World Englishes, Vol. 27, No. 3/4, pp. 450–464, 2008.

0883-2919

Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore

VINITI VAISH∗

ABSTRACT: This paper reports on an investigation of the effect of religion on language use in Singapore.
Data come from the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006, a large-scale language survey linked to
follow-up studies. The conceptual framework was based upon Castells’ idea of a new social order in
the network society; the main research questions were (1): Are Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil a ‘cultural
ballast’ in the tide of global English? and (2) Does religion influence language maintenance or shift in an
‘informational society’ that is one of the most globalized nations in the world? Answers to these questions
were explored through analysis of patterns of language use in multiple domains. It was found that while
English dominates the mother tongues (Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil) in the domains of school and public
space and competes with them in the domains of family/friends and media, the mother tongues dominate
English in the domain of religion. Results also showed that the means of maintaining the mother tongues
within the religious domain differ across the three main ethnic groups of Singapore, that languages are
maintained in the Malay and Indian communities along with active acquisition and use of such sacred
languages as Arabic and Sanskrit, and that language shift is taking place in the Chinese community.

INTRODUCTION

Singapore is wide open to external influences. Millions of foreign visitors pass through each year. Books,
magazines, tapes, and television programmes pour into Singapore every day. Most are from the developed
countries of the West. The overwhelming bulk is in English. Because of universal English education, a
new generation of Singaporeans absorbs their contents immediately, without translation or filtering.

This openness has made us a cosmopolitan people, and put us in close touch with new ideas and
technologies from abroad. But it has also exposed us to alien lifestyles and values. Under this pressure,
in less than a generation, attitudes and outlooks of Singaporeans, especially younger Singaporeans, have
shifted. Traditional Asian ideas of morality, duty and society which have sustained and guided us in the
past are giving way to a more Westernized, individualistic, and self-centred outlook on life. (Mr Goh
Chok Tong’s address at the opening of Parliament, January 1989; quoted in Quah 1990)

This lengthy quotation from Goh Chok Tong, senior minister and chairman of the Mon-
etary Authority of Singapore at the time this paper was written, highlights two important
themes in this paper. The first is that of globalization. Singapore is one of the most glob-
alized nations in the world. In 2005 the A.T. Kearney Globalization Index (Kearney 2005)
ranked Singapore no. 1 in its list of the 62 most globalized nations on the basis of eco-
nomic integration, technological connectivity, personal contact, and political engagement.
At the same time Singapore, even from before its inception as a separate country in 1965,
has been concerned about the preservation of its indigenous languages and cultures. An
illustration of this concern is the All-Party Report (1956) which gave equal importance to
the four official languages of the country: Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English.
∗ Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, NIE Block 5, Basement 3 (NIE5-B3-
CRPP), 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616. E-mail: viniti.vaish@nie.edu.sg


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02148, USA.
 Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore 451

The other key theme in this quotation is that social groups and countries perceive
themselves and others through identity politics. Thus in the final sentence Goh makes a
distinction between ‘traditional Asian ideas of morality, duty and society’ and ‘a more
Westernized, individualistic, and self-centered outlook on life’. Describing the new social
order in an age of globalization, Castells (2000a) writes: ‘In such a world of uncontrolled,
confusing change, people tend to regroup around primary identities: religious, ethnic, terri-
torial, national . . . Identity is becoming the main, and sometimes only, source of meaning,
in an historical period characterized by widespread destructuring of organizations, dele-
gitimation of institutions, fading away of major social movements, and ephemeral cultural
expressions’ (p. 3). Thus Goh’s comment about maintaining an Asian identity is crucial in
an era of globalization.
This paper reports on patterns of language use amongst 10-year-olds in Singapore.
It shows that religion is the only domain which strongly maintains mother tongue use,
followed by that of family and friends. The domains of media, school, and public space
are dominated by English. The reasons for this lie in Castells’ conceptual framework of
globalization, in which religion as a measure of identity plays a very important role in the
social order of informational societies. Within the domain of religion there are differences
in the way that the Chinese, Malay, and Indians, the three main ethnic groups in Singapore,
maintain their languages.
Castells’ view of identity is reflected in Singapore’s language ideology. In this country
the mother tongues of the Chinese, Malay, and Indian people are considered to be ‘cultural
ballast’ which prevents Asians from being swept away in the tide of global English. The
current Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, used this phrase in the 1980s in an interview with
journalist and writer Raj Vasil:

I do not want an only English-educated community. It is not only the language. With the language goes
the literature, proverbs, folk lore, beliefs, value patterns . . . If we are going to make our own distinctive
contribution to civilized and cultivated living in Southeast Asia, then we must have this cultural ballast.
(Vasil 1984: 105)

This phrase, ‘cultural ballast’, has endured in the imagination of Singapore. In a speech
at the opening of the upgraded premises of the Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre,
Professor Jayakumar, Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs, said: ‘Their mother tongue
gives them [students] a world-view that complements the perspective of the English-
speaking world. It acts as a cultural ballast that will enable them to face adversity and
challenges with fortitude’ (http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2001).

Language and religion in Singapore

According to the 2000 Census of Singapore the country shows stability in religion across
three decades (see Table 1).
As Table 1 shows, the main shift in religion in the past three decades has been in
the Chinese community from Taoism to Buddhism. Within the Chinese community the
Buddhist population has increased from 34.3 per cent in 1980 to 39.4 per cent in 1990
and finally to nearly half the Chinese population, i.e. 53.6 per cent, in 2000. There has
been a concomitant decline in Taoism, from 38.2 per cent in 1980 to 28.4 per cent in
1990 and finally 10.8 per cent in 2000. There have also been modest increases in the

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Table 1. Resident population aged 15 years and over by ethnic group and religion (per cent)
Ethnic group/religion 1980 1990 2000

Chinese
Christianity 10.9 14.3 16.5
Buddhism 34.3 39.4 53.6
Taoism 38.2 28.4 10.8
Other religions 0.2 0.3 0.5
No religion 16.4 17.7 18.6
Malays
Islam 99.6 99.6 99.6
Other religions 0.3 0.3 0.4
No religion 0.1 0.2 0.1
Indians
Christianity 12.5 12.2 12.1
Islam 22.1 26.5 25.6
Hinduism 56.3 53.1 55.4
Other eeligions 8.0 7.1 6.3
No religion 1.2 1.2 0.6

Source: Singapore Department of Statistics (2000).

Table 2. Language trends in Singapore

Language Ethnicity
spoken at Chinese Malay Indian
home 1990 2000 2005 1990 2000 2005 1990 2000 2005

English 19.3 23.9 28.7 6.1 7.9 13.0 32.3 35.6 39.0
Mandarin 30.1 45.1 47.2
Malay 93.7 91.6 86.8 14.5 11.6 10.6
Tamil 43.2 42.9 38.8
Dialect 50.3 30.7 23.9
Others 0.3 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.5 0.2 10.0 9.9 11.6
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Source: Singapore Department of Statistics (2001; 2006).

Chinese community for Christianity and ‘No religion’. The Malay community remains
homogeneously Muslim. Half the Indian community is Hindu across the three decades
shown in Table 1 and a quarter is Muslim. However there is no substantial increase
in either Muslims or Christians amongst the Indians, emphasizing stability of religious
affiliation. ‘No religion’ is not common amongst the Indians and Malays.
Table 2 shows trends in language maintenance and shift in Singapore.
The table shows that English has gained ground as the language most frequently spoken
at home for the Chinese. This increase is also evident for the Indians and Malay, though
in these communities the rate of increase seems to be slower. Thus this table shows both
language shift in terms of the spread of English and also language maintenance in terms
of the slower spread of English in the Malay and Indian communities. Vaish (2007) and
Vaish et al. (forthcoming) have argued that this language maintenance is mainly due to the

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 Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore 453

strength of social capital in the domain of religion and, to a lesser extent, in the domain of
family and friends.

Research questions
The focus in this paper is on the role of mother tongues serving as ‘cultural ballast’ in
the tide of global English. The question posed here is whether the languages of Mandarin,
Malay, and Tamil play this role in Singapore, especially in the domain of religion. Related
ideas are language maintenance and shift, which raise a further question: how can the
trends of language maintenance and shift in the three ethnic groups of Singapore – Chinese,
Malay and Indian – be explained on the basis of language use in the domain of religion?
Specifically, what are the ways in which mother tongues work as cultural ballast?

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Religion and language maintenance/shift
The literature on religion and language covers many subfields, including discourse anal-
ysis of speech in sermons (Wharry 2003), attitude studies in which varieties of languages
are used in religion (Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo 1991), and linguistic analysis of the lan-
guage of sacred texts (Schiffman 1998). Excellent overviews of the field are available in
Spolsky (2003), Keane (1997), and Ferguson (1982), which cover such topics as languages
used to communicate with invisible interlocutors, for example, spirits, whether religion can
cause language spread, and how the language of sacred texts influences the way language
will be used in a particular religion.
Ghim (2006) discusses two distinct trends in the Chinese community in Singapore which
suggest that spread of certain religions does indeed cause language shift. Using census
data, she shows that the main religious trend in the Chinese community in Singapore is
a shift from Taoism to Buddhism, and secondarily from Taoism to Christianity. She links
this with the loss of Chinese dialects, resulting from implementation of a policy initiated
by the Singapore government in the 1970s with the aim of homogenizing the Chinese
community into one linguistic group, a Mandarin-speaking one. Through initiatives like
the Speak Mandarin Campaign (launched in 1979) and the teaching of Mandarin in schools,
the government has successfully created language shift in the Chinese community from
numerous Chinese dialects to a unified Mandarin.
In the Indian community, the domain of religion is the site of language maintenance
of Tamil. A detailed discussion of this sociolinguistic phenomenon is provided in Vaish
(2007). Here I want to emphasize that though 25 per cent of the Indian children in the
study sample are Muslim, their language in the mosque is not Malay but Tamil. Thus
Tamil is actively maintained in both Hinduism and Islam, though philologically it is linked
with Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism. The maintenance of indigenous language
despite religious conversion can also be seen in religious practices in the Solomon Islands
in ethnographic work reported by Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo (1991). Though 95 per cent
of the islanders have converted to Christianity, the authors do not report language shift to
English; in fact, they found that in all types of church included in the research, numerous
indigenous languages are used in various combinations along with English.

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Conceptual framework
In the last decade there has been a surge of literature on the theory and processes of
globalization. Economists, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and sociolinguists have
approached this truly interdisciplinary topic with their unique perspectives. In this paper
I would like to build a theoretical framework based on the sociologist Manuel Castells’
three-volume monumental work, The Information Age (Castells 2000a; 2000b; 2004). ‘In
a world submitted to cultural homogenization by the ideology of modernization and the
power of global media, language, as the direct expression of culture, becomes the trench
of cultural resistance, the last bastion of self-control, the refuge of identifiable meaning’
(Castells 2004: 56). This comment elaborates Castells’ central thesis that the new social
order which has arisen in the era of globalization is based on a tension between the Net
and the Self.
The term ‘the Net and the Self’ sets up a tension between the World Wide Web and
other internet services, on the one hand, and the individual with a unique identity, on the
other. Castells traces the origins of this new social order from the 1970s in California, when
Silicon Valley was becoming the centre for research and development in IT. This revolution
in technology then spread to other parts of the world, and today it is those countries that
are not able to join the technology revolution, like Third World countries in Africa, that
are being left behind in the inexorable march of globalization.
The tension between the Net and the Self is also that between the global and local. In
this tension there is a revival of local communities through ‘urban social movements’.
In American cities, for instance, gangs have emerged as a major form of association for
work and identity amongst youth (Castells 2004: 67). Castells sees a revival of the local
in reaction to the homogenizing forces of the global. He writes that the Net creates a
feeling of isolation and atomization in the individual which the local tries to overcome.
‘People resist the process of individualization and social atomization, and tend to cluster in
community organizations that, over time, generate a feeling of belonging, and ultimately,
in many cases, a communal, cultural identity’ (Castells 2004: 64). What Castells means is
that though people may be networked through computers, this virtual interaction actually
makes them feel more alienated. People thus band together in social groups, which could
even be in the form of gangs, that provided disadvantaged and alienated youth with a sense
of belonging.

METHODOLOGY
Data for this paper are drawn from a project called ‘The Sociolinguistic Survey of
Singapore, 2006’ (henceforth SSS 2006), undertaken by the Centre for Research in Peda-
gogy and Practice in Singapore. The research question of SSS 2006 is: who speaks what
language to whom in what context with what attitude with what level of fluency and to
what end? The survey, which has a sample size of 716 students from the Grade 5 cohort of
Singaporean schools, is stratified by race (Chinese, Malay, and Indian) and socioeconomic
status (SES).
The survey questionnaire, which takes about an hour to administer, is divided into
five domains corresponding with the five main parts of the questionnaire: school, family
and friends, religion, public space, and media. It also has sections on language attitudes,
ideology, and finally proficiency. There are 40 items in the entire questionnaire, with

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 Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore 455

Table 3. Design of follow-up studies

Socioeconomic status (SES)∗ Chinese Malay Indian Total

SES 1 1 1 1 3
SES 2 1 1 1 3
SES 3 1 1 1 3
SES 4 1 1 1 3
Total 4 4 4 12
∗ SES is calculated on the basis of total household income as per the Singapore census: SES 1 being the highest and SES
4 the lowest.

subsections for each item. A bilingual research assistant administers most of the survey
on the computer in a face-to-face session in the languages of comfort of the child and in
the home of the child. This part of the questionnaire is in an Excel file with a pull-down
menu for options. In some items there are up to 50 options of language combinations.
Additionally a set of demographic questions, written in both English and the mother
tongue, are given in paper form, for the parent to fill out.
After the large-scale quantitative survey described above, follow-up studies (see Table 3)
were conducted by the project team1 with 12 children, who were observed for about two
weeks in the five domains of the survey. They were divided into ethnic groups and, within
these groups, into levels of socioeconomic status (SES).
The bilingual researcher audio- and video-recorded and wrote daily fieldnotes on what
she observed. Her ‘observation guide’ documented those details of the child’s environment
that could not be captured on tape. The children were requested to keep a journal-cum-log
in which to record their activities, particularly those focusing on language and literacy. As
the project emphasized the child as participant in and leader of data collection, one tape
recorder was left with the children, who were asked to record what they thought was typical
language use in their life worlds. Consequently, each one of the 12 ‘cases’ is made up of the
survey instrument of the first stage of the study and the observation guide and researcher
fieldnotes, transcripts and translations of all the audio- and video-recordings, the language
journal-cum-log submitted by the child, e-mails exchanged between researcher and child,
and finally any other appropriate artefacts collected from the home in the follow-up studies.
These artefacts include Hari Raya and Christmas cards, poems or notes the children might
have written, photos of religious calendars, and pictures of Mecca.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section I present and discuss key quantitative and qualitative results from the
project. In the quantitative section, the overall findings from all five domains are sum-
marized followed by data on the religious make-up of the sample. Thereafter results of
the items in the religion section of the questionnaire are analyzed. In the qualitative part,
transcripts from the follow-up studies of a few children, from a total of 12, are discussed.

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Table 4. Dominant language in five domains

XX
XXX Race Chinese (%) Malay (%) Indian (%) Total (%) (n = 716)
Language XXXX (n = 400) (n = 206) (n = 92)

4(a). Family/friends

English 41.7 24.4 41.3 36.2

Mother tongue 31.8 46.0 32.8 36.3
English-MT 15.9 18.3 13.9 16.4
Other 0.4 0.1 2.2 0.5
N.A. 10.4 11.2 9.8 10.6
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

4(b). School

English 68.5 60.4 72.4 66.5

Mother tongue 19.9 30.1 19.4 23.0
English-MT 11.3 9.4 7.1 10.2
N.A. 0.2 0.1 1.1 0.3
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

4(c). Media

English 69.2 57.7 66.5 65.2

Mother tongue 2.7 4.6 1.1 3.1
English-MT 7.2 12.6 4.7 8.6
Other 0.7 0.5 0.3 0.6
N.A. 20.2 24.6 27.4 22.5
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

4(d). Public space

English 65.3 58.2 69.4 63.7

Mother tongue 20.2 30.1 20.8 23.3
English-MT 14.5 11.7 9.5 12.9
N.A. 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.1
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

(4e). Religion

English 38.7 3.7 26.1 26.1

Mother tongue 35.5 79.5 58.1 52.2
English-MT 4.8 2.6 5.6 4.2
Other 0.7 12.2 9.1 5.5
N.A. 20.1 2.0 1.1 12.0
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Dominant language/s in the five domains

The dominant language across the three ethnic groups for each of the five domains are
represented individually in Table 4(a–e) . In the domains of school, media, and public
space, English is clearly the dominant language for Singaporean children across all ethnic
groups. However, the domains of family and friends and of religion tell a different story. In

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Table 5. Religion and ethnicity in percentages from SSS 2006

Religion Race
Chinese (%) Malay (%) Indian (%)
(n = 370) (n = 206) (n = 92)

No religion 23 0 0
Buddhism 51.9 0 1.1
Islam 0.3 100 25.0
Hinduism 0 0 60.9
Christianity 22.5 0 13.0
Taoism 2.4 0 0
Total n = 668

the former domain, English is not dominant for the Malay ethnic group. Though English
is dominant for the Chinese and Indian ethnic groups, it is by a much smaller margin than
in the other three domains listed earlier. In the domain of religion, mother tongue (MT) is
dominant for both the Malay and Indian ethnic groups, though English is dominant for the
Chinese ethnic group. Comparing across ethnic groups, we can see that English has very
little impact on religion amongst the Malays, as only 3.7 per cent of the children reported
that English is dominant for them in the religious domain.

Religion and ethnicity

As Table 5 shows, all the Malay respondents in our sample reported that their religion
is Islam. This extreme homogeneity does not obtain amongst the Indians, where 25 per
cent are Muslims, 13 per cent are Christian, and a majority, 60.9 per cent, are Hindu.
The Chinese ethnic group is heterogeneous with regards to religion, with large numbers
falling into three main groups: primarily Buddhism, and secondarily more or less equally
split between Christianity and ‘No religion’. Only 2.4 per cent of Chinese children in our
sample are Taoists.

The language of prayer

Table 6 gives an in-depth look at patterns of language use across the three ethnic groups
in the domain of religion. The overall pattern that emerges is that the Malays use English
the least, followed by the Indians; finally, the Chinese use a fair amount of English in this
domain. If we look at the results of questions 1–4 and then 6 and 7 for the Malays, the
cell for English shows extremely small percentages: 1.0, 2.4, 2.9, 9.2, 3.9, and 0.5. These
statistics confirm that English is not used substantially by the Malays in the religious
domain.
What is curious about the results for the Malays in Table 6 is the high percentages in
the cell marked ‘Others’. For instance in answer to question 1, 16.9 per cent of the Malays
fall into ‘Others’, 18.9 per cent for question 2, 20 per cent for question 3, 14.2 per cent
for question 4, 27.2 per cent for question 6 and as many as 85.5 per cent for question 7.
Follow-up studies show that for the Malays this ‘Others’ is actually Arabic. Also, the
results of question 7 are not self-reported. For this question the children actually recite a

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Table 6. Language of prayer in the religious domain

Question Languages Chinese (%) Malay (%) Indian (%)
used (n = 370) (n = 206) (n = 92)

1 What languages do you English 31.6 1.0 14.1

usually use to pray in the MT 46.2 78.2 54.3/10.9
church/temple/mosque/ (Malay)∗
others? Eng + MT 6.2 1.5 4.3
N.A. 11.9 1.9 0.0
Don’t know 0.3 0.5 0.0
Others 3.8 16.9 16.4
2 What languages do you English 33.2 2.4 16.3
usually use to pray at MT 38.6 74.8 54.3/9.8
home? (Malay)
Eng + MT 2.4 1.0 4.3
N.A. 22.2 2.4 2.2
Don’t know 0.8 0.5 0.0
Others 2.8 18.9 13.1
3 What languages do you English 41.4 2.9 25.0
usually use in your silent MT 32.7 75.2 42.4/12.0
prayer? (Malay)
Eng + MT 4.1 0.0 5.4
N.A. 18.1 1.9 1.1
Don’t know 2.2 0.0 0
Others 1.5 20.0 14.1
4 What languages do you English 49.5 9.2 48.9
usually use to learn about MT 14.9 65.5 26.1/13.0
religion? (Malay)
Eng + MT 5.4 6.8 4.3
N.A. 26.2 2.4 1.1
Don’t know 3.2 1.9 0
Others 0.8 14.2 6.6
5 Do you read or write about Yes 30.0 78.6 35.9
religion? No 70.0 21.4 64.1
6 If yes, what language(s) do English 24.1 3.9 13.0
you read/write in? MT 2.7 42.7 6.5/8.7
(Malay)∗
English + MT 2.7 4.4 1.1
N.A. 66.5 21.8 63.0
Don’t know 4.0 0.0 0.0
Others 0.0 27.2 7.7
7 Can you give me an English 30.8 0.5 26.1
example of a prayer that MT 19.2 5.3 25.0
you say? English + MT 1.1 0.0 2.2
N.A. 38.9 2.4 2.2
Don’t know 7.6 6.3 4.3
Others 2.4 85.5 40.2
∗ The first figure refers to Tamil speakers and the second to Malay speakers within the Indian community.


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 Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore 459

prayer and the surveyor writes down the language that it is in. Our surveyors consistently
report that when Malay children recite a prayer, it is in Arabic.

Use of Arabic in the Malay community

All four Malay children with whom we conducted follow-up studies are studying or have
studied Arabic outside of school. The use of Arabic in religion, and the choice to learn
Arabic despite the heavy language-learning load in the Singapore school system, points
to the desire for an identity that connects Malays with other Muslims across the globe.
Though Muslims across the world speak numerous languages like Urdu and Gujerati, it is
Arabic, the language of the Qu’rān, that networks Muslims of different linguistic groups.
Also, Arabic is a language of high prestige, which is not the status associated with Malay
in Singapore. This is so despite the fact that Malay is spoken not only in Singapore but
also, though in slightly different versions, throughout the Malay peninsula, in Malaysia,
Brunei, and Indonesia.
In Transcript 1 below, Azman, a Malay boy, is talking to the researcher about why he is
studying Arabic and what the language means to him as a practising Muslim.

Transcript 1. Attitudes toward Arabic

1. Azman: no I start, I start at p-one.

2. Researcher: still early what. P-one is still young.
3. Azman: but p-one I already not interested already.
4. Researcher: [laughs] but what do you think of the arab, arab, what do you think of the bahasa arab?
(but what do you think of the Arab, Arab, what do you think of the Arabic language?)
....
5. Azman: I think it’s important pasal nanti kalau kita nak pergi Medinah nanti nak gi Haji nak gi Umrah
then we have to talk lah.
(I think it’s important because later if we want to go to Medina and do our pilgrimage then we have
to talk lah.)
....
6. Researcher: but kalau selain daripada tu, let’s say some people don’t end up going to medinah or
whatever, macam mana? Do you think it’s important at all?
(but if other than that, let’s say some people don’t end up going to Medina or whatever, how? Do
you think it’s important at all?)
....
7. Azman: it means, how to say eh, it means a lot, because I don’t really know much. Just in Singapore,
if I want to know much, macam Nabi Muhammad, and other-other Nabi uh, then I will have to go
to other countries like, macam, Iraq ke, Saudi Arabia ke to get to know more right, so I have to
know this Arabic so that I can ask them more about its history.
(it means, how to say eh, it means a lot, because I don’t really know much. Just in Singapore, if
I want to know much, like Prophet Muhammad, and other-other Prophets uh, then I will have to
go to other countries like, Iraq or, Saudi Arabia to get to know more right, so I have to know this
Arabic so that I can ask them more about its history.)
8. Researcher: but my question is now sekarang, when you learn Arabic kat sekolah kan, nila you belajar
pat sekolah agama, that’s the only way you macam, face Arabic language kan? Okay, bila you
belajar Arabic kat sekolah, you actually use macam, words from the muqqaddam kan? Your contact
with the words in Arabic is in Muqqaddam kan? Kena baca muqqaddam, betul tak?
(but my question is now, when you learn Arabic at school right, the things you learn during religious
school, that’s the only way you like, face Arabic language right? Okay, when you learn Arabic at


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school, you actually use like, words from the Muqqaddam right? Your contact with the words in
Arabic is in Muqqaddam right? You have to read the Muqqaddam, right?)
9. Azman: tak, buku, the teacher macam give us simple concept gitu ah.
(no, book, the teacher like gives us a simple concept ah.)
10. Researcher: oh, simple concepts. So from there you actually sort of have an idea lah. So you think
it’s important for like, sembahyang or any other religious things? Is it important too? Or is your
purpose of belajar Arabic ni untuk ape?
(oh, simple concepts. So from there you actually sort of have an idea lah. So you think it’s important
for like, prayers or any other religious things? Is it important too? Or is your purpose of learning
Arabic is for what?)
.....
11. Azman: for travel, then some more if we need to know more from the Arabic. Because uh, we in
Singaporeans we don’t really know much about history right, because the history goes more to
arab. So we have to go to arab to know more.
12. Researcher: so not so important?
13. Azman: not so important ah. Why is it not so important? Because we don’t really use this Arabic in
Singapore.

Azman, a Primary 5 (grade 5) pupil, reveals that he started learning Arabic in Primary 1
(grade 1). Azman is honest with the researcher in saying that from Primary 1 itself he was
not particularly interested in learning Arabic (turn 3). In turn 9 he also emphasizes that it
has no relevance in this daily life because, though he studies the Qu’rān, which is in Arabic,
the teacher explains everything in simple Malay. However, Azman likes studying religious
history and says that when his family goes for their pilgrimage to Medina he will require
Arabic because in the Middle East they do not speak Malay. More importantly, he makes
a comment (turn 11) which shows how the Malay people look towards the Middle East as
the fount of historical knowledge regarding Islam. In this turn Azman is connecting the
local Malay of Singapore to the global Arabic-speaking world where knowledge of Islamic
history resides. In this sense Arabic is very important for him. Azman’s comments on
Arabic reveal that Malay is used by his ustazah, or religious teacher, to teach children the
history of Islam. As such, Malay becomes cultural ballast in the life world of the practising
Muslim.
Arabic’s role as a bridge between the local and the global is the reason for the active
support it receives from the Singapore government. The Ministry of Education (MOE) is
offering Arabic as a third language at the MOE Language Centre. A press release dated 7
March 2007 states:
MOE will offer Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic as Third languages at the MOE Language Centre at Bishan
from 2008. We are offering the two new languages so that, over time, we will have a pool of Singaporeans
with facility to engage with Indonesia and act as bridges into the Middle East, a fast growing region in
the world. (http://www.moe.sg/press/2007/pr20070307-print.htm)

This statement points to the linguistic capital of Arabic as a link language with the Middle
East. Thus, both for symbolic and instrumental reasons, Arabic is a global language that
networks the Malay community with the larger Islamic world.

Language maintenance in the Indian community

Patterns of language use in both the Muslim and Hindu groups within the Indian
community point to language maintenance of Tamil. Referring back to Table 6, questions

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1 and 2, half the Indians, 50 per cent and 51.6 per cent respectively, use their mother
tongue, that is, Tamil. Only 14.5 per cent and 16.1 per cent of the Indian children use
English in reply to questions 1 and 2. The 16.1 per cent and 12.9 per cent of children in the
‘Others’ cell point to the use of Sanskrit as the language of prayer in Hinduism. Though
Sanskrit is not taught in the Indian community, it is used in temples to recite the Hindu
mantras. Similarly, the results of question 3 show a larger percentage for Tamil compared
to English: 37.1 per cent of the Indians use Tamil for silent prayer and 25.8 per cent use
English. The 17.7 per cent in the ‘Others’ cell use Sanskrit.
Questions 4, 5, and 6 have to do with literacy in the religious domain. Results of question
4 show that 41.9 per cent of Indians use English to learn about religion. A lower 30.6 per
cent use Tamil and 12.9 per cent use Malay. The latter would be Malay-speaking Indian
Muslims. The Tamil and Malay speakers together constitute 43.5 per cent, showing that in
the case of learning about religion, nearly equal numbers of Indians use English and their
mother tongue. Despite this large percentage of users of English, Table 4(e) above shows
that Tamil is maintained in the domain of religion. In Table 4(e), 33.3 per cent of Indians
use the mother tongue and 27.18 per cent use Sanskrit (‘Others’), a total of 60.48 per cent.
In comparison, only 23.1 per cent use English in the religious domain. This pattern of
language use helps to maintain Tamil in the Indian community. It is for this reason that, as
shown in Table 2, there is stability in number of Tamil speakers in the Singapore census
from 1990 till 2000.
Transcript 2. A religious class in a Hindu temple. Ten-year-old Abhishek and nine
other children are being instructed by the priest. They have all just sung a religious song,
or ‘bhajan’. The priest then goes on to explain the meaning of this song to the children.

inaiku kaarula varaliya? Oru pattharai ilirunthu patthu naapathu varaikko time ko-
duthukungka. Oru patthu nimisho neenga varathukku. Oru pattharaikkah vantha rumba nal-
lathu illa oru patthu nimisho vara minna pinna. Patthu naapathukku correcta thodankiduvo.
Eenaa pathinoru mukkalukku irankki poittaangka.
Manthira Paatham.2 We did see it last week? Last week we saw? In that, we read the first and
last part. It’s good to read the whole passage. It is called the power passage. In this passage,
there is some power in it. Every other passage has some power but this passage was sung to
the Paandiyan king when he was sick. This passage has the power to heal sickness. That is
why this passage is highlighted.

Two points in this transcript merit special emphasis: the reference to the Pandyan king and
the power of healing. The Pandyan kingdom existed in Southern India from pre-historic
times until the 15th century, and its polity, culture, and kings are eulogized in Sangam

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462 Viniti Vaish

literature, which is canonical for the Tamil language. Through this reference the priest
is teaching his Indian students about one of the best-known periods in the history of the
Tamil people. By emphasizing that correct pronunciation actually has the power of healing,
he is referring to the nature of ritual speech in Tamil and Sanskrit, where form is more
important than meaning. Schiffman (1998) refers to this when he writes that, in Sanskrit,
correct pronunciation is most important because words have the power to effect action.
If the mantra is recited correctly, then God himself will appear. It is this aspect of Tamil
that the priest is emphasizing. Thus the priest’s explanations point to the use of Tamil as
‘cultural ballast’ for young Indians – exactly as Singapore’s language policy meant it to be.
It is important to note here that Tamil is also the language of religious classes for
Tamil Muslims in Singapore. Saira Banu, a quiet Tamil Muslim girl, attends classes on the
Qur’ān once a week with her cousins and aunts. During these classes the ustazah, or female
religious teacher, reads passages from the Koran in Arabic and explains the meaning in
Tamil. Though the children are expected to write notes in Tamil, Saira Banu finds it easier
to write in English. She confided to the research assistant interviewing her that she often
hides her answers when the ustazah walks by because she will be scolded for writing in
English.

Language in religious practices in the Chinese community

An illustration of language and religion in one community is that of two Chinese children,
the first from a Buddhist and the other from a Christian family. Xiao Shen’s family goes
every Saturday night to a friend’s house for Buddhist prayers. Xiao Shen and his family are
Mandarin-dominant, except when his aunts are scolding him in Hokkien. On one particular
Saturday, Xiao Shen and his family, which included his aunt and uncle, arrived for prayers
around 9.30 p.m. A ‘master’ was leading the prayers in Pali and people were chanting after
him. The Pali3 prayers were written in Mandarin in both Chinese characters and Hanyu
Pinyin, which is the romanized form of Chinese characters. All worshippers referred to
paper copies that they were holding in their hands.
Chris Tan is an English-dominant Chinese child from a Roman Catholic family. His
mother, Madam Tan, who speaks both English and Mandarin, values Mandarin and passes
this along to her children: ‘So I always tell them you must always find back your root . . . .
We will make a trip to China just to immerse them in Mandarin because there is where you
know where you come from’ (Visit 1, Christopher Tan). Madam Tan also says, regretfully,
that Chris usually uses English and not Mandarin to converse.
Transcript 3. A religious class in a Christian church. Chris is in a religious class in his
church conducted by Michael, an Indian. This was a class primarily for children in Chris’s
age group (10–11). The exchange below, recorded on video, shows that Mr Michael is an
entertaining religious teacher. His discourse and the texts he uses are all in English. The
following is an excerpt from this class:

Mr. Michael: OK, stop there. Are we all promised a place in the Kingdom of God?
Students: Yes.
Mr. Michael: Eh, how come this side has no ‘yes’? I don’t know if it is in the book, lah. I read this
statement: ‘good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere’. (laughs). Oops sorry. I hope you are
not in the bad girl section.
Gabriel: They are not.


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 Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore 463

Mr. Michael: Good boy. Don’t you all want to marry him one day?
Gabriel: No!
Mr. Michael: You are not supposed to answer, they are supposed to answer. What do you say: ‘No’? Stop
digging your nose! I need to drill!
(whole class is laughing)

While observing this class, the research assistant noted, ‘Although there were a lot of
Chinese around, but I hardly heard them speak in Mandarin or Dialect’ (fieldnotes, day 3,
p. 1). She also observed: ‘The notices here mostly contain matter related to the religion and
mostly are in English language’ (fieldnotes, day 3, p. 1). Thus in the case of the Chinese
there are two main languages: Mandarin for the Buddhists and English for the Christians.
Though Mandarin and Pali do not have common roots, they are the key languages for
Buddhists in Singapore. As such, these languages are cultural ballast for the Chinese
Buddhist community. For the Christians in Singapore, English seems to function both as
cultural ballast, as seen in the values training Chris receives at his church, and as a global
language.

CONCLUSION
Castells’ idea of the bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self is resolved in dif-
ferent ways by the three ethnic groups in Singapore. For the Malays, Arabic is increasingly
the language that bridges this opposition because it is both a global language, with the
linguistic capital of links to the oil-rich Middle East, and a religious language, with the
symbolic capital of the Qu’rān. At the same time, Malay is also strongly maintained in
the domain of religion. For the Indians, Sanskrit and its use in the temples (though not
its active acquisition, as in the case of Arabic) links Indians in Singapore with the larger
Hindu community. For both Malays and Indians their mother tongues, Malay and Tamil,
are cultural ballast, and as such function to pass along and maintain cultural traditions .
The Chinese use either predominantly Mandarin or English in Buddhism and Christianity
respectively, both of which are global languages with enormous instrumental value. At the
same time, both English and Mandarin are languages through which religious values are
inculcated in children.

NOTES
1. A team of 18 was involved in executing SSS 2006, 17 of whom are women. Of the 18, 2 are consultants from outside
Singapore. Though I have written this paper I am deeply indebted to all of them for making this project possible. SSS
2006 formally ends in June 2008. All names are pseudonyms. Funding for SSS 2006 has been provided by the Centre
for Research in Pedagogy and Practice through projects: CRP22 & 23/04AL.
2. ‘Manthira Paatham’ is a story in the book studied by children who attend the religious class in the temple.
3. Pali is an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Sanskrit. The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore Team does not
have expertise in Pali; however as someone who studied Sanskrit in school in India, I can recognize many words in
Pali that are cognates of Sanskrit. For instance Pali uses words like dukkham, meaning suffering, and dhamma, which
in Sanskrit is dharma, meaning duty. The scriptures of Theravada Buddhism were written in Pali, in the first instance,
in Sri Lanka in the Sinhalese script around the first century BCE. Thereafter Pali has been written in many scripts, like
Devanagari and Brahmi, and also in roman script.

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