PAGE 13

Background

• There are many ways to increase the usage of Tamil outside of the classroom. This write-up will be concentrating on the two below: o

Increasing the Usage of Tamil by Students Outside Classroom

Bridging the diglossia between spoken and written Tamil

Diglossia in Singapore

In Singapore, classic diglossia exists among the four official languages( Cruz-Ferreira, 354).

• Despite the existence of Singlish, English is a language that would survive and progress even further given the universal and economic nature of the language.

• Mandarin is another language that would survive given the state’ s effort to promote Mandarin via the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979, which reduced the usage of dialects in the public sphere. Though dialects are spoken at homes, the prevalence ofMandarin will push through.

• Malay is a language that could suffer from diglossia given the slight difference in the spoken and written variety. However, it has to be noted that Malay language( the written form) does not have much of a classical root, which implies the easy nature of the language( Vega, 220). This would only result in students at least speaking either variations of Malay thereby keeping the language.

• For Tamil language, the written version takes on a classical note, which is interpreted as being difficult for students to comprehend. Nevertheless, students study the subject as a second language for exam purposes and are reluctant to speak the language given the slightly difficult nature of it.

• Also, unlike the thriving of spoken Malay, there is a lack of exposure to spoken Tamil for students due to the rise of English-speaking homes, which leads to a huge bridge in the language. Statistics show a decreasing trend in homes speaking Tamil: 52.2 % in the 1980s, 43.7 %, in the 1990s and 42.9 % in 2000( Seetha, 121).

Importance of bilingualism from young

• It was interestingly found in a research article based on research published by researchers from NUS Department of Psychology in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences( FASS) that“ babies who learnt two languages mastered languagespecific rules faster than monolingual babies.”( Singh, Poh, Fu 2016)

• The research involved 70 babies.

• This shows that bilingualism is actually beneficial in mastering the languages and hence bilingualism must be encouraged and not discouraged by parents and teachers.

Definitions Diglossia

According to Dr. Harold Schiffman( 1998) and Dr. Ferguson( 1959), diglossia has to be understood as“ a situation in which one language community uses two( usually closely related) dialects or languages.”

Diglossia, according to Dr. Ferguson( 1959, 1972), Dr. Harold Schiffman( 1998), Dr. Seethalakshmi( n. d.), is a result of dividing the language into a high and low variety. The high being the formal, and classical Tamil, while the low being classified as the spoken variety that we usually hear on media and speak to our family and friends.

Author: Mr. Mohamed Shaik Faizal

Effective Bilingualism

Minister Goh Keng Swee termed it as bilingualism‘ in terms of functional usage’ of the languages.( Lee 2008)

‘ Effective bilingualism’ is a situation where one’ s knowledge of the second knowledge overlaps considerably so that they are able to effectively communicate with others using that second language.( Hancock 1979)

Dr. Harold Schiffman

• Professor of Dravidian Linguistics and Culture at Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania

• His research interests focus on the linguistics of the Dravidian languages, especially Tamil, and to a lesser extent, Kannada, and in the area of language policy.

• Recent publications include A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil( Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Problems of diglossia in Tamil to the education system

• Students tend not to speak Tamil outside their classrooms as they feel that Tamil is difficult to comprehend.

• Tamil students when they meet one another are more comfortable in conversing in English as that way they do not go wrong in the conversation.

• Tamil, a mother tongue, has become a subject to attain grades.

Dr. Seethalakshmi � Associate Professor at Department of Asian Languages and Culture, National Institute of Education( NIE).

� Her teaching and research interests have been concerned primarily with Standard Spoken Tamil, curriculum review, classroom pedagogy, Tamil lexicography, teaching Tamil as a second language, Tamil pedagogy for the Tamil diaspora, sociolinguistics and the development of Tamil language and literature through mass media.