I REFER to Tuesday's letter by Mr K. Sabesan, 'Speakers' Corner Red Card'.

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This poor guy got it all wrong. He says "..Tamils are unhappy at the addition of new languages in sign boards..". No Tamils are unhappy at the deletion of Tamil. Tamils will never object to addition of more languages. He has never followed the subject at all it seems. I believe this fellow belongs one 'group' from Chennai which always insults Tamils even though 'their' mother tongue is also Tamil.

I dare the govt to remove the malay signages at the airport. Will they do it? Definitely not. They know for sure that several IDD calls will be made to Afghanistan if they trampled upon the malays' rights.

I agree with Mr.Ganeshamoorthy's views in general and in particular the emphasis on the need for Singaporean Indian students to perform well in schools and the need for mind set change in our community leaders.

I would like to add few points here. Tamil Teachers Association and its members in addition to promoting the Tamil language through teaching and other means, they must rope in Maths , Science & other subjects teachers and help weak students and slow learners and late developers from pre-primary and primary school classes. It is time our community leaders rope in more youngsters ( from born and bred Singaporeans as well as new comers who has empathy for the locals who are not doing well and real passion for uplifting the educational achievements of the local Indian students ) into leadership positions in community organisations, temples, churches, mosques and so on.

I may be wrong, but my perception of many of our community leaders and their actions are they are more interested in holding the positions for a long time, they want to attend community functions as VIPs, and also want to gloat about the recognition they won as community leaders from the authorities.

As Mr. Ganeshamoorthy pointed out it is time for mindset change. The Indian community should act fast and make use of the opportunity the government provides and new ones they create with more focus on pre primary and primary schools education.

I state categorically that Mr Retnam has gotten the facts wrong. Firstly, I'm a full-bloodied Singaporean, and one whose passion for the Tamil culture knows no bounds. Secondly, I was only commenting on what I perceived as a misdirected manner in which a few Tamils were castigating our Government for including Japanese signages at the airport without the inclusion of Tamil signages. I stand firmly in my believe that those who clamour for such external facades should have a genuine concern for enhancing the Tamil culture through enhancing the lot of Tamil students who really are not performing in our schools and junior colleges. The fact that Tamil students have not got a President scholarship for so long shows that Tamil students are really under-performing; my question is shouldn't Tamils focus on this more urgent task at hand rather than clamouring for some puerile sentimental requests from government that has already done and continues to do so much for Tamil culture in Singapore.
S Ganesamoorthy

Ganesamoorthy

You are spot on about Retnam Thillainathan's habit of getting his facts wrong on not just this topic, but a whole host of others on different threads in this DB. He also reacts with sarcastic jibes whenever another poster corrects him.

Retnam stated that Brazil won the World Cup 7 times, & after I pointed out that it was 5, he wrote that I was behaving like "a mother-in-law"! Retnam also incorrectly stated that Christians murdered a Hindu religious leader in Orissa, India recently, & went on to blame the Christians of causing the rampaging Hindu mobs to murder Christians in revenge. It was, in fact, the Maoists who murdered the Hindu leader, & they even issued a press statement claiming responsibility for the killing. Retnam should really check his facts before mouthing off.

#5 - just curious: how has the sg govt been promoting tamil (culture)?

Promote Muthu,s curry, Jalan Kayu's prata, Serangoon Rd,Mustafa,drinking todi under a coconut tree and play sor tai ti la.

As I have mentioned in my last discussion board. ST should seriously look into to remove this person XiaoWei from this discussion board. This character writes rubbish most of the time.

It may not have anything to do with self-esteem or spurring better performance, but as an official language, I do support the proposition that Tamil should be included in official signages which features the other official languages of Singapore.

Otherwise, it might as well be dropped as an official language. What would be the point?

An official language means a person who is literate in no other language but that language should be able to have ready access to information that is made available in the other official languages.

As for Japanese being included for business reasons, I understand the rationale too well.

Japanese had never been discouraged from flocking to various tourist destinations around the world such as Paris, London, Rome and New York despite the lack of Japanese language signs along the roads or airports etc., in those cities.

The difference for Singapore is that Singapore's attractions pale in comparison to other attractions in popular tourist destinations around the world, and Singapore has to use every means possible as a compensation to earn the favour of the Japanese tourists, by making things as convenient as possible, even if it may not actually be necessary.

I had written about this to STPB before, and pointed out the exclusive presence of Japanese language along with the official languages in STPB signs around Singapore might send a different message to the growing number of non-Japanese tourists.

The STPB sent a reply that in terms of practicality, tourists from South Asian countries are generally literate in English, and those from Indonesia/Malaysia would benefit from the Malay signs. And of course, those from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong benefits from the Chinese signs.

Yes, I do observe the truth that travellers from South Korea are generally better in English than their Japanese counterparts.

But the exclusive inclusion of Japanese in the signages could still be sending out messages that is questionable, such as:

1. Travellers from Japanese are too inept to deprived of signs in their language, or
2. The Japanese are Singapore's most favoured tourists - and we're not just telling this to the Japanese tourists but to every non-Japanese tourists who came to Singapore. What a welcoming message this would send to the non-Japanese tourists.