Multi-lingual Proficiency - Honestly?

Most of us stay comfortable with one way of speaking and that may mean, but not necessarily, one language, not even Singlish. We simply do that, unless we have very special motivations to be a learned multi-lingual: like scoring A for both your English and 'mother' tongue in school, or your work requires that, or you just have a passion for languages.

Honestly, how many of us Singaporeans can really be good at both languages all at the same time? I've come across a few who can, but I think the answer is, really, not many. Our bilingual background (actually tri- or tetra-, if we count our dialect exposures) can be both a strength and a weakness depending on the situation.

Strength is in that, we are somewhat multi-lingual; that can become useful in some international situations. Weakness, in that, we are often not very proficient in each of them: you cannot out-English and Englishman, neither can you out-Chinese a China man. OK, OK, there a few gifted ones who might, but in general, we really cannot.

Honestly, as a Singaporean, which language is our native tongue or our mother tongue? Really. You can go ahead and give your 'right' answer, mine is more like 'I don't really know'.

In Singapore, our very informal mode – i.e. comfort zone  – of speaking is to use more than one language; all in one sentence. In fact, few would complete explaining a thought (a paragraph perhaps) purely in just one language. I believe this arises from our indulging ourselves in picking what immediately comes to mind when we speak, whatever language or dialect it may be, it matters not. As long as the listener understands, there is no problem. And the truth of the matter is, we do understand each other very well, and what's interesting to note also is that we do feel rather comfortable speaking that way.

Why do we switch? Well, some words, in the carefully chosen language, just have the perfect nuances and the right ring that we look for in projecting exactly what we have in mind. Yes, put simply, it is our way of communicating.

We continue to stay in this comfort zone in our daily speech and the practice continues to strengthen our dependence on switching language in mid-sentence. Then it becomes our downside. The downside is, we become lazy in thinking out the correct term or phrase in any one language. The purist will say we corrupt the languages this way; and, they are probably right too.

But what the heck! We exist in a manifold cultural junction, both in the spatial and temporal sense. We are Singaporeans. What can we expect? We have all these bits and pieces from different parts of the world that don't really belong to us, but we use them. What do we do? Make a choice! Choose what? Don't know yet! We can't just dump one of these things, so, we use all of them! We are cultural hybrids!