From: krishna@suliman.iss.nus.sg (Krishnamoorthy Subrahmanyam)
Subject: National language, lesson from Singapore
Originator: krishna@suliman
Organization: Institute of Systems Science, NUS, Singapore
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 11:28:31 GMT


Somebody raising the national language status on the net:

   for those, I would like to present the picture of Singapore's linguistic.

   The Republic of Singapore consist of four races and total population is 
   about 4 million. 
                      Chinese 70%,  Chinese(Mandarin)
                      Malays  20%,  Pahasa Malaysia(Malay) 
                      Indian  07%,  Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi
                      Others  03%,  Eurasians, others.

   Government gives official language status to the following languages,
 
                   English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil

   The Government maintains the signboards and public notice boards in all
   the four languages, i.e, English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.

   There are 3 TV channels, of which CH#1 assigned to Malay and English, Ch#2
   assigned to Chinese and Tamil, and CH#3 exclusively for English language
   programs such as sports, documentary, CNN, so on.  The timings allotted 
   according to the population ratio. Normally the Tamil programs are given 70 
   minutes from 5.30pm to 6.40pm. Every sunday, in the afternoon from 12.30 to
   3.30, allotted to Tamil programs. The Tamil programs includes the other 
   Indian languages programs as well. One Hindi film screened in every month.

   There are seperate radio stations for the each official languages, in that,
   Tamil also entitled to one. The program start from 5am and in the air till
   12pm.  This station caters other Indian groups as well, where Hindi given 105
   minutes, Malayalam 30 mnts, Telugu 30 mnts, and Punjabi/Bengali 30 mnts.
   It is lovely to hear every sunday, half-an-hour punjabi sikh kirtans.

   The Government encourages the people to undergo a subject in their mother 
   tongue along with regular educational stream in English. It is not compulsary
   that to undergo any language. So, Normally Chinese ethnics take Chinese with
   English, Malay ethinics take Malay with English, Indian ethinics take Tamil
   or Hindi or Punjabi with English. 

   The English plays the link language role, hence the  educational system 
   quarantees that everybody knows English. Being majority community, the 
   Chinese not imposing their language on others. 

   No doubts raised about patriotism in the name of language. Some time back,
   government did some compaigning for "Speak Mandarin", that is only to the
   Chinese population, and it is meant to unite the various sub-groups in it.
   (i.e. the Chinese population have different dialacts). 

   Most interestingly, I have never seen the hue and cry of language, religion 
   or culture, or any sort, and type of imposing on others. There are government
   sponsored ethinic group organisations like, Mendaki for malays, Sinda for
   Indians are existing, but the purpose is to identify the group needs and
   concentrate more on the weakness and help it to recover. In this respect,
   the SINDA, found that Indian students are not doing well in their education, 
   hence the efforts are directed towards that end.

   The emphasis is on English for survival purpose, and one's mother tongue 
   to preserve their cultural past. 

   The rest of the energy concentrated on the economic issues (not like s.c.t,
   hindu-muslim, h1-visa, films so on) and the result is the DEVELOPED NATION 
   STATUS. (Newly Industrialised Nation)

      (For your information, Singapore came into the existance in nineteen 
       sixties, and at that time it was a under developed, may be not better
       than the India at that time. Now this tiny country exports US$ 72.00
       billions worth of goods to other countries, five times of India.)

   I, as an Indian citizen, normally try to understand this system, and often 
   try to compare the situation back in India. Ok, I don't want to go in 
   details, and I leave the analysis up to you.


   ...Krishnamoorthy.

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   I am a Telugu, loving Tamil & Sanskrit within the bounds of Indian culture.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian