Thoughts on bilingualism from forum letters

I confess ... the recent spate of forum letters presenting differing views on bilingualism of Chinese Singaporeans ... has me somewhat bewildered.

As I wrote in an earlier blog on school bullies, I came to Singapore as a child without knowing a single English word and very little Mandarin.  I was put in a lower-primary class well after the term started, and where I was 1 year older than all other students.  My classmates took advantage of me and one even wrote in my Chinese exercise book the Chinese characters for "teacher king eight egg" (transliterate that into 5 Chinese characters and you'd know what I mean).

For a long time, I begged to return to where I came from, I pored through my comics and books we brought to Singapore which I could read, and I watched Malay programmes which at least I could understand.

Eventually though, through a lot of factors, including daily extra-curricular writing regime under parental supervision, reading, and watching TV series, I picked up both English and Mandarin, enough to score As in exams by the end of the second year I was in Singapore.

I credit the "Famous Five" TV series for getting me started to read Enid Blyton, and the student magazine "Young Generation" and 连环图 for keeping Chinese reading going ... oh, and the weekly TV magazine with synopsis of the wuxia serials.

My command of Mandarin never rose to be the same level of my proficiency in English, but I never had to worry.  There was a whole world of Chinese literature from Journey to the West to Jinyong's novels to keep me going.  Though my brothers did not do as well as I did in Chinese language exams, passing was never a problem for them either.

It was in secondary school that I was surprised to learn that some of my schoolmates who aced all other subjects with their eyes closed could come close to flunking Chinese.  I noted they all have one thing in common - English was the *only* spoken language at home.

And the darn thing was, they'd rather spend more effort on their Third Language class.

At that time, I thought, well, it's all the parents' fault, or maybe it started with the grandparents earlier.

It was much later that I revise my opinion.  Why should someone be made to learn Mandarin just because he is ethnically a Chinese?

There's the whole government approach about preserving one's culture, ethnicity and heritage of course, and how no matter where you go in the world, you will be despised for not knowing how to speak Chinese (or any Chinese dialect).

In recent years, LKY was reported in the press that he realised the pursuit of bilingualism was not a realistically achievable goal, on the basis that there is a limit to the learning capacity/capability of most people in general.

I do beg to differ.  I'm not a particularly bright student.  Sure I got into an 'elite' school, but I got no strings of awards to boast of.

What I did have was a conducive environment, some strict supervision in the beginning, and a reading hobby.  It's not really a lot.  Certainly nothing beyond the reach of other Singaporeans.

But of late, I realised that I did have something which other Singaporeans did not - the experience of being thrusted suddenly into a totally foreign environment at a young age.

Unlike other Singaporeans who grew up within their own (linguistic) comfort zones, there was none for me.  It was a swim-or-sink situation, and I happened to be at an age group when the learning capacity is at its peak.

And this realisation also made me a little concerned for my 2 children - I can't replicate my own learning experience for them.

Snowylady's family is not English-speaking, so that provided an anchor for her as she went on to do double literature in JC (1 in English, 1 in Mandarin).  She was also active in Theatre Practice, well known for its multi-lingual plays under Kuo Pao Kun.  I might have a slight edge in written Mandarin, but she's way ahead in spoken Mandarin (and I'm banned from teaching my children Mandarin because my pronounciation is atrocious).

How my own children will turn out remains to be seen, but what is evident is that we as parents got our roles to play.

The exciting thing for me is though my kids won't go through the same learning experience for me, I'm sure I can make use of that experience in another way to benefit them in distinctive ways.  The hard part is figuring out how.