Don't make the same mistake of abolishing Singlish altogether

In the early sisties and seventies, our grandparents and parents grew up to shows helm by Wang Sa and ye Fong, the duo were the hottest comedy stars in Singapore, i can say they can be comparable to Jack Neo and Moses Lim. The reason of why the duo can reached to the masses easily and successfully perhaps is the usage of dialects. Dialects were spoken by many of the Chinese in Singapore. The early immrigants usually herd together like flocks of Sheeps determined by the dialect that they spoken. Clans were set up for each respective dialect group.

However the government decided to abolish dialect shows altogether to suits the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Wang Sa and Ye Fong were forced to retire prematurely. The Speak Mandarin Campaign were quite successful to a certain extent. Now, except for vulgarities, none of the chinese speak Dialect. Throw them some dialect words and they can't dicepher what is the meaning. Communication with their dialect speaking grandparents were thus lost and one way or another, the abolishment of speaking dialect contributed to the generation gap between grandchildren and grandparents.

Recently, the government i believe, decided to revive dialect speaking bit by bit, discreetly. They can't really do it openly as it would mean backtracking. We can see the opening up by speaking of dialect in movies like The best bet, Money no enough and tv sitcom like Don't worry be happy. Majority is Chinese entertainment shows that have dialects.

So in what comparison do it have with Singlish? Plenty.

Speak good english campaign was started in the late 90s when the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong signalled Phua Chu Kang, the sitcom, as a rather bad influence to the youngsters for its overly use of singlish. Immediately, the producers of Phua chu Kang changed the sitcom to suits the government agenda.

I firmly believe, the abolishment of Singlish is too big a mistake and perhaps costly. What really bind people together is not their skin color, not the way the dress, but their religion and language.

Religion like i said previously, is a powerful tool to mankind. I believe anyone can see that when a fellow muslim see another muslim, he will walk up to him and shake his hand. Such is the binding force of religion to the individuals. Osama has an important tool to dispose of, that is religion. We can see how fast and widely spread the Al Queda speads its tenticles. Around the world not only the Arabs are muslim, but also the Malays, the indonesian, a few handful of chinese decent and caucasian. The fact that a non arab is willing to blow up himself on a plane proves that religion has surpass the skin factor and culture.

Langugage is the most crucial form of communication. Whenever we are of same race, we tend to speak in our mother tongue. Even if we have one or two friends of different races with us, we still tend to speak in our mother tongue as it just come out naturally. It is of such cases that our friends of different races can pick up our mother tongue fast.

Singapore is make up of a very diverse array of people, each with his own religion, culture and language. The chinese alone have embraced christianity, taoism, buddhist and what have you. The malay have Islam as their religion with some embracing other religons. Same goes to Indian.

We can't really force everyone to have a single religion as it will be a breech of human rights and disregard and disrespect to the religions that were not chosen to be the forced religion of Singapore.

What i want to say is that racial harmony is more than having school performance on july 21th every year. It is not just reciting the pledge, affirming racial harmony either. It goes beyond that.

Racial harmony can never exist flawlessly as there are just too many factors to be considered. What we can do is to make it near flawless.

Therefore, imposing the same religion to make the people homogeneous at least, in their faith is out of the question. Same goes to changing the skin color or even each individual culture.

Therefore, Singlish is needed actually to bind us together. If the Anglo Saxon can import french word, latin, spanish or even chinese word and phrases into English, i see why we can't import our Lah Lor Leh into our unique brand of English.

Singlish in this era, doesn't serve the purpose of communicating anymore. It serve a more divine and practical purpose, to bind the races together. It is an language which every Singaporean have with him, inborn. It is an language which set us at ease when we communicate. It is a language which we can converse easily without any miscommunication and most importantly, it is a language which is made in Singapore.

In this country where everything is imported, from ideas to food to cultures, we badly need a unique entity which we can really call it our own. I see no other things except Singlish.

To abolish Singlish is a grave mistake not to be repeated like abolishing dialects. No singlish could mean racial ties are in fact, weaken. English is the language of business, Malay is the offical Language and i think Singlish is the racial harmony language.