Title: TongueTied in Singapore: A Language Policy for Tamil
1Tongue-Tied in Singapore A Language Policy for
Tamil?
- Harold F. Schiffman
- Dept. of South Asia Studies
- University of Pennsylvania
2Introduction Tamil situation in Singapore
- Lends itself ideally to the study of minority
language maintenance - Tamil community is small Indians constitute
around 7 of the population, of which Tamils
constitute 60. - History and demographics well known.
- Tamil community acknowledged to be facing a
number of crises Tamil as a home language not
being maintained by the better-educated.
3Role of Education
- Schooling seen as the mainstay of language
maintenance - Tamil Education sine qua non of language
maintenance efforts - Policy is failing, even with (now) compulsory
"mother tongue" instruction for Chinese, Malays
and Tamils. - Should be cause of general alarm in Singapore,
not just among Tamils.
4 Language Maintenance and the Sociology of
Language
- Tendency among Indian community to confuse corpus
planning and status planning - Tamils' traditional strategy is to emphasize
corpus planning, esp. purity - The housing policy in Singapore the real culprit?
5What kind of Tamil do people want?
- Problem of diglossia concern is always with the
corpus management of the literary language - The revolutionary zeal, evangelical, rhetorical
and oratorical skills of DMK mesmerized a
generation of Singapore Tamils. Fervor now gone. - The kind of Tamil taught has no communicative
value for younger people.
6 Some differences between Tamilnadu and Singapore
- Ambient language in Tamilnadu is Tamil
- Ambient language in Singapore is English
- Literacy in Tamilnadu primarily in Tamil
- Literacy in Singapore primarily in English
7Registers, varieties, levels Tamil consists of
at least five different kinds of language
- peeccu tamiR, spoken by all educated speakers
- Modern literary Tamil, the language of social
novels and short-stories - Older modern LT, the language of Pavanandi
(thirteenth century) - Medieval Tamil (the Alvars, TirukkuraL), and
- Sangat-tamiR, the oldest Tamil--cannot be
understood actively by anyone without the
commentaries and dictionaries.
8 Problems with Pedagogy
- The problem with irredentism language can never
be fully controlled - Not giving an inch may mean that that is all
Tamil will have an inch (no domains for the
language at all) - But domains exist today that never existed in the
pastTV, movies, videogames, the Internet - People do not value print literacy as much as
they once did.
9 Overt and Covert aspects of Policy
- At the highest level, the policy appears to be
pro-Tamil. - But the housing policy has a negative
consequences - Tamils are so dispersed that Tamil ceases to act
as an intra-ethnic language in the Tamil
community.
10Examples of different levels of vocabulary the
word for television
- 1. duurdarshan used, even in Tamilnadu, for
government television broadcasting originating in
New Delhi. Example itu duurdarshan. "This is
(the Indian government television broadcasting
system)". - 2. tolaikaaTci is used for television broadcasts
originating in Madras, and also term used for
television in Singapore. - 3. 'television', pronounced TelaviSan, is used by
many educated people, often to refer to the
concept of television, even when speaking Tamil,
e.g. TeleviSion vandadukku munnaale, rediyoo taan
irundadu. 'Before there was television, there was
only radio. - 4. TV, pronounced Tiivii is also used widely in
spoken Tamil. naan ungaLe Tiiviile paatteen 'I
saw you on TV'. - 5. paTapoTTi used by uneducated people, from
paTam 'picture' and poTTi 'box', modeled on
earlier folk work for radio.
11No need for Gratuitous Criticism.
- Everyone in the system doing the best job they
know how to do, with the best will and the best
of intentions. - However, when asked what people think the problem
with Tamil is, there is a certain amount of
blaming that starts up
12(But people criticize anyway)
- Those people are responsible
- It's the Ministry of Education
- it's the Curriculum Development people
- it's the teachers, they're too lax
- it's the parents, they don't speak with their
children - it's the children, they don't appreciate Tamil
culture.
13What is the purpose of teaching Tamil?
- Why do Singapore Tamils want Tamil to be Taught?
14 Students
- The purpose of maintaining Tamil language in
Singapore is to pass the O-level and A-level
tests administered by the MOE, in order to get 5
A-level passes and gain admission to university
(and never use Tamil again.)
15CIDS and MOE
- The purpose of the teaching of Tamil in Singapore
is to maintain 'pure grammatical' Tamil.
16Parents
- Parents' goal for Tamil is to have their children
have as much appreciation of Tamil language and
culture as they themselves have, but not more.
17Teachers
- The purpose of teaching Tamil in Singapore is to
provide jobs for teachers their goal is to
enable students to get 5 A-level passes and gain
admission to university.
18NIE Tamil Teacher Training
- The purpose of having Tamil taught in Singapore
is to make it necessary to train teachers to
teach Tamil
19Writers and Intellectuals
- The purpose of Tamil language maintenance in
Singapore is to provide job opportunities for
people who are otherwise unemployable.
20A More Optimistic View, and some Recommendations
- Introduce the notion that knowledge of a literary
language is necessarily connected to the
knowledge of a spoken language, and that the
literary language will not survive without
knowledge of the real mother-tongue
21Spoken Tamil is a rule-governed form of language
- Is actually quite regular, uniform, and
standardized. - Literacy in Tamil should be based on knowledge of
mother tongue students bring with them to school.
22Spoken Tamil is rule-governed
- ST should be treated as a resource instead of a
liability. - Decisions can be made about the best time to make
transition to the grammatical forms of LT, (P1 or
P4). - Teacher trainees need to be taught explicit
knowledge of structure and syntax of ST
23Creative Writing in Singapore
- Creative Writing is rare and hard to find
- Conscious effort to stimulate creative writing
for Tamils needed - Tamils have nothing to read that reflects their
experience - Tend to view their language as lacking in some
way
24Convene a study group?
- Representatives of the NIE
- Tamil Teachers
- Ministry Of Education
- Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore
- Recent former students, and parents.
- Agree to work toward concensus on what the goals
and purpose of Tamil maintenance might be.
25 Conclusion Egalitarianism and Equality
- Egalitarianism does not necessarily lead to equal
outcomes
26Problems with Egalitarianism
- Tamil is seen as having no economic value
- Excessive Purism defeats egalitarianism
- Very small minorities may see no future
- Younger generation does not revere the language
- Housing Policy is counterproductive to language
maintenance
27References
- Gopinathan S. and A. Mani. (1983). "Changes in
Tamil Language Acquisition and Usage in
Singapore A Case of Subtractive Bilingualism."
Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science Vol.
11(l) 104-116. - S. Gopinathan, Anne Pakir, Ho Wah Kam, and
Vanitha Saravanan (eds.) Language, society, and
education in Singapore issues and trends.
Singapore Times Academic Press, 1998.
28More references
- Saravanan, Vanithamani. Language Maintenance and
Language Shift in the Tamil-English Community.
Chapter 8, Gopinathan et al., 1998. - Schiffman, Harold F. (1994) "Standardization and
the Case of Spoken Tamil Where does
SingaporeTamil fit in?" Talk delivered at RELC,
March 16, 1994 - Schiffman, Harold F. (1999) A Reference Grammar
of Spoken Tamil. Cambridge Cambridge University
Press.
29Acknowledgements
- Research for this paper was carried out under a
Fulbright Research grant from the Council for
International Exchange of Scholars/USIA in early
1994. 1 would like to express my appreciation
also to the National Institute of Education,
Nanyang Technological University, Republic of
Singapore, for their welcoming assistance.