Fried Dumpling Noodle

Language policies have recently been the talk of the town. The recent speak mandarin campaign make use of the foreign children (or maybe are already Singaporeans) to spread the importance of speaking the much forgotten mother tongue. Likewise, Mr Brown did a podcast on the degeneration of dialects in Singapore and predicts a much hilarious situation with the lost of it.

Language has always been a key indicator of ethnicity and probability on a smaller extent nationality in certain countries. France is an example of using French to tie the people together despite ethnic differences.

I was ordering food with my friend like any other day in the high noon in school when suddenly over my shoulder came a voice of another student "Can I have Fried Dumpling Noodle?” For a moment, my mind went blank as if the deoxygenated blood had just rush to my head. I was truly alarm and perhaps the uncle tending the stall also tried to regain his composure. Why is this happening?

English language has been slowly becoming the dominant language in Singapore is definitely more prevalent in tertiary institution where it is the language of instruction. However, it should still not totally erode the ability of anyone in Singapore speaking their own mother tongue. If you look at the people all over the world and I would say almost all of them possessed the ability of speaking their own mother tongue. This was actually commented by my friend while personally I tend to believe this is another result of our paradox society.

English has always been to No 1 language stressed by the governing party which is a tool for creating social harmony among the different races. This is not just for communication but also implicitly implied none of the major races are biased.

While English help to mend to friction between societies, English continued to flourish with globalization, loosening the importance of the learning of mother tongue. The rapid globalization rendered that many Singaporean parents see English language as a useful tool to climb up the social ladder and also the increase the income as well.

One might noticed that despite the same globalization effect on the little red dot, the most drastic effect of language deterioration actually fell disproportionately on the Chinese. The Malays and Indians are generally capable of juggling with both languages. Hence, what is it actually the main culprit of the degradation of mandarin as a mother tongue?

One likely reason and perhaps a paradox problem lie on our education sector. For many years, Chinese has been given a leeway and many schools and students capitalize on the downgrading of Chinese education and reduced syllabus. I do not have many examples other then the Chinese B syllabus. Even with the lighter and easier syllabus, many school mates around me actually tend to openly discuss how bad their Chinese were. As compared to the other mother tongue, the lax of Chinese syllabus and decreasing requirement ironically by of education ministry have caused this downfall of mandarin in our paradox society.

I am still so puzzled by my fellow schoolmate just now for not knowing how to pronounce 云吞面 or maybe in this case 炸云吞面。 Unless you are a foreigner, you should be able to order the food at its original language. To me, ordering with the wrong language is similar to eating the food with wrong utensils. Maybe it’s too exaggerated but this is likely to grow into a worrying trend. Imagine this, "Uncle, one plate of white chicken rice.", "carrot cake fried with black soy sauce", "Coconut rice" instead of the original "白斩鸡一盘","chye thou kway 炒黑" and "Nasi Lemak."

It’s no secret that our language ability are losing at a fast rate. This might be the compensating loss to the English language and other "economical" subjects in school. However, language is a key indicator of ethnicity and sometimes nationality and policies should help to encourage retaining languages, even possibly Singlish. Policy makers should come to realise that all policies should be more integrated and run aligned. By introducing Speak Mandarin Campaign and still allowing slacken approach in teaching Chinese in School has no effect at all.