Englishes of South-East Asia – Colonial descendants?

Englishes of South-East Asia – Colonial Descendants?

South-East Asia covers a wide geographical area in which several culturally and linguistically distinct countries are found. These include the countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), an organization which was founded in 1967. The members of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. In this chapter, the situation with regard to the Englishes of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines will be described.

1.    Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei

a.       Malaysia

At the time of independence in 1957, English and Malay were the official languages of the new Malaysia, but the government was keen to improve the standing of the Malay population and started to give precedence to the Malay language, Bahasa Malaysia. In 1967, the Malaysian government chose a policy which is called as ‘positive discrimination’. It decreed that education, from primary through tertiary would in the main move to a Malay medium, although certain primary schools could teach in either Tamil of Chinese. All English medium schools were to be phased out.

The politician most associated with this policy was Dr. Mahathir Mohamed. One consequence of the policy to phase out English-medium instruction was that many tens of thousands of Malaysian especially ethnic Chinese went overseas to English-speaking countries to pursue their education there. Even though the policy tries to diminish English as medium instruction, 20 per cent of the population of Malaysia understand English and some 25 per cent of those who live in urban areas use it for some purposes in daily life. It remains a language of prestige and is important in the domains of government, business and the professions (David, 2000).

 

b.      Singapore

The history of English in Singapore and its roles today are quite different. By 1947, some 32 per cent of Singaporean school students were studying English-medium schools. The others were studying in Chinese-, Malay-, or Tamil-medium schools. Yet, in 1949, the Singapore government views Chinese-medium education as a possible breeding ground for young communist. Thus the Chinese-medium university was closed. Since 1987, English has virtually been the sole medium of education in Singapore at all levels. So, although English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil remain four national languages of Singapore, the language policy requires all its people to speak English and their own mother tongue. It is a bilingual language policy of ‘English + 1’.  There some consequences of this policy. First, it has encouraged the learning of Mandarin Chinese by Singaporean Chinese, the majority of whom are mother tongue speakers of the dialect of Fujien Province, Hokkien. A second consequence of the ‘English + 1’ policy has been the emergence of many students who are not perfectly literate in either English or their ‘+ 1’ language. In terms of reading and writing many students far prefer to use English for two major reasons. First, its scripts takes less time to learn English and across different media, including computer-mediated scripts, than in Chinese and certainly more than texts available in Malay and Tamil.

 

c.    Brunei

Brunei has a very small population of only about 300,000 people, the majority of whom are Brunei Malays. Brunei Malay is a distinct variety of Malay and students are also expected to learn standard Malay. With regard to English, the government introduced a bilingual education policy in 1985 which promotes the use of both standard Malay and English, but in different domains. Malay is the medium of instruction in the first years of primary school; in later primary and throughout secondary school Malay and English both act as media of instruction, with Malay being used to teach ‘humanities’ subjects and English used to teach ‘science’ type subjects (Jones, 1996).

 

2.    Linguistic Features

The English of Singapore and Malaysia has commonly been descried in terms of lectal continuum (Plat and Weber, 1980) which ranges from basilect, through mesolect to acrolect. Acrolect is somehow closer to a standard and thus better than the basilect.

The linguistic features described below represent the variety spoken by well-educated people in relatively formal contexts.

a.       Phonology

The information here draws heavily on Brown and Deterding (2005: 7-14):

Ø  Singaporean English does not distinguish between pairs of vowels that are distinct phonemes in RP. The pairs of vowel sounds /I/ and /i:/, /α:/ and /Λ/, both  vowels are short and pronounced more or less the same. For example the vowel sounds in ‘scenic’ are pronounced the same as in /sInIk/.

Ø  With regard to consonant sounds /p/ and /b/, /t/ and /d/, /k/ and /g/ etc may be pronounced the same especially when in final position.

Ø  At the level of the word, Singaporean English may either give each syllable equal stress or when one syllable is stressed, the stress may be on a different syllable from that stressed in RP.

Ø  Singaporean English is non-rhotic while Malaysian speakers sound post-vocalic /r/ in certain contexts.

Ø  In terms of its international intelligibility, relatively formal Singaporean English has proved to be extremely intelligible to speakers of other varieties English and to people for whom English is not a first language.

 

b.      Lexis

§  Malay phrases

Malay phrase	Meaning
Gotong-royong	Communal co-operation
Lessen terbang	Flying licence
Makan	Food
Kecil makan	Little food
Adat	Traditional law
Kampong	Traditional Malay village
Bomoh	A traditional Malay medicine man
Amok	crazy
Barang	Luggage
Dadah	Drug addicted

§  Semantic shift on transfer into English

Semantic Shift	Examples
Narrowed semantic range	Bumiputra – Literally ‘son of the soil’, but has now come to refer to ethnics Malay and become a key word in Malay politics.
Broadened semantic range	Rakyat – the original meaning is ethnic rural Malays, but now its meaning has become Malaysian people in general.
Semantic shift is also evident when English words become part of bruneian English or Brunei Malay.	confident – means over confident or arrogant (negative connotation).   proud – means haughty or sombong (negative connotation).
Semantic shift also evident in English words	If you offer to send someone to the airport, means you are offering to accompany them there   Crocodile – refers to a womaniser and also buaya
Semantic shift also occurs in certain ordinate and superordinate nouns.	Christian –  it is a superordinate term in British English and refers to all followers of the christian religion, while it is ordinate term in Singaporean English and refers to Protestants (Deterding, 2000). Alphabet – in English, it refers to the whole system of letters, while in Singaporean English, it refers to any of them, the word ‘alphabet’ is made up of 8 alphabets.
The way of different religions refers to special prayer days in English by David and Young (2002: 172)	9th Moon 24th Day’ (female Chinese Buddhist)   The 6th day prayers will be held at Wada Gurdwara Sahib on 2nd September 2000 between 3pm and 5pm (male Punjabi Sikh)

 

c.       Grammar

Aspects	Examples
Colloquial Singaporean English	You have pen or not? Mortality rate is high, and  Genneral Secretary is William Wan
Tendency to use invinitive verb phrase where gerund might be used	I have great pleasure to report on...., and  I take pride to announce....
The shift of uncountable nouns to countables	chalks, luggages, sceneries, and slangs, & information
The invariant tag questions	is it? and isn’t it? – I am beautiful, isn’t it?
Aspect marker	Already – “my father already pass away”, and “You finish makan already”
Marking of past tense form	When speaker descibed single action, the past tense was marked over 90% of the time (e.g. I left for  Hong Kong last night), but when speaker describes habitual action, the past tense was never marked (e.g. Whenever he leaves the light on, I got an angry)
Pro-drop feature – allow for no noun to be in subject position.	*Modern Standard Chinese for ‘it’s raining’ is ‘xia you/down rain’ *Hurt girlfriend with lighted butt – it means ‘her boyfriend hurt his girlfriend with lighted butt’
Preference of Singaporean English for paratactic over hypotactic constructions/paralel conjunctions.	*Though it may not be a direct translation, but it is more acceptable in English
The use of certain particles such as ‘lah’ in Singapore, Malay, & Brunei	*I didn’t buy dress lah. *For Chinese New Year, we make jam tarts, jelly, love-letters, all lah. *But still, try lah.

 

d.      Code-mixing

In multilingual countries, the use of code-mixing and code-switching are common and natural.

§  Code-mixing is the use of more than one language or variety intra-sententially in the same utterance or sentence).

§  Code-switching is the use of different languages or varieties inter sententially

Some scholars and self-appointed guardians of linguistic morality view both code-mixing and code-switching as a sign of inguistic poverty or deficiency and rail against it. Code-mixed English Malay has been given the negative term bahasa rojak. Rojak is a type of Indonesian salad dish, so bahasa rojak means mixed language. Its use is frequently condemned in the local media (McLellan, 2005: 45). Code-mixed variety is some way inferior to a pure one which formed with grammatical framework and lexical items.

But McLellan has shown that code-mixing is systematic. Both code-mixed and code-switched text are linguistically sophisticated, far from being deficient. He has also convincingly argued that many of the code-mixed text show a more or less equal amount of grammar and lexis from both languages. In order to produce text below, the user must be fluent in both English and Malay and aso know how to combine them to create a third code.

·         Frankly speaking, baiktah jangan dibali barang2 yang kena auction atu, bukannya apa, if we buy them, in a way, we are helping those who have used buit ketani for their personal interest to pay for their debts. Mana tia yang dulu the famous 7 org atu. Inda kedengaran. Has the trial started? it’s so sad, isn’t it, how our beloved country jadi cemani .

·         As for me, Bruclass ani my mind opener walaupun ada masanya idea atu inda sehati dengan contributors. I have also been proud meliat idea-idea yang diusulkan menunjukkan anak2 Berunai ani pintar dan berfikiran. Mungkin cara penyampaian seseorang atu berbeda and ada mesanya tunggang terbalik, panjang (like me) and payah kan dicomprehend, but at the end of the day. It’s one opportunity untuk diorang meluahkan isi hati demi kepentingan Negara. Samada diterima atau inda atu terserahlah. (McLellan: 2005:270)

In his study, McLellan found that the text of this type co-existed with monolingual Malay and monolingual English text.  These code-mixed texts constitute a systematic third code or variety and the type of exemplified above is complimentary, perhaps as interdependent (2005:177).

Furthermore, hashim (2002:86) illustrate a different type of code-switching (different level of formality in English) with the excerp from a  short story “everything’s arranged”, by the Malaysian writer Siew Yue Killingsley.

§  ‘Sitting in the lounge, watching the distracting and excited girls rushing by with packed cases, longing to go home to some decent food, rukumani asked Devanagayam, “this time you think you can write or not? Can send to Amy’s house what. My mother likes her mother. I can easily go there to get your letters. But I think better you don’t put my name outside. Can just put “Miss Amy Wong”. She knows your writing and won’t open.’

Based on the three examples above, the role of English in the three countries is different. English is used in a wide variety of domain and by different types of people in all three. In the context of Malaysia, feature of Malaysian English are important in establishing national identity. In the context of Brunei, they claim that they have some control over English, but English has no control over them.

In any multilingual and multicultural society, there will always be intense grammar over the role of specific language. In recent study on the relationship between language and identity. Lee investigate three well-educated Malaysian women of different ethnic backgrounds and found wide different opinion of them.

§  The Malaysian Tamil asserted that it was essential for her to know Tamil in order to appreciate her cultural heritage

§  The strait Chinese felt that languages were just assets in one’s repertoire of skills and the more one knows the better.

§  An ethnic Chinese who speak Hainanese and Cantonese, but not mandarin, deliberately choose to speak English at all times when in the presence of Mandarin-speaking Chinese.

Lee state that we must teach tolerance, aware of the danger of ethnocentrism, teach an appreciation of our cultural diversity, and empathy for others, no matter what tongue we speak, alien or mother (2004:124)

 

 

3.      The Philippines 

In discussing the development of new English variety in Philippine, we will deal with the linguistic background and colonial history of this country.  Philippine has experienced two colonial masters. It was a colony of Spain and America (1895). Within 3 years of coming under American control, 7 schools were opened in Manila. During the American colonial period, English was systematically promoted as the language that will “civilize” the Filipinos. 6 years after the beginning of American rule, English-medium education was introduced, with English being the medium of instruction for all schools. At the time of independence (1946) its colonial history was evident in the establishment of both English and Spanish as national languages, along with the local language Tagalog (Filipino). In 1974, the Philippines’ government introduced policy of bilingual education. In 1901, only very few people speak in English. However, by the 1980 census, 64.5 per cent of population claimed to be able to speak English.

Related to the use of English in Philippine, Thompson believes that the future of English is bleak. The argument is that English is no longer regarded as useful for socio-economic advancement and once an intellectual version of Filipino is accepted for a wide variety of scientific, technical, and professional purposes, English will die out except among a select view. However, the Pilipino scholars have different point of view. Gonzales (1997) predicts that English will not only continue but actually increase for two reasons. First, Filipino academics will have to continue to rely on American sources for their scholarship and second as English is so useful for the export of human resources. In addition, another possible reason for the increased use of English in Philippines is the role that English plays as a lingua franca in ASEAN. Gonzales (1997) also concludes that the ‘revivication’ of English will be represented by Filipino English which will be marked by an attenuated phonological system, ‘Filipinisms’ and local collocational rules, and fully restructured system of tense, aspect and articles.

 

4.      Linguistic Features of Philippine English

a.       Phonology

Gonzales (1997) argues that “almost from the beginning, Filipinos learn English from Filipinos and the seeds of what we now call Philippine English began”. Certain phonological features have been identified for Philippine English, many of which occur in other varieties. McArthur (2002) states that PE is rhotic and has a tendency towards syllable-timing. There is no phonemic distinction between the /I/ and /i:/ or between /Ʊ/ and /u:/ and the diphthong /OƱ/ is sounded as /ɔ:/. 

b.       Lexis

The vocabulary of PE derives from a range of phenomena including semantic and part-of-speech shift, loan translations, coinages and creative innovations, compounds and hybrids. The adoption of certain brand names to refer to the articles in general is one example of semantic shift. For instance “pampers” refers to disposable nappies in general. Besides the semantic shift, we can also see the other examples as the following:

The examples of part-of-speech shifts	"Sorry I'm late, it was so traffic" "Why are you so high-blood again? What's upsetting you?"
The example of coinages	Cockfighter: someone who raises cockes for cockfighting.
The example of compounds	Captain ball: team captain
The example of hybrids (compound is formed of words from different languages	Buco juice: the juice of a young coconut

 

c.       Grammar 

Philippine English is restructuring the tense and aspect systems. Certain tenses are thus used in distinctive contexts. PE speakers use the present perfect where other varieties would use the past simple (e.g. I have seen her yesterday), the past perfect is often used where others might use a present perfect or past simple (e.g. 'Have some pupils tell they class what they had observed'), present continuous is used for habitual actions (e.g. He is going to school regularly).

Word order can also be distinctive as Philippine English favours a "verb-adverb-object". The interrogative order is retained in imperatives.

Bautista then tries to find out whether or not the features occurred in other varieties of English. First, she found that the use of "one of the + N (singular)" phrase is also common in other varieties of English. Second, the feature of the word "majority" without preceding article also occurs more frequently in Indian English. Third, the usage of the word "wherein" did prove to be distinctive and was far more frequently used in PE than in any other variety, especially in spoken PE. In addition, the Pilipino also has particle "na".

Such studies can therefore help determine which features are shared across varieties - and thus possibly caused by their transfer from parameter settings in universal grammar - and which features are specific and thus possibly caused by their transfer from just one language.

5.       Literature in PE

The Philippines already had a flourishing by the time the Americans arrived. However, it was not taught in the colonial classroom. English remained the sole language of public school until 1940 and the literary canon taught in the schools was exclusively colonial. This led to an appreciation of "Western" writing and a rejection of traditional Filipino fine writing. Some Filipino writers currently writing in English appear to feel that the English they write in must be correct in this sense of being crisp, sharp, and economical.

In the forum of writers in 1993, it is found that several participants do not want to write "Filipinisms". It can be because many Filipino writers are teachers who conscious of correct classroom English. Another participant believes that English he used was distinctively Filipino. In similar, F.Sionil Jones asks the American editor to correct the grammar or anything but ask the editor not to make Jose less a Filipino. However, it is hard to understand how correcting the grammar or everything would result in anything other than making the authors "less a Filipino".

This case then becomes a reminder that along with the complexity over the possible causes of the linguistic features of varieties of English, the extent to which these varieties are considered acceptable and appropriate by their own speakers is as varied as the socio-cultural and linguistic contexts in which they have developed.