Gone Bananas?

{ September 18, 2009 @ 2:20 PM } · { Perceptions }

                            

      To have successful verbal communications with others, one needs to equipped oneself with the skills of using language to express himself/herself. The more types of languages you know, the better it will be for you to communicate with different groups and societies. This is a common knowledge for all but it has also brought to the attention of the local media on Singaporean teens. It was said that these teenagers are increasingly turning themselves into “Bananas” (in this case, this term describes about the Chinese youths here in Singapore).

  So what is this “banana” thing? I’m sure most of you have heard about the endless news on how to make our Mother Tongue classes less boring and more enjoyable. This is because our society has deemed us as westernised youths (similar to white people) with “yellow” skin on the surface which is equilavent to bananas. In short, we tend to avoid using our Mother tongue language in our daily lives and this has led to further weakening in our skills.  

Make mother tongue fun, ST 18/9/09 (An attempt by MOE to make the classes more interesting) 

  But is this really true? Are we, the youths of Singapore, turning our backs against the language that holds our very roots? Or are we, in the case of the Miss Singapore Universe accident, a group of youths who cannot speak proper English either? 

  As a student who is currently in an English-medium faculty but comes from a Chinese-speaking family, I would definitely beg to differ with the previous view. This is because I am lucky enough to have the exposure of the two main languages in my everyday life. Thus, I am able to communicate with different groups of people quite well.

 However, this cannot be say for the rest of the teens in Singapore. Many of them do not have the chance of practicing their own Mother Tongue  as frequently as I do. This maybe due to the large emphasis placed on the English Language both at home and in school. Moreover, Western entertainment media forms are more popular among teenagers and the English Language is a more convenient  form of language to communicate with people of different races. Thus, this has caused a phenomenon of young Singaporeans prefering to speak English rather than their own Mother Tongue. 

  On the other hand, a worrying trend has appeared in these recent years. The news has reported that our English standards are dropping and it has catch the attention of the public especially after the “famous” English pronounciation blundders in an interview made by our very own Miss World, Ris Low.  Let’s see how we fare (with our Miss World) against other people (European beauty queens):

           

At this rate, I guess we will have a major problem in competing with others in this globalised world in future just because we  speak our own Singlish unknowingly, even under formal circumstances such as interviews.

However, I do not have any complaints on having our very unique style of speaking English (Singlish). In fact, I am proud of it. Singlish is a language that brings out our own identity as Singaporeans, something that we can relate to within a particular society that limits only to truly Singaporeans. It is something that is similar to other countries with their accents.

At the end of the day, we come back to the question of “ Have we gone bananas?” I am not sure either as in this very complicated society of ours, we are exposed to many kinds of languages. It is going to be really hard for anyone to find a balance between all of them. My guess is that we should be called as plates of rojak instead, a dish that has various ingredients and flavours in it.

Rojak, anyone?

                             

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