When I was little, I would pick out my favourite bedtime story to read every night, tucking the book under one arm and dragging my dad or my mum’s hand with my other arm to the reading corner. At first, I always wanted to read only English books. I don’t remember why – Maybe I thought the books were better? Or maybe I was more confident reading in English? But my mum started to get worried that I was not enjoying my Tamil language as much. My mum is a Tamil teacher, so to ensure that I would enjoy reading  in Tamil just as much as I did for English, she would compile newspaper clippings, buy storybooks, bring us to movies and stick up reading charts. This all helped to make sure my growing process in reading was balanced between my languages.

By making reading fun, my parents helped me to practice my language skills. Even now I enjoy reading in all my languages!

What is the most fun thing you do in each of your languages?

Eshwaaree is a Research Assistant in the BLIP Lab, working on the Singapore Talk-a-thon as part of the Language-Mixes Project

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Today, for the International Day of Multilingualism we’ll be sharing lots of stories about multilingualism in Singapore – what it’s like to grow up in such a multilingual place, how different people feel about their different languages, and some of the core research questions we are working on as a team.

Hi, I’m Kathleen, and I have a 16 month old daughter. My husband is Italian and a psycholinguist, so discussing how our child will grow up linguistically is an interesting matter for us.

We want our daughter to be able to communicate with her grandparents, as one side speaks Italian and the other side speaks both Mandarin and Teochew. Growing up, my parents wanted my Mandarin to be good, so they did not speak to me in Teochew. Because of this I was not able to communicate smoothly with my Teochew-speaking grandparents, and I missed out on having a closer relationship with them. This is a common phenomenon in Singapore.

These days, many parents in Singapore are worried that hearing more than two languages might be too much for a baby. My parents fall into this category. Although they speak to each other in Teochew, they only speak in Mandarin to my daughter. But when we look at the science, we know that around the world, many babies grow up hearing many languages at the same time, and they do just fine! There is no scientific evidence that hearing more than two languages is bad for a baby. It is still an effort to convince my parents that it is alright to speak to my daughter in Teochew, but we are doing our best!

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At BLIP Lab we’re launching a series of investigations into how different families decide which of their languages they will speak around their babies, and how the different combinations influence language development. You can find out more about our Singapore talk-a-thon, or sign up and express an interest in joining our 500 families!

Did you know that alongside their other languages, Singaporeans speak a special kind of language called Singlish? Singlish is a ‘contact language’ that arose over hundreds of years of East/West trading through the free port of Singapore. Singlish combines words and phrases from English, Malay, Chinese Dialects and lots of languages, woven together in a unique grammar that has influences from Chinese. Although it is considered informal speech in Singapore, Singlish has its own unique structure, and can be very difficult for outsiders to learn! These days Singlish dictionaries can be found in local bookstores, and lots of Singaporeans feel a kind of Singlish pride – lah!

Preeti says: Speaking in English is common in my daily life in Singapore – I speak in English with my family, friends and even colleagues. But when I lived in Sydney for six years, I avoided the usage of ‘Singlish’ when I spoke to my professors and fellow classmates. It felt strange to speak in Singlish because it was not the norm in Australia, and I felt the need to blend in as well. 

Have you ever switched between different versions of English because of where you were or who you were speaking to? Linguists call this kind of switching ‘diglossia’ since a person speaks in two (di-) different codes (-glosses). It’s similar to bilingualism don’t you think?

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Today, for the International Day of Multilingualism we’ll be sharing lots of stories about multilingualism in Singapore – what it’s like to grow up in such a multilingual place, how different people feel about their different languages, and some of the core research questions we are working on as a team.

Hello, I’m Sakinah!

I grew up studying three languages in school, namely English, Malay and Arabic (formal). My family and I converse in Malay and English languages at home. While in school, my friends and I used to speak three languages in one sentence, and we understood each other perfectly. It was a special experience for me as nowadays I am no longer using these languages in one sentence as there is no one around me who could speak in Arabic.

There was a hilarious incident when I was younger, I was discussing with my friend about a matter and referred her as “anti”.  Anti in Arabic is used when referring to someone as “you”.  However, before my friend had the chance to reply, a nearby Auntie (an elderly woman who we refer as Auntie in Singapore) turned and responded to me!  After which, we all laughed as I explained to her that I was actually talking to my friends in a different language.

Like many other skills, learning new language takes up a lot of time and hard-work. Some people struggled and some had it with ease. However, it is worthwhile when you get to grasp the language and see the beauty of it.

The benefits of speaking or understanding multiple languages are apparent.  Personally for me, it has helped  me to widen up my outlook on life. As such I am more open and understanding of others’ different cultures. It also helped me to strengthen family bonding, and gave me the opportunity to connect with people from vastly different backgrounds. As an example, I am using Malay language to communicate with my grandparents as they feel more comfortable speaking in Malay than in English.

Sakinah is a Research Assistant in the BLIP Lab, working on the Singapore Talk-a-thon as part of the Language-Mixes Project

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This week, for the International Day of Multilingualism we’ll be sharing lots of stories about multilingualism in Singapore – what it’s like to grow up in such a multilingual place, how different people feel about their different languages, and some of the core research questions we are working on as a team.

Young infants are amazing! When they are first born they can hear a wide range of sounds. Since their ears don’t know what language they will go on to learn, they are born with the capacity to learn any of them! For the first 6 months all babies have essentially the same hearing – they find some sounds easier to hear than others. For example, the ‘ee’ sound in ‘cheese’ and the ‘oo’ sound in ‘soup’ are easier to hear than the ‘a’ sound in ‘cat’. By around 6 months of age, babies’ hearing begins to change in line with the sounds they hear around them. For some sounds, babies become better at hearing differences that were originally hard to tell apart – an example of this is that American English hearing babies become better at hearing the difference between ‘r’ and ‘l’, since the language they hear around them contains lots of these sounds [1]. For other sounds, babies become worse at hearing differences between sounds that were originally easy to tell apart – an example of this is that American English hearing babies become worse at picking out the difference between two sounds in Tamil, even though the differences were initially easy to hear [2]. In this case it’s because the American babies are only hearing one of the two sounds.

This means that babies’ hearing becomes ‘tuned’ to the sensory structure of the languages spoken around them. Most of what we know about this process comes from babies hearing only one language. For these kiddies, tuning is in place by the end of the first year of life.

What about kids hearing more than one language? Surely that’s a harder process? Well guess what? Bilinguals get extra-time before the end of the language learning game – recent studies have shown that bilingual babies have an extended sensitive period compared to children hearing only one languages [3].

Image by mengyan wang from Pixabay

1. Kuhl, Stevens, Hayashi, Deguchi, Kiritani & Iverson, 2006
2. Werker, Gilbert, Humphrey & Tees (1981)
3. Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés (2003)

In the process of acquiring my languages, I have noticed a few similarities between them – even though English, Malay, and Arabic are not closely related! This matter sparks curiosity in me to figure why do languages sometimes share a word that sounds the same? And what is the term for it?

Apparently, these are known as loanwords! It is a term to describe words that we adopted from other languages.

For instance, there are words from Malay that have been adopted into the English language such as “Orang Utan”, and “Satay,” and the names of local fruits, like “Rambutan”, and “Durian”! We can also see this in words like “Kopi” which means “Coffee” in Malay. This means English has borrowed Malay words, and Malay has borrowed English words too!

Similarly, the Malay language has also taken a few words from Arabic such as “kerusi” in Malay, which sounds very similar to “kursiyun” in Arabic. They both carry the same meaning: “chair”. English has also borrowed from Arabic over the centuries, with words like “algebra”.

So you can see, where all of these languages come together in multilingual communities, they behave like good neighbours loaning their words like linguistic cups of gula melaka*!

*gula melaka: palm sugar (Malay)