Dr Jia Jia and Singlish in Writing

Photos taken from this website: http://www.edvantage.com.sg/edvantage/features/people/1038164/They_have_1_5_million_YouTube_hits.html

So, I hear that Dr Jia Jia will be featured in the National Day rally. Hey, that's the sign that you have really arrived and made it as a national icon. Like Phua Chu Kang, Barbarella, Ah Meng and Taufik. Wow! 

I like that little guy. He's super cute and he says some outrageous things although I know his dad tells him what to say. He's our own Sophia Grace except that he does not sing...yet. And he's got his own big brother side kick too! And if you don’t know who I am talking about, Google Dr Jia Jia.

But much as I like Dr Jia Jia, I am not so sure that I am a fan of what he's doing. I find some of his jiajiaisms like “delicious” instead of dyslexia, clever and amusing. And all the Hokkien and Malay phrases are endearing- si bei pai seh, jin pai tung, jia lut, Tak boleh tahan. Trust me; at the right moment, they are just the thing to say. But I do get upset when Dr Jia Jia mangles his English grammar to make his Singlish sound cute. It’s not cute when Big Brother says “The impacts of iPhones and iPads on kids” “I sit bus to school” or “You cannot like that one”.  And it’s not cute when their tenses and sentence structures don’t sound anything like English, especially when we see them in the subtitles.

Ironically, I read that the original intention of the Dr Jia Jia’s videos was to discourage the use of Singlish (The New Paper, Monday April 2, 2012). However, I don’t see any evidence of this at all in the videos I have seen.  

I can hear all of you crying out, “Wet blanket”, “Purist!” and the like, but wait. I admit the English teacher in me can be critical sometimes, but you must also agree with me that you don’t want your children to speak and write Singlish all the time. As adults, who have mastered the language, we are at liberty to play with it and to use all the Singlish we want, because we know when to switch back to proper English. Unfortunately, for young children, especially those who do not get enough help with learning English, this may end up to be the only kind of English they will learn. And say what you like, this will eventually be a hindrance to their education and careers.  People who support Singlish, saying that it promotes our national identity, are people who either have already a good command of English and use Singlish as their fun language or are those whose English is less than stellar and don’t want to be criticised for it.

I will admit that I like Singlish phrases and use them often. My favourite words are “smoke” and “powderful” which I use every now and then, even in class.  But if I am teaching my young learners, I consider it my responsibility to teach them the correct and the standard version of the language, and not short change them with a non-standard version.  This is especially so for kids who come from non-English speaking homes. The school, the classroom and the teachers are their only sources of good English; kids gets enough Singlish from their home and play environments.  So while Dr Jia Jia looks and sounds super adorable with his Singlish utterances now, try to imagine him a young adult speaking like that still. Not so cute, right?

So is there no place for Singlish in school at all? Of course not. In essay writing, I often encourage children to add some Singlish expressions or structures into the dialogues they write in their stories. This is especially so when the characters they are writing about are Singaporean aunties and uncles or Singaporean baddies. The use of Singlish makes the characters real and gives them the distinct Singaporean identity that we want in our stories. The uncle in the wet market in not going to say,
“And would Madam like some fresh kembong today?” 
He’s more likely to say, “Aunty, today got fresh kembong. Want or not?”
And Aunty is likely to say,
“Is it? Expensive or not?” and not
“Really? Is it going to cost me an arm and a leg, my good man?”
Similarly, the bad guy who does not like the way you are looking him will probably say,
“Look what? Never see before ah?” instead of
“Who do you think you are looking at? Haven’t you seen me before?”

Dialogue, in its very nature, is meant to be casual and conversational and capturing the right voice in writing dialogues remains a challenge for all writers. So it can be quite painful to read the dialogues of local characters that are written in full sentences and in super correct English. They sound extremely stilted and completely unSingaporean.

Make no mistake. I don’t advocate using Singlish in the actual narrative, only in dialogues but I find that teachers often penalise students for doing so.  I don’t think this is right. There is a place for Singlish - in appropriate dialogues - and this should be allowed. I am often amused by how teachers pounce on examples of written Singlish but are happy to allow their students to use all manner of “broken” English in their everyday conversations.  While we don’t always write the way we speak, you cannot deny that our speaking habits often leak into our writing.

What should we do then? Don’t ban Singlish in the classroom. It won’t work. But point out its place in writing and in speaking. The occasional Singlish is fine and even desirable when we seek to be a part of the gang, but it’s important for students to know that for each Singlish phrase, there is an English equivalent for it. And when there isn’t, there is still a grammatical way to express that thought.

I don’t think we should over-correct children’s speech; being the English police is not always fun, but when certain Singlish phrases get overused or if the proper equivalents should be learnt, do highlight them for teaching and discussion.

Often, speaking carelessly is a bad habit that can be corrected; it is no reflection of one’s IQ. Teachers can do so much to help their students develop the desirable speaking habits. 

As for Dr Jia Jia and Big Brother, I trust they are learning the right habits from their respective schools.   

A teacher affects eternity...

Recently, we had a small gathering of former school mates. We were all from the same primary and secondary schools and two of us, Singaporeans, were there to meet up with our friend who was visiting from elsewhere. I haven’t spoken to this friend, P, for 40 years so it was great catching up. After a while, our conversation drifted to the topic of our former teachers, and invariably, we talked about the one teacher who left an indelible mark on our memories of school. This was our Maths teacher at secondary school, Mrs A.

I remember writing about my experiences with Mrs A before, but I did not know how my other school mates felt about her; we have never spoken about our individual experiences before. We were all from a convent where most of the girls were of working class backgrounds and a large number of these girls had fathers who worked at the huge railway workshop near our school. Indeed, in those days, most of the houses in that neighbourhood were built for the railway workers (and referred to as railway quarters) and their families although these days, it will cost you an arm and a leg to buy a place there.

The truth is I don’t remember many things about Mrs A, but a few unpleasant  incidents have been tucked away in my memory all these years.  My friend E, remembered her as a rather racist person who disliked dark skinned girls.  She recounted an incident where she saw Mrs A staring daggers at another dark-skinned classmate. “I shook with fear”, she said watching the hatred and anger in Mrs A’s face then.  It was rather dramatic and I did wonder if perhaps E’s youthful imagination went a tad into over drive then.  But I also asked myself why this one memory stayed with E after four decades.

Most of us remember Mrs A for her nightmarish Maths lessons. She would not just shout and threaten but she also slapped all of us freely. This was a woman who walked around during the exam peering into your test paper and demanding to know why you have left some sums unsolved. If your answer was not appropriate, like I don’t know how to do that sum, you were likely to get slapped.  I don’t know if I was born mathematically challenged but I am pretty sure I was terrorised into it by Mrs A. But, still E and I were the lucky ones who don’t remember getting slapped.

There were also all the different humiliating punishments she came up with when we failed Maths. Like being put out on show on the steps leading to the canteen with the test papers pinned on our uniforms. Or being led from class to class like criminals, with the offending test paper folded into a big bow on our chests.  We had to stand in a line in front of each class as examples of failures.  It is a miracle we did not all grow up to be insecure women, although some may have, like I did, develop a phobia for Maths.

So there we were, three grown professional women, sitting in the posh club of the hotel, each with a Singapore Sling in hand, recounting tales of Mrs A and shaking our heads with bewilderment. I imagined our younger selves similarly bewildered by the unnecessary cruelty and humiliation. What possessed her to do those things to us?

Mrs A has migrated to another country but several years ago, she was invited to a gathering of old girls (one that I did not go to).  My friend, P, recounted how she made a special effort during that event, to take a picture of Mrs A.

Why? I asked.

“I needed to show my children the teacher who slapped me two days in a row because I could not do the sums on profit and loss,” she replied.

Professionally, we have all come a long way since those days and we do have our teachers to thank. But that evening, we never once spoke of our favourite teachers or the teachers who helped us the most. Our thoughts, that evening, were consumed with memories of Mrs A and the helplessness and injustice we felt then. True, that was a long time ago and we should let it all go, but somehow, the effect of her actions stayed with us all through the years.   Perhaps she meant well and she just wanted us to work hard.  I’d like to think that too. But perhaps it was because she didn’t think much of us poor girls who, to her, would amount to nothing. As it turned out, we all proved to be one of the most successful batches of students the school has ever produced.  But now, even as successful senior citizens-to-be, memories of the one bad teacher still remain with us. 

Henry Brooks once said: 

A teacher affects eternity:s/he (sic) can never tell where his/her influence stops.  

In the case of Mrs A, her influence is indeed lifelong; we have never forgotten all the things she did to us. And she still remains the very model of a teacher we would never want our children to have.