|
Go back to "interesting" section.
A friend from Singapore provided this brief
explanation: Hello..
Sorry for this late thing. Was busy with my reports and all.. and sorry,
again as I tend to get and probe deep into a certain topic when initiated.
Pseudo-Deep.
Haa!
So moving on.. hum. What, exactly, or how much do you know about the
Singlish movement? :)
haha. Prolly I could enlighten you a little here - basically Singlish is a
form of a Slang as per spoken and/or adopted by Singaporeans here, mostly.
You do
know Singapore is, a diversified country, where there's no exactly one sense
of identity (Unlike the UK - English-English and Aussie - Aussie-English,
yes?). It's pretty much jumbled up here. 4 main races. With that comes
different forms of speech, customs, cultures.. and with that too, comes
different forms of styles we've adopted from each heritage.
Mix them all together - and you'd get a hybrid of speech forms, too. It's
like the Aussie slang, for instance.. "mate, howdy, bla bla bla.." It's our
sense
of identity, in a way.
But but.. the [government], however, does not recognize this as something
that can be used in the macro or global level - which reasonable man of the
world can
understand a form of speech, 'accented' by the various other forms.. i.e.
It's just like mixing and playing around with an Anglo-Chinese/Malay/Indian/Eura
talk. You wouldn't catch no ball.
[Bottom line] is.. we use those in your everyday lives. But [government], on
the other hand.. although how much they'd be in support of the Singlish
movement, they
discourage us from using Singlish outside Singapore.
And.. no. We DO take up our mother tongue language in school.. ONLY as a
second language (with [exception] for some top, elite Chinese schools - they
do both English and Chinese as their first language. Mandatory for them..
[elitists], you'd say..)
Goodness gracious.. sorry for this [lengthy] bullshit. And I'm quite
surprised they'd be stripping off all non-[English] medium in [schools]
there in the States? -
[what's] the [government] and/or the nation's [stance] for that? - In
support or otherwise?
and hey - for MORE on [Singlish].. do login to:
www.talkingcock.com
:)
cheers dude
L***
Here is my explanation to my friend about what's
going on in the US:
Hey,
...As for your e-mail, I think I got a good idea about the whole Singlish
situation now. In the United States, we are dissolving a lot of the old
bilingual programs, because some people that they aren't doing a good job in
teaching students English fast enough. When kids from other countries
immigrate to the US, they are placed in a bilingual English class if needed.
They usually stay there for 1 to 3 years until they can begin to learn
English on the same level as other students. In many states, they have
either shortened that period to 1 year or dismantled the system entirely.
A new movement called English Immersion has pissed off a lot of people,
particularly Asians and Pacific Islanders, because it's very insensitive to
the needs of non-English speaking students. It restricts the bilingual
classes to 1 year and then forces students to go to standard/normal English
whether they are ready or not. You can understand how that is a big problem,
right? This is worse than what they had previously done in the past, because
the state governments have set up new laws that punish schools and teachers
if they do not obey the rules for English Immersion. That means that if they
keep a student in bilingual classes longer than 1 year, the school may be
fined up to $10,000 USD, because they broke the law. Isn't that crazy?
None of the new laws even addresses whether or not these students will learn
English or not. I guess they will just wait until a few years later and then
find out that English Immersion has more negative effects than what they
expected.
Sounds kind of messed up, right? Of course, this is all a type of
institutional racism and classism that is directed towards immigrants, of
which Asians and Pacific Islanders make up a large part of. I know some
people in Singapore might think that the US is a lot better place than
countries in Asia, but they don't know about all the racism that goes on,
much of which the national government (and our president) does not try to
fight. That's why there are so many community groups and organizations that
have to fight for the Asian and Pacific Islander communities.
Of course, that doesn't mean that you couldn't visit the US anytime soon,
hehe.. But it's always good to know the stuff that doesn't get advertised,
especially the bad stuff.
|
