Tongue-Tied in Singapore:
A Language Policy for Tamil?
Harold F. Schiffman
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Introduction: Tamil situation in Singapore:

Lends itself ideally to the study of minority language
maintenance:
– Tamil community is small: Indians constitute around 7% of
the population, of which Tamils constitute 60%.
– History and demographics well known.
– Tamil community acknowledged to be facing a number of
crises: Tamil as a home language not being maintained by
the better-educated.
Role of Education
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Schooling seen as the mainstay of language maintenance
Tamil Education sine qua non of language maintenance efforts;
Policy is failing, even with (now) compulsory "mother tongue"
instruction for Chinese, Malays and Tamils.
Should be cause of general alarm in Singapore, not just among
Tamils.
Language Maintenance and the
Sociology of Language
Tendency among Indian community to
confuse corpus planning and status
planning;
 Tamils' traditional strategy is to
emphasize corpus planning, esp. purity
 The housing policy in Singapore: the
real culprit?

What kind of Tamil do people want?
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Problem of diglossia: concern is always
with the corpus management of the literary
language;
The revolutionary zeal, evangelical, rhetorical
and oratorical skills of DMK mesmerized a
generation of Singapore Tamils. Fervor now
gone.
The kind of Tamil taught has no
communicative value for younger people.
Some differences between
Tamilnadu and Singapore
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Ambient language in Tamilnadu is Tamil
Ambient language in Singapore is English
Literacy in Tamilnadu primarily in Tamil
Literacy in Singapore primarily in English
Registers, varieties, levels: Tamil
consists of at least five different
kinds of language:

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peeccu tamiR:, spoken by all educated speakers;
Modern literary Tamil, the language of social novels
and short-stories:
Older modern LT, the language of Pavanandi
(thirteenth century);
Medieval Tamil (the Alvars, TirukkuraL), and
Sangat-tamiR, the oldest Tamil--cannot be
understood actively by anyone without the
commentaries and dictionaries.
Problems with Pedagogy:

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The problem with irredentism: language can never
be fully controlled
Not giving an inch may mean that that is all Tamil
will have: an inch: (no domains for the language at
all)
But domains exist today that never existed in the
past—TV, movies, videogames, the Internet…
People do not value print literacy as much as they
once did.
Overt and Covert aspects of Policy
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At the highest level, the policy appears to be
pro-Tamil.
But the housing policy has a negative
consequences:
Tamils are so dispersed that Tamil ceases to
act as an intra-ethnic language in the Tamil
community.
Examples of different levels of vocabulary: the
word for television:
1. duurdarshan used, even in Tamilnadu, for government television
broadcasting originating in New Delhi. Example: itu duurdarshan. "This
is (the Indian government television broadcasting system)".
2. tolaikaaTci is used for television broadcasts originating in Madras, and
also term used for television in Singapore.
3. 'television', pronounced TelaviSan, is used by many educated people,
often to refer to the concept of television, even when speaking Tamil,
e.g. TeleviSion vandadukku munnaale, rediyoo taan irundadu. 'Before
there was television, there was only radio.’
4. TV, pronounced Tiivii is also used widely in spoken Tamil. naan
ungaLe Tiiviile paatteen 'I saw you on TV'.
5. paTapoTTi used by uneducated people, from paTam 'picture' and poTTi
'box', modeled on earlier folk work for radio.
No need for Gratuitous Criticism.
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Everyone in the system doing the best job
they know how to do, with the best will and
the best of intentions.
However, when asked what people think the
problem with Tamil is, there is a certain
amount of blaming that starts up:
(But people criticize anyway…)
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Those people are responsible:
It's the Ministry of Education;
it's the Curriculum Development people;
it's the teachers, they're too lax;
it's the parents, they don't speak with their
children;
it's the children, they don't appreciate Tamil
culture.
What is the purpose of teaching
Tamil?
Why do Singapore Tamils want Tamil to be
Taught?
Students:

The purpose of maintaining Tamil language
in Singapore is to pass the O-level and Alevel tests administered by the MOE, in order
to get 5 A-level passes and gain admission
to university (and never use Tamil again.)
CIDS and MOE:
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The purpose of the teaching of Tamil in
Singapore is to maintain 'pure grammatical'
Tamil.
Parents:
Parents'
goal for Tamil is to
have their children have as
much appreciation of Tamil
language and culture as they
themselves have, but not
more.
Teachers:

The purpose of teaching Tamil in Singapore
is to provide jobs for teachers; their goal is to
enable students to get 5 A-level passes and
gain admission to university.
NIE Tamil Teacher Training:
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The purpose of having Tamil taught in
Singapore is to make it necessary to train
teachers to teach Tamil;
Writers and Intellectuals:
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The purpose of Tamil language maintenance
in Singapore is to provide job opportunities
for people who are otherwise unemployable.
A More Optimistic View, and some
Recommendations
 Introduce
the notion that knowledge of a
literary language is necessarily
connected to the knowledge of a
spoken language, and that the literary
language will not survive without
knowledge of the real mother-tongue
Spoken Tamil is a rule-governed
form of language:
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Is actually quite regular, uniform, and
standardized.
Literacy in Tamil should be based on
knowledge of mother tongue students bring
with them to school.
Spoken Tamil is rule-governed:
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ST should be treated as a resource instead
of a liability.
Decisions can be made about the best time
to make transition to the grammatical forms
of LT, (P1 or P4).
Teacher trainees need to be taught explicit
knowledge of structure and syntax of ST
Creative Writing in Singapore:
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Creative Writing is rare and hard to find
Conscious effort to stimulate creative
writing for Tamils needed
Tamils have nothing to read that reflects
their experience
Tend to view their language as lacking in
some way…
Convene a study group?
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Representatives of the NIE
Tamil Teachers
Ministry Of Education
Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore
Recent former students, and parents.
Agree to work toward concensus on what the goals
and purpose of Tamil maintenance might be.
Conclusion: Egalitarianism and
Equality
Egalitarianism does not necessarily
lead to equal outcomes:
Problems with ‘Egalitarianism’
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Tamil is seen as having no economic value
Excessive Purism defeats egalitarianism
Very small minorities may see no future
Younger generation does not revere the
language
Housing Policy is counterproductive to
language maintenance
References
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Gopinathan S. and A. Mani. (1983). "Changes in
Tamil Language Acquisition and Usage in Singapore:
A Case of Subtractive Bilingualism." Southeast Asian
Journal of Social Science Vol. 11(l): 104-116.
S. Gopinathan, Anne Pakir, Ho Wah Kam, and
Vanitha Saravanan (eds.) Language, society, and
education in Singapore : issues and trends.
Singapore : Times Academic Press, 1998.
More references…
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Saravanan, Vanithamani. “Language Maintenance
and Language Shift in the Tamil-English Community.”
Chapter 8, Gopinathan et al., 1998.
Schiffman, Harold F. (1994) "Standardization and the
Case of Spoken Tamil: Where does SingaporeTamil
fit in?" Talk delivered at RELC, March 16, 1994
Schiffman, Harold F. (1999) A Reference Grammar
of Spoken Tamil. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Acknowledgements:
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Research for this paper was carried out
under a Fulbright Research grant from the
Council for International Exchange of
Scholars/USIA in early 1994. 1 would like to
express my appreciation also to the National
Institute of Education, Nanyang
Technological University, Republic of
Singapore, for their welcoming assistance.