For one of projects in university, I decided to use Alfian Sa'at's Malay Sketches as one of the books that'll help me with research. It has a wide range of stories, and each of them carry a sentiment of the Malay Muslim life in Singapore. It has grown to be one of my favourites, and I'd say myself fortunate to have met Alfian, and have him sign my copy of the book.

This afternoon I read one of his stories again, "A Howling". It's about a woman who after observing that her neighbour's maid is Muslim, she believes her neighbour to be unfair and unreasonable as he tasks his maid with taking care of a dog. It's written so simply, so brief. The amount of words used are economical yet impactful and effective. It's not my first time reading it and I still sometimes get taken aback by how poignant his stories can be. I don't even relate to "A Howling" but I'm still left with my own provocative and reflective thoughts after I finish it.

I suppose this is of the many reasons why I admire the writing of Alfian Sa'at so much. Even with just a few words he's able to evoke a powerful reaction, especially so when the stories he writes about have to do with my own community. I can only wish to do the same.

In my Singapore Literature module this semester (my favourite mod of this sem), we study Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh. This particular text, in many ways, both mends and breaks my heart, and it's mostly to do with the fact that it touches on deculturalization.

According to Wikipedia, deculturalization refers to the "destruction of the culture of a dominated group and its replacement by the culture of the dominating group." 

So that's that. When someone, especially of a minority ethinicity and race, shed their culture, customs, and language away, and replaces all that with those of a majority's, which supposedly seem more appealing, intelligent, and strong, then it can be said that they have been deculturalized. For me personally, the former would refer to my Malay culture, and the latter would refer to white culture (because I'm not yet entirely informed what exactly white culture entails, I refer to just the English language).

As I sat through the lecture, I was brought back to my early madrasah days, when whenever my friends and I would converse in English, there would never be a single tinge of Singlish. It would be impeccable, and almost entirely grammatically sound. And I liked that. I liked speaking and reading and writing in English. It became my strongest language, and (unfortunately) it still is. 

I say 'unfortunately', because in that process of appreciating English, and it pains me greatly as I admit this, I neglected my Malay. It's not to the terrible extent of not wanting to speak it, nor did I cringe whenever people used it, it was just that I was uncomfortable with it. And that discomfort is enough to shame me. It doesn't roll out of my tongue as fluently as English does, it felt janggal. Awkward. And, fun fact, I learnt the word janggal from my peers when they told me how janggal I sounded whenever I spoke Malay.

Deep down, it always bothered me that I wasn't as proficient in my own mother tongue as I was in English. Because I loved Malay, I never disliked it or felt ashamed by it, I've always been fond of it. And, when I'm in my most depressed state, when I talk to myself, when I'm in my most private and personal state, when I talk to God, Malay is the language that breathes out of me. 

And yet, I still am very far from being proficient in it. Even as I type this out, it is more than clear that the language I'm most articulate with in expressing my thoughts is not Malay, it's English. It bothers me, it really does.

Though it's hard, I strive to improve my language, my bahasa, my Malay. I wish to never, ever be like Humphrey Lim, who worships the English culture as he rids himself of his own Chinese values. I do not wish to pride myself solely of the language of my own ancestors' colonialists. I wish to be effectively bilingual, and able to have Malay flow out of me as smoothly as English, or even better. Because that's who I am – I am Malay.

And with that, I end with the framework of Breaking the Tongue, an excerpt from the late Lee Kuan Yew's 1978 National Day Rally speech:

A person who gets deculturalised—and I nearly was, so I know this danger—loses his self-confidence. He suffers from a sense of deprivation. For optimum performance a man must know himself and the world. He must know where he stands. I may speak the English language better than the Chinese language because I learnt English early in life. But I will never be an Englishman in a thousand generations and I have not got the Western value system inside; mine is an Eastern value system. Nevertheless, I use Western concepts, Western words because I understand them. But I also have a different system in my mind.

A non-English person can speak only English, read only English, write only English, breathe only English, but they can never, in a thousand generations, ever be English.