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30/08/07

Dr.Subramaniam Thinnapan -Publications listed at National University of Singapore - South Asian Studies

"...As with any journey, one has to start with the first step - usually a small step. In the Tamil diaspora's case, we have taken several long strides in the short time so far. We now have to chart the course for a long journey. However, in true Internet spirit, market forces will decide the fate of this peregrination. The Tamil community is fortunate, as it is resource rich in terms of knowledge, technology, culture and creativity which are critical success factors in the webworld. Perhaps the three elements that will shape Tamil Internet are community, content, and commerce. In a world of simultaneous aggregation and disaggregation, the Tamil community should take advantage of aggregation to leverage its not inconsiderable strength of 65 million members. Daunting as it may sound, the objective of making Tamil a mainstream language on the net is both practical and achievable.."

Singapore Thirumurai Manram

"This paper explores the translocal forms of citizenship amongst members of the Sorrapallam village and fellow Karkatha Vellalar caste members now based in Singapore. Like all transnational communities involved in the production of locality, identity and social viability, Soorapallam villagers now based in Singapore maintain strong social and cultural ties with their village in South India. Singapore is an immigrant city-state consisting of a diverse ethnic population with the Indians making up the third major group. Since achieving independence from British colonial rule, the Singapore government embarked on the project of nation-building: to create a sense of national identity amongst the heterogeneous and largely immigrant population. Against this backdrop of nation-building, this paper critically examines the cultural location of the South Indian diaspora in Singapore, and their relationship to their home and host nation."

Singapore - சிங்கப்பூர்
- an estimated 200,000 Tamils live in Singapore -

Ethnologue report for Singapore  Republic of Singapore. National or official languages: Bengali, Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, English. 3,476,000 (1998 UN).... 90,000 Tamil speakers in Singapore (1985), 3.5% of the population, out of 111,000 in the ethnic group (1993).

 “In terms of numbers, the Ceylonese, like the Eurasians, are among the smallest of our various communities. Yet in terms of achievements and contributions to the growth and development of the modern Singapore and Malaysia they have done more than warranted by their numbers. In the early days of Malaysia’s and Singapore’s history the civil service and the professions were manned by a good number of Ceylonese. Even today the Ceylonese community continues to play a prominent role in these and other fields of civil life. For example in Singapore, today, the Speaker of Parliament is a Ceylonese. So is our High Commissioner in Great Britain. So is our Foreign Minister. In the Judiciary, in the civil service, in the University, in the Medical Service and in the professions they continue to make substantial contributions out of all proportion to their numbers. They are there not because they are members of a minority community but on the basis of merit. The point is that the Ceylonese are holding their own in open competition with communities far larger than them. They have asked for no special favour or consideration as a minority. What they have asked for – and quite rightly – is that they should be judged on their merits and that they be allowed to compete with all other citizens fairly and without discrimination. This, as far as the Singapore government is concerned, is what is best for all of us. I believe that the future belongs to that society which acknowledges and rewards ability, drive and high performance without regard to race, language or religion.” Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew

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From Tamil Language Policy in Singapore: the Role of Implementation.- Harold Schiffman -

"How endangered is Tamil in Singapore?

According to Fishman’s graded intergenerational disruption scale (GIDS), an eight-point scale of endangerment, with stage 8 the point of no return, Tamil can be located at Stage 4, “where the regional or minority language gains some official recognition and moves into mainstream formal education.” This stage presupposes that the minority language is actually used in the home and is transmitted intergenerationally, which is true for Tamil (and indeed other languages in Singapore) to some extent, but as we know from other studies, Tamil may indeed be lacking this support in many Singapore homes. But what is important here would be to determine whether measures taken by the Singapore state to strengthen the domains of Tamil, such that it moves up the ranks, e.g. to Stage 1, which is the highest level of vitality, or whether other measures taken by the state actually weaken the support for Tamil, without appearing overtly to have any relationship to language maintenance.

Grin goes on to state that for minority languages to be used, there must be ‘capacity, opportunity and desire’ to do so. This is where problems with Tamil maintenance in Singapore appear most strongly, because while the school system gives children the capacity to use the language, they need opportunities to do so, and with the lack of a territorial domain for Tamil, and given the small size of the population, opportunities are few and far between. And finally, desire, the weakest link. When Tamils are interviewed on this issue, we find that little incentive to use the language exists. The language has no economic value, and other opportunities to actively use it are few and far between—even religious use may be largely a matter of passive observation of religious practices, especially in Hinduism. Since young people lack also the incentive or opportunity to create their own slang the way teenagers in other linguistic cultures do, they are forced either to speak like their elders, or simply opt out of using the language. As Grin puts it,

“Typically, minority language speakers are bilingual. This implies that in principle, they have a choice to carry out their various activities through the medium of the majority language or of the minority language. If there is a choice, one of the conditions for the choice to be made in favour of ‘doing things through the medium of the minority language’ is therefore people’s desire (or willingness) to do so.” (Grin 2003:44)

As Grin goes on to say, minority language speakers are more dependent on the state (than are majority language speakers) to provide for the three conditions of capacity, opportunity and desire to be present. Here is where things begin to get troublesome: Grin feels that the state needs to be sure desire is facilitated, but most polities I am aware of see this as something the minority language community needs to recognize for itself, and that it is not the task of the Singapore state to provide motivation to its minorities. In the Tamil community, as far as I am aware, when desire or lack of it is discussed, the older generation generally faults the younger generation for lack of desire (especially lack of love for Tamil), and the younger generation of course rolls its eyes and replies that the older folks ‘just don’t get it.’

But perhaps the more serious problem here is the economic issue. Tamil has no economic value in Singapore, since almost no jobs exist for people who know Tamil, or know it better than they know English. To this the older generation, imbued with a love of Tamil that seems to be difficult to instill transgenerationally, reply that younger Tamils should love Tamil for reasons that are difficult to explain, or are just simply intangible. This situation calls to mind another linguistic minority situation I have studied, that of German-Americans in 19th century America (Schiffman 1976).

German-American church denominations tried to maintain the German language through the establishment of German-language schools for their parishioners’ children, and requests from congregations to deal with the fact that many younger members (known in German as die Nachkömmlinge) were becoming English speakers, were denied, ignored, or stonewalled. The German-born pastors and theologians simply could not fathom how their children and grandchildren did not nurture the same love for the German language that they had brought with them from Germany, and refused to allow the English language any domains in these churches. This had the unfortunate effect of driving die Nachkömmlinge out of these churches and into membership in English-speaking bodies, rather than making them love the German language. Perhaps the requirement among Singapore Tamils that their children should love the Tamil language as much as they do is having the same effect—driving them into the embrace of English, which they already learn in school, especially for the study of ‘practical’ subjects. The parallels between this situation and the German-American case are striking, since those schools also tried desperately to maintain some domains for German, falling back on a formula that reserved German for religious subjects (Bible study, hymn-singing, etc.) but English for math, science, and geography.

Grin again has pointed out the necessity of a cooperative approach:

There is no doubt that the behaviour of actual or potential language users is crucial for the success of any policy measure. Language use cannot be mandated, and there are many examples of well-intentioned revitalisation policies that have failed to produce any results, because of their top-down perspective, which ignored the role of actors. This does not mean that the authorities must […] make language decisions in their place. However, should we not expect the state to select measures in such a way that they actually engage actual and potential users, and result in effective minority language use? (Grin 2003:85)

One of the examples Grin cites here is that of Ireland, where attempts at revitalization went on for decades after the establishment of the Irish Republic, but were mostly unsuccessful, and have now been largely abandoned. Irish citizens did not want to give up English, and did not even feel tremendous enthusiasm about learning Irish for sentimental reasons, even if they were forced by their school systems to do so. As the European Union expands to take in new members, as it recently did, it will be interesting to see whether this new state can help its citizens to retain languages with so few speakers as Estonian, Slovenian, and Latvian, when knowledge of English or some other language will obviously prove more ‘useful.’ Given the strong role of English in Singapore, it is also questionable whether efforts to get citizens to maintain languages spoken by less than 4% of the population will be successful in the long run..." more

From Language Shift in the Tamil Communities of Malaysia and Singapore: the Paradox of Egalitarian Language Policy - Harold F.Schifmann 1996 Note: this paper was originally published in Language Loss and Public Policy, I , Garland Bills (ed.), Southwest Journal of Linguistics , Volume 14, Nos. 1-2, 1995.

Within this number, people classified as Tamil-speaking amount to about 85% in Malaysia, and 65% in Singapore, or perhaps 120,000. Some people estimate only 60%, or 115,000 speakers. But in fact, with the declines in actual native speakers as evidenced by figures in the 1990 Census (see tables), what the actual Tamil population of Singapore might be is difficult to say with any accuracy. Most of the time, declaration of `Tamil' is a declaration of Tamil ethnicity, not linguistic habits. Below I will deal with the subject of the increasing number of people classified as Tamil who are not actually Tamil speakers.

In a recent compendium of articles on South Asian immigrants in Southeast Asia (Sandhu and Mani, (eds.) 1993) over half of the articles are devoted to the question of Indian communities in Malaysia---nineteen out of a total of 37, the rest being devoted to Brunei, Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. All of them see the situation of Indians in Malaysia as somehow problematical.

Contrast this with the articles on Singapore, where the future of Indians in Singapore is described as ``not without promise." (Sandhu 1993:787, op. cit.) . In fact the future of Indians in Singapore may be more secure than the languages spoken by them; it is not clear what would happen if all Singapore Indians were to become English speakers. whether it be the preferences given to Bumiputra Malaysians² over immigrant Indians, the socio-economic conditions affecting plantation workers or the educational opportunities provided their children. In Singapore the situation is less dire, but language shift, especially among educated Tamilians, is proceeding apparently even faster than in Malaysia.

I will try in this talk is to place the issue of Tamil language and language maintenance within the larger sociolinguistic milieu in Malaysia and Singapore, and see whether we can make a prognosis for the survival of Tamil, and indeed the survival of a Tamil-speaking minority, in Malaysia and Singapore in the twenty-first century.

Origins of the Tamil Community in the area.

The Tamil situation in Malaysia and Singapore must be seen in the context of an original colonial unity---after the Napoleonic Wars, Britain ceded many of its colonial `possessions' in insular Southeast Asia to the Netherlands in exchange for Dutch concessions in South Asia and South Africa. But Britain maintained a presence in the Straits of Malacca (Singapore, Penang, Malacca) as `trading posts' of the East India Company, and expanded from there into all of Malaya, and parts of Borneo. Tamils were brought to the area as indentured laborers to do agricultural work of various sorts, but eventually predominantly on rubber estates.

They were drawn from two different segments of Tamil society---the workers were recruited from the most destitute landless laborers in Tamilnadu, while the overseers were recruited from educated, English-knowing graduates of Jaffna College, in what was then called Ceylon. It should be noted that the Jaffna Tamil spoken dialect is not mutually intelligible with Indian Tamil, though both share a diglossic `H' variety in Literary Tamil, and Jaffna Tamils learned to speak enough Indian Tamil to be able to communicate.

These two groups were thus so different, both sociolinguistically and socio-economically that they never developed any notion of having common interests. Even today there is little intermarriage between their descendants, and it is the Sri Lanka-descended Tamils who are most urbanized and educated.In Sri Lanka itself, Jaffna Tamils have no common interests with so-called Indian Tamils, who were brought from India in the 19th century to work on tea plantations; the Sri Lankan census considers them to be different categories of people, so that despite an actual population of approximately 25% Tamils (Jaffna or Sri Lanka Tamils, Indian Tamils, and `Moors'), each group is treated differently, and sees no commonality with the other.

After World War II, Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia but was `ejected' from it in 1965,Singapore rejected the Malayocentric view of Malaysia, since its population was predominantly Chinese in origin; in fact all of the larger cities in Malaysia, especially the coastal ones, have Chinese majority populations.

In Singapore, the interpretation is that Singapore was `expelled' from Malaysia, while in Malaysia, Singapore is seen as having `withdrawn' from the Federation. so for three decades their language policies have diverged---Malaysia has moved toward a Malay-dominant policy, while Singapore enshrines Chinese, Malay and Tamil as languages given special rights (alongside English). Language policy in Malaysia is a topic that cannot be openly discussed without fear of being charged under the Sedition Act of 1948.

The policy, as stated in the Constitution (Amendment) Act, 1971, is that the status of Malay as official and other languages as tolerated, ``may no longer be questioned, it being considered that such a sensitive issue should for ever be removed from the arena of public discussion." (Suffian bin Hashim, 1976:324). It is only one of those taboo issues (the place of Islam, the special status of Malays) that may not be discussed in Malaysia, for fear of disturbing certain ethnic sensibilities. Most of the writing on the topic of language policy, therefore, consists of filiopietistic articles extolling the virtues of the system, its natural fairness, its commitment to building up the national culture, and so forth.

 It can be described, but it cannot be criticized, so criticism of it only occurs outside the country. In Singapore, the language policy is openly discussed, and may be criticized, but rarely is, because it appears on the surface to be egalitarian, and therefore to not deserve any criticism.Singapore Tamils rarely criticize the language policy, because it seems so much fairer than Malaysia's policy; instead they lay the blame internally, at the feet of the Tamil teachers, the young people, their parents, the English language, the curriculum developers, or the kali yuga. Were they to assess the situation correctly, they would instead blame the housing policy.

My original research goal was to establish how the Tamils of Malaysia and Singapore were maintaining their language in the face of two differing policies, the former (Malaysia) emphasizing integration through Bahasa Malaysia and Islam, and the latter (Singapore), with a supposedly open, tolerant and `egalitarian' policy.

Since the Tamils are known for their intense language loyalty back in their South Asian homeland, I was expecting to find that their love of the language and intense language maintenance efforts, manifested in India and Sri Lanka with strong opposition to Hindi, Sanskrit and English.

The current antipathy is strongest against Hindi and is known as Hindi etirppu; the opposition to Sanskrit was stronger several decades ago, and the opposition to English is mainly to English loan words being borrowed into Tamil ( angilak kalappu), not to English as an instrument or as a language per se. The opposition to Sanskrit has had the effect of ridding the written language of almost all traces of loan words from that language; in the spoken language, where no overt rules are prescribed, Hindi, Sanskrit, English, Portuguese and other loan words abound. would result in effective language maintenance in both contexts, but more so in Singapore, where Tamil actually has `rights'. " more

From National University of Singapore - South Asian Studies  

Publications of Dr Subramanian Thinnappan

Books and monographs

Dhandayudham, Thinnappan, Tamil Kavikkovai, (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya, 1973) (in Tamil).

Thinnappan, Phonetics and Speech Training in Tamil. A package consisting of one Textbook for Primary Schools, one Textbook for Secondary Schools, Teachers Guide Audio Cassette tapes and Transparency masters (Singapore: Curriculumn Development Institute of Singapore, 1983)

Dheivanayagam, Thinnappan, Govindasamy, Manual for the Teaching of the 13 Modified Letters in the Tamil Script Occasional Paper, No.15. (Singapore: Institute of Education, 1984)

Thinnappan, Ramiah, Govindasamy, Functional objectives in language learning Tamil Language A Report on Phase 1 of the Project Institute of Education, (Singapore 1989).

Thinnappan, Ramiah, Govindasamy, Functional objectives in language learning Tamil language. A Report on Phase II of the project. Institute of Education, (Singapore 1990)

Thinnappan, Singapooril Tamil Moliyum Ilakkiyamum (Tamil Language and Literature in Singapore) (Devakottai: Theen Valliyammai Publishers, 1993)

Swami Siva Nandhi Adikalaar,Loganathan,Thinnappan (eds), Saivite Hinduism (London: Meikandar Aadheenam World Saiva Council, 1994)

Thinnappan, SP. Kaniniyum Tamil Karpittalum (Computer and Teaching of Tamil) (A Collection of 10 Research papers) Pulamai Publications, Madras (S.India) 1995 .

Thinnappan, Ramiah, Govindasamy, Seet, An Attitudinal Study of a Cross Section of Tamils in Singapore towards Tamil Language: Perception and Practice, Research Report SOA, (Singapore: NIE 1995)

Chapters in books

Thinnappan, 'Tolkaapiyattil ilakkana kuriyittyccorkal', in Agesthialingom and Murugaiyan (eds), Tolkappiya Moliyiyal (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University, 1972)

Thinnappan, 'Do type interrogative in Dravidian', in Prabakara Wariyar (ed), Malayala Bhasa: pathannal (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University, 1976)

Thinnappan, 'Case system and Sandhi'. in Agesthialingom (ed), Dravidian Case System (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University, 1976)

Thinnappan, 'Alapetai in Tamil', in Agesthialingom and Subrahmaniyam (eds), Dravidian Linguistics (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University, 1977)

Thinnappan, 'Concepts of Grammar', in Agesthialingam and Kumaraswami Raja (eds), Tolkappiyam Studies in Early Dravidian Grammars, (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai,1977)

Thinnappan, 'Nagarathars' way of Letterwriting', in Agestialingom and Karunakaran (eds), Sociolinguistics and Dialectology (SeminarPapers) (Annamalai Nagar: Annamalai University, 1980)

Thinnappan, Govindasamy, 'The Bilingual Ability (English/Tamil) of a sample of Primary 3 pupils', in Ho Wah Kam (ed), Research Papers (Singapore: Institute of Education, 1987)

Thinnappan, 'Cinkappuuril Tamil Kalvi (Tamil Language Education in Singapore)', in Sambasivanar (ed), Veezhchiyutra Tamizhagathil (Madurai: Tamil Maarudham, 1995)

Thinnappan, 'Ikkala nookkil moli karralum karpittalum (Teaching and learning of a language from the Modern point of view)', in Karunakaran and Shanmugam (eds), Working Papers in Linguistics and Literature Vol 2 (Coimbatore: Bharathiar University, 1995)

Thinnappan, 'Tamil mozhi oor aRimukam, Tamil language: An Introduction', in The Handbook of Tamil Culture and Heritage (Woodbridge: International Tamil Language Foundation, 2000)

Thinnappan, 'Nataraja Thaththuvam Dance of Siva Nataraja', in The Handbook of Tamil Culture and Heritage (Woodbridge: International Tamil Language Foundation, 2000)

Thinnappan, 'Ungal cinthanaiththiranum padaippaaRRalum vaLara - Ways to increase your capacity to think and create', in The Handbook of Tamil Culture and Heritage (Woodbridge: International Tamil Language Foundation, 2000)

Journal Articles

Thinnappan, 'A Modern Evaluation of Neminatam', in Journal of the Annamalai University (Humanities) Vol XXVII, (India, 1970)

Thinnappan, 'A Contrastive Study of Tamil and Malay Phonology (Consonant)', in Tamil oli (Malaysia, 1972)

Thinnappan, 'Writing of Text Books in Tamil – Some Problems', in Pulamai (India, 1988)

Thinnappan, 'Kaninivali Tamil (Tamil Through Computer), in Kalanciyam 5:3 (India, 1990).

Thinnappan, 'Some Aspects of Singapore Tamil' , in Pulamai 16:2 (India,1990)

Thinnappan, 'Karpittal Kotpadukalum moli karpittalum (Teaching Theories and Language Teaching)', in The Journal of Tamil Learning, Vol. 1:1 ( Madurai: International Council for Tamil Learning, 1993)

Thinnappan, 'Kaninivali Tamil Karpithal (Teaching of Tamil through Computer)', in Tamil Marutham, 4:3 (India,1994)

Thinnappan,' Karral karpittalil Cintanaippanku perum Cirappu – (Importance of Thinking Skills in teaching and learning)', in Pulamai 23:1 (India, 1997)

Thinnappan, 'Cinkai Tamil Ilakkiya Munnodi Ci.Na.Sadhasiva Pandithar (S.N Sadhasiva Pandithar, Pioneer of Singapore Tamil literature (1887))', in Pulamai, 24:1 (India, 1998)

Thinnappan, 'S.N.Sadhasiva Pandithar and his works - A Pioneer for Singapore Tamil literature', in Singa, issue 27 (Singapore, 1998)

Thinnappan, 'Kudhiraip pandhaiya laavaNi - oor aayvu ( A Study of Kudhiraip pandhaiya laavaNi)' , in KOLAM, Vol 5&6, (Singapore, July 2000)

Thinnappan, 'KuRal kaattum Kudumbam (Family depicted in Thirukkural)' 4 parts, in Namkudumbam (May-July 2000)