The Linguists' View of Languages is really different.

I learnt something in my lecture on Thursday afternoon. I have been reading diligently and have been applauding the linguists' view that there are no "good" or "bad" languages, that standard languages are man-made prototypes. I took a good two weeks to tune myself to the truth and the notion that spoken language existed long before the written, and no matter how long the chinese writing system has been in place, when one goes back to the history, the fact remains that in a time not so long ago, the tongues under the big umbrella of  the Chinese language family were really separate tongues. 想一想，秦始皇统一中原之前，谁都不是一家的？

I should have seen it coming then but it still hit me real hard when the proposition was presented in class. My Prof was using the case of HK English as an example to discuss the notion of World Englishes and language varieties.

It's a wonder...in the Linguistis' view of World Englishes, when grammatical mistakes are systematic enough, they are classified as a variety of English. I know we usually "discuss something", not "discuss about something" ; my teacher taught me long ago that it is "a bowl of noodles" not "a bowl of noodle". That was listed as a trait of HK English. I will probably accept "discuss about something" , but what about "have a close look TO Amah Rock", " multilingualism is need for a country" ? We have to draw the line somewhere, don't we?

On a facebook discussion later on, E reminded me that HK English and Singapore English are recognised as creoles, not standard languages. It was a good reminder. Perhaps that was why i thought that the Prof pushed it a bit too far in the lecture, when he asked those of us who teach, if we would mark the errors in the HK article wrong, or just leave it there and mark for content instead.

Some nodded their heads like me, while others shook theirs.

If one reads the grammar part of the wikipedia entries for HK English and Singapore English, one would easily understand my discomfort as a teacher. Prof said when he was in HK, he had to make some adjustment and decide that marking for content in his top HK students' assignments is more important. I agree with that. However, he didn't quantify the question he posted us and he didn't really take a stand when I posed the question of where to draw the line? I proposed that the ideology of just marking for content in the university is totally plausible but it may not be so for teachers teaching secondary and primary school kids.  Perhaps, I should have cited the example of how English teachers in Singapore uses a focused method of marking for either content or language only for some of the written assignments. Nonetheless, I didn't want to answer my own question, as I really wanted further views from Prof, and I wasn't sure if this methodology was applied in most of Singapore schools. Anyway, I did a bit of research when I was back and I really can't imagine Prof wanting to mark essays from Singapore students, written with that kind of grammar cited in the wiki page above.  

Certainly, I do understand that he was coming from a sociolinguist point of view that language varieties should be recognised as that was how languages evolved and how the Romance languages broke away from Latin. As a matter of fact, I rememberd clearly that afternoon in Beida, when my Prof in China told me that is nothing wrong with my sense of the language when I feel that the "蛮”in "满/蛮好的"could also be used to express negative terms, though older corpus showed that it is usually used with positive terms. She explained that language is always evolving and if in Singapore's context, we do say "蛮差的"， "蛮糟的"，then we can't say that it is wrong, because language usage is really 约定俗成, ie when things becomes a convention, it would eventually be deemed as acceptable. (a search online today, will probably show that the use of "蛮”has indeed evolved! ) 

In addition, it should be clarified that the examples given on the wiki page for Singapore English is actually more of Singlish. The linguists studies on Singapore English are more of what one gets from the HK English page, where we differ in our use of prepositions, articles etc. Nonetheless, I can't imagine how would he react if I try to submit my essay in overt Singapore English. Obviously, I ain't going to risk my marks. Never die before arh?