Television And Language

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Phua Chu Kang is a sitcom that is shown weekly on Television Corporation of Singapore�s (TCS) Channel Five. Its run of the second season ended late last year. It revolves around a 38-year-old contractor, who has successfully built his own contracting and renovation business from scratch. He is proud of his business and thinks of himself as the best contractor in Singapore and JB.

Phua Chu Kang’s wife is Rosie, an ex-lounge hostess. He lives with his gossipy yet endearing mother Madam Ang and his brother Chu Beng, his wife Margarat and their son Aloysius. Constantly berating his choice of a wife, Chu Kang’s mother constantly compares him with his architect brother, Chu Beng. The brothers, however, get along well although they are very different in character and personality. Chu Kang saw Chu Beng through university with his construction business. Chu Beng designs while Chu Kang builds. Chu Beng's sophisticated wife, Margaret, on the other hand, finds Chu Kang and Rosie intolerably uncouth and tries not to associate herself and her family with them.

The sitcom came under fire in the debate about Singlish and Standard Singapore English in July 1999. Phua Chu Kang is seen as a sitcom that unabashedly employs and promotes the use of Singlish. The "broken" English used by Phua Chu Kang and his wife Rosie is contrasted to the proper standard spoken by Phua Chu Beng and his wife.

In his National Day Rally Message 1999, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong urged Singaporeans not to mimic the Singlish used by Phua Chu Kang, but to speak a global brand of English. He had also suggested to TCS that the Phua Chu Kang character, played by actor Gurmit Singh to go for English upgrading classes.

As a result of its popularity and the adverse effects it is having on the way Singaporeans speak English, Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) has decided to tone down Phua Chu Kang’s use of Singlish. The next season would see Phua Chu Kang returning from his English upgrading class speaking proper Standard English. Prepared by: Lau Foong Yee

National Day Rally message

The Straits Times

23 August 1999

Out: Phua Chu Kang

In: Proper English

Speaking a brand of English no one else does makes it harder to go global, and the TCS sitcom has made teaching proper English more difficult, says PM.

If Singaporeans continue to speak like the television sitcom character Phua Chu Kang, the country will end up with its own brand of English that no one else can understand.

Singapore will find it difficult to do business with the rest of the world.

The solution: Go global with proper English.

Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong yesterday warned against the danger of allowing children to pick up substandard English or Singlish.

He urged Singaporeans to learn a brand of English that would be understood anywhere in the world.

This would give companies and schools here a competitve edge over those from other parts of the world.

And the key to attracting talent and teaching children proper English, said Mr Goh, was to provide a good English-speaking environment and discourage them from picking up Singlish.

First on Mr Goh’s hit-list was local TV comedy show Phua Chu Kang.

The sitcom, starring actor Gurmit Singh, had attracted much attention recently with its liberal use of Singlish.

Students, he said, are reported to be picking up catch-phrases such as "don’t pray pray" from the show.

"The students may think it is acceptable and even fashionable to speak like Phua Chu Kang," he said.

A character in the show who spoke proper English, was portrayed as a snob.

"In trying to imitate life, Phua Chu Kang has made the teacing of proper English more difficult," he said, after giving other examples of ungrammatical English heard in schools.

If Singaporeans continued in this fashion, they would end up speaking their own variety of pidgin English—one spoken only by Singaporeans and which others would find "quaint but incomprehensible", he said.

"We are already halfway there. Do we want to go all the way? We would be better off sticking to Chinese, Malay or Tamil.

"Then at least some other people in the world can understand us."

Mr Goh noted how local actor Nicholas Lee had been criticised for not speaking Singlish on the TCS sitcom, Under One Roof.

The actor’s response was that the programme was shown overseas, and if he had spoken Singlish in the script, viewers abroad would not have been able to understand him.

The local movie Forever Fever, for example, could not be released in the United States because the actors in the film spoke Singlish.

"We cannot be a first world economy or go global with Singlish," Mr Goh said.

The solution was to teach children proper English in school and ensure that they did not get into the habit of speaking broken English.

The Ministry of Education had taken several measures to achieve this.

These include revision of the English language syllabus to make the teaching more rigorous; a 60-hour course for 8,000 teachers leading to certified skills in teaching English; and campaigns to promote the use of proper English in schools.

Said the Prime Minister: "We should nurture the next generation to have higher standards of English than ourselves.

"We can help them by discouraging the use of Singlish—or at least not encourage it."

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