are taught them. In this sense, Singaporeans are certainly
learners, since English is a school subject for everyone. However,
many Singaporeans feel unhappy acknowledging that they are learners
of English. The second sense is that people learn things because
they did not know them before. In this sense, I am as much a
learner of English as anyone else. I regularly consult dictionaries
such as the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced
Learners and Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary, and find out things that I was not aware of or not
sure of before. It seems incongruous that many Singaporeans are
unwilling to call themselves learners of English, while I am.
Singapore is a unique linguistic
situation. Several interesting questions about the definition of
terms follow from all the above discussion.
There are no easy answers to these questions (also see Foley
2001).
Conclusion
There are many Singaporeans who only speak English (20% of
Chinese, 3% of Malays and 22% of Indians, according to the 2000
census), or who speak English fluently but no other language with
the same fluency. English is widespread in Singapore throughout the
whole population. It should be clear from the preceding discussion
that my personal attitude is that such monolingual people in
Singapore can be called native speakers. Otherwise, we have the
incongruous situation of monolingual speakers without any native
language.
Readers may object that such
people are monolingual in Singapore English, not in
standard international English. However, this is not a valid
argument, as there are many native speakers in the USA, UK, etc who
do not command a standard internation variety of English. A
Singapore English speaker is, in this respect, no different from a
speaker from, say, Newcastle - fluent and monolingual in one
(albeit non-standard) variety of English. In short, native.