How far do you love your own language?

If you ever have come to Singapore and overheard the language spoken there, which they called Singlish, you might be tickled or shocked by how the Singaporeans have transformed the distinct British accent, their past colonies, into a topsy-turvy language or they call it Bahasa Rojak. However, if you cross that short Singapore strait and over the Sumatra island, you will reach Java, which you can find Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, where the people corrode their own beloved mother tongue language, Bahasa Indonesia.


One said language has a strong bond with the culture, so does this mean the Indonesians, especially the residents of Jakarta, are destroying their own culture? The teenagers began to mix up the Indonesian language with English language, even in most teenager's novels, there are numerous words written in italic. Does this mean they do not love their own language anymore?

Maybe this is en route to open Indonesia for internationalism where most of the people are able to speak English. We can clearly see that more and more foreigners are confident to live in Jakarta since many of the residents are able to communicate with them well. However, this may lead some people to perceive English as a superior language and start "betraying" their own national language. Another threat is schools which use English as their main language as the students become used to not to use Bahasa Indonesia. As they grow, they may see their own mother tongue language as an inferior language and learn it barely for passing the exams.

If the Indonesians have stained their own language, then can we say that Singaporeans have stained the English language? When I first came to Singapore, I was a bit disgusted in how they mixed English with other languages, such as word ending sentences like: meh, lah, and loh or adopting other language phrases, such as: tikam-tikam(guessing), kay poh(a busy body), and chia lat(difficult, very bad). To make matters worse, some of my classmates introduced me some words that are combined from two different languages, like agaration(estimation). This also has made me confused at the first time and thought maybe Singlish was the world's worst language ever made.

But soon I realized something: as a multi-cultural country, there are a lot of languages spoken in Singapore. And since some phrases may not be available in English language, they must have adopted their own mother tongue languages because some phrases have been commonly used. Maybe, using Singlish is one of the ways to preserve mother tongue languages in the society.

If you do not like how the Singaporeans speak English, now maybe you should look on the positive side that they are maintaining the use of their mother tongue language. But if you are thankful about the increasing number of Jakarta's residents are using English, maybe you should be remindful that they are blemishing their own mother tongue language. So, which one is better?