Tongue-Tied in Singapore: A Language Policy for Tamil?

1
Tongue-Tied in Singapore A Language Policy for
Tamil?

• Harold F. Schiffman
• Dept. of South Asia Studies
• University of Pennsylvania

2
Introduction 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.

3
Role 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?

5
What 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

7
Registers, 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.

10
Examples 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.

11
No 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.

13
What 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.)

15
CIDS and MOE

• The purpose of the teaching of Tamil in Singapore
  is to maintain 'pure grammatical' Tamil.

16
Parents

• 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.

17
Teachers

• 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.

18
NIE Tamil Teacher Training

• The purpose of having Tamil taught in Singapore
  is to make it necessary to train teachers to
  teach Tamil

19
Writers and Intellectuals

• The purpose of Tamil language maintenance in
  Singapore is to provide job opportunities for
  people who are otherwise unemployable.

20
A 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

21
Spoken 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.

22
Spoken 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

23
Creative 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

24
Convene 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

26
Problems 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

27
References

• 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.

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More 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.

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Acknowledgements

• 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.