Follow us on Telegram for the latest updates: https://t.me/mothershipsg

MOTHERSHIP ESSAY COMPETITION: What does it mean to "sound local" or "speak like a local" in Singapore?

In June, Mothership launched our inaugural essay competition. Over the course of one month, we received around 300 submissions from readers of different ages and backgrounds. 

20-year-old Muhamad Iqbal bin Mohd Amer was jointly awarded third place with Khine Zin Htet, receiving a prize of S$200.

By Muhamad Iqbal

There was once a period in Singapore where the underlying point of commonality between him and her was the strain of their backs and the sweat that poured onto the floor. Neither in speech nor in the colour of their skin were they the same.

The Indian coolie and Chinese samsui woman, different as they could be, coming from lands far away, had their heads down, always busied with work.

To be local then was to be an amorphous worker amongst many, a fabricated mishmash labour force held loosely by the common interest of survival — in being so, we understood each other through the natural bastardisation of the Colonial tongue for our own purpose, our own very pidgin language.

To be local now is to be an amorphous worker amongst many, a fabricated mishmash labour force held loosely by the rhetoric of survival — in being so, we are persuaded against the proliferation of our beloved creole language in favour of a standardised language.

Grew up a "Coconut"

Growing up, I was always in the company of my Chinese countrymen.

Rarely hearing anyone speak the tongue of my forefathers, my formative years were spent therefore in learning a language whose script was as foreign as how my own mother tongue sounds. That perhaps misconstrued my own affinity for my racial identity.

There is much talk about a Banana, a Chinese person wholly incapable of conversational Mandarin (let us not even mention of the complete inability to speak dialect), but yet there is little to no mention of a Coconut—when a Malay or an Indian person exhibits similar traits akin to a Banana.

Shouldn’t they too be bestowed a name of shame like everyone else? And so I grew up being a Coconut, missing out on peers speaking the same tongue as my blood did.

Being a Coconut, I struggled in formal tests. I could not distinguish between the different imbuhan, rarely nailing the different penjodoh bilangan for their respective nouns, and all peribahasa were as abstract concepts as algebra is in mathematics.

Harder still to befriend those who spoke the very same tongue as I am supposed to. Alienation. That was what a freak of a person I ended up being.

The myriad of languages learnt meant that I could understand simple Chinese sentences, a proficiency in English like any other primary school kid, and a complete disability in Malay.

Bahasa Baku and Bahasa Pasar

Despite earnest attempts throughout the 11 years of formal education in trying to improve my mother tongue, nothing came out of it. I was left completely disillusioned with learning languages, much so my own very tongue.

Often I was confused between the language being taught in schools and the language spoken.

You see, the Malay language is caught in an awkward position. On one hand you have what is dubbed Bahasa Baku or standard language, and on the other you have Bahasa Pasar or lingua franca.

The natural progression would be as such for a Malay learner: you would have to go through several years of education learning the basic foundational blocks of the language, everyday experience would supplement the special rules in which the foundational blocks do not account for, and then you would finally be able to speak in confident fluency.

Therein lies an obstacle in reality, a common reality for the “M” and “I” of our national CMIO model — population spread.

We are hard pressed to find the very people that share the same tongue as we go about our day to day life, participating in the very same economic activities that support the lives of our family and the community at large.

For when we go to the pasar to buy sayur-sayur, to buy tau huay for breakfast, it is not the company of our fellow native tongues that we find ourselves.

Instead, with our national brethren we communicate possibly in bahasa pasar if the towkay is of the older generation, and in Singlish if they are the latest breed continuing the dying legacy.

Learnt the value of being understood

I am the product of a highly efficient education system, where a strong command of the English language is prized.

So far removed from society, so insular on how things really are, I saw no need to learn how to speak Malay after seeing marginal returns grades-wise. I also saw little reason to embrace Singlish, viewing it as antithetical to “good English”.

In short, I was in an ivory tower, only the concerns of academic life were all I knew. Things changed as I transitioned away from being simply just a student, into a member of Singaporean society in its fullest sense.

Spending big chunks of my time mingling with different people in National Service, participating within my local pasar with my dollar votes in attempts to tide them through the economic woes of Covid-19 and consequent multiple lockdowns, taught me one simple lesson: the value of being understood far outweighs anything else.

Tension between standardised language and spoken language

The central conflict, it appears, lies solely within the tensions between a standardised form of a language and its living, breathing counterpart.

In pursuing standardisation, we are ensuring a commonly upheld standard to which dissemination of information happens much more rapidly given its unique advantage of a relatively shorter gestation period. How else could we teach languages to our future generation?

As a nation, we have long ago agreed on the benefits of a highly structured, highly efficient education system — that is the biggest reason why the status quo is as such, with little public discourse regarding the merits and faults of our education system.

Consequently, this is a hyper-reality superimposed onto the messy reality that is the ethnic makeup of Singapore. When children are exposed to conflicting messages of “that is improper grammar” and “huh, I cannot understand lah”, it is perhaps not a wonder why popular sentiments regarding both languages are highly polarised.

On one hand, official zealots preach the gospels of prescriptivism whereas on the other hand, the disillusioned majority march on with pride what they have collectively created through years of mutual hardships.

Is there really no middle ground?

As long as I can be understood, does it matter my form of language?

Perhaps to sound local is to be keenly aware of this tension, to know that we must not fall for the dichotomy of standard or lingua franca.

That in donning our work clothes, we transition to a speech so foreign in day-to-day life; that in donning our everyday clothes, we transition to a speech so comforting in day-to-day life.

That we must not fall for any beguiling trick that convinces us to trade in our ability to communicate and understand each other comfortably, that we have much more to lose than simply just a central tenet of our cultural identity.

That to lose our dearly beloved pidgin is tantamount to surrendering our ability to understand each other on an intimate day-to-day basis.

So long as I can be understood by my Indian neighbour, so long as I can be understood by the Chinese towkay I go to for my weekend breakfasts, so long as I can be understood by my Malay barber — does it really matter in what form of a language I speak in?

I imagine the tired Indian coolie and the tired Chinese samsui woman sitting not too far from each other by the Singapore River long before I was born. Before retiring away to their quarters, they asked each other what they would be having for dinner in pidgin. Is that not what a Singaporean is?

Read our other essay competition winners here:

1st place:

2nd place: 

3rd place (tied with Muhamad Iqbal):

Top photo courtesy of Muhamad Iqbal bin Mohd Amer.