English speakers leave Singapore in droves: Minister

In an effort to appear plugged in to current affairs, here's a post about the ongoing Speak Good English Campaign (or SGEM, which is not to be confused with the Go-the-Extra-Mile for Service movement, or GEMS). Despite that I don't want to establish a tradition of criticising spoken English because 1) rules for spoken words is (and should) be looser than written text, 2) for this reason, throwfurther is dedicated to written rather than spoken English, and 3) nitpicking already is a road well-travelled.

Anyway, the prepared text of Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew's speech at the Launch of SGEM offers an interesting specimen of bad English we can take a look at. I note that Lui's actual speech was improvised, and so would be somewhat different from the linked text--and irrelevant to this blog.

Paragraph 6 reads,

Singapore’s demographic landscape is changing fast. In 1996, 1 in 3 pupils in Primary One came from homes where English was the main language. Now, 1 in 2 pupils in Primary One speak mostly English at home. However, we realise that many Singaporeans are not aware that they are not speaking Standard English. This in turn impacts the way their children pick up English.

Wordiness and the tacky use of "impact" aside, here's an example of that vulgar desire to impress by means of big words.

"Demographic landscape" is just meaningless, inflated padding. First of all, population and geography are clearly too related in meaning to pair up without muddling. ("Did you leave move from Hougang to Jurong West because of the recent earthquakes?") More obviously, it isn't actually our population that's changing--it's our use of language that's changing. ("Nah, I just had enough of Mr Low Thia Khiang's English.")

More important than an conscious effort to get our tenses, articles and subject-verb agreements right, I think, is the conscious effort mean what we say.

Microsoft Word is smarter than you

When I first used Windows-based word processors in Secondary School (Ah, Lotus AmiPro, how I miss you), I quickly formed a love-hate relationship with its Spell and Grammar checker: I loved the former, and hated the latter. The psychological pathology was all there--Spell Check fixed my horrible spelling and thereby preserved my dignity, while Grammar Check appeared to be so completely off its rocker that I could laugh, NTU Engineering graduate-like, that computers were completely stupid without intervention from its superior human users. (Deep Blue hadn't stirred my metaphysical insecurities yet at the time. And I hadn't started working life as a journalist.)

Years of using Word processors and copy-writing later, I think some repentance is in order. Actually, the average Singaporean is better off trusting the green wiggly line of Microsoft Word than their own English skills. The cold fact is, written English in Singapore plain sucks.

The horrors of bad English I have encounted plenty, but my uncaffeinated mind allows me to recall one for now. Take, for example, the difference between that and which. If you typed the sentence, "The word processor which is used most often is WordPerfect," in Microsoft Word, the program would have asked you to change it to "processor, which" or "processor that" The issue seems horribly trivial at first, since most people (here) would pass over it without blinking. It is, after all, a silly piece of pedantry that says there must be a comma before "which", but there's no need for one before "that".

So let's consider the difference between

The rules of English grammar, which are impractical, should be ignored.

and

The rules of English grammar that are impractical should be ignored.

(Source)

Anyway, this blog will be some sort of my personal crusade against bad English. Though I honestly think it's not possible to run myself out of a job doing this. Heh.

Urgh.

Yes I did remember to do a spellcheck on this post.