I read Mr Luke Lu’s commentary, “Can English be a Singaporean mother tongue?” (July 15), with interest.

I would agree with his notion of recognising English as one of our mother tongues. I was brought up to speak and write English properly. Thankfully, I turned out all right, and he would consider me one of those who use English as their de facto language.

However, it has historically never been our native language and we must recognise that. The British may have their dialects, but the English language is part of their societal make-up.

For us, English was a lingua franca among different races and it also helped us to reach out to the world when doing business. It was, and still is, our vehicular language. Despite it having been our medium of instruction for a few decades, I doubt that we are ready to make it our mother tongue.

The massive obstacle is that, while many of my peers in their late 20s and early 30s claim to be speaking and writing English, in reality, theirs is often a direct, literal translation of Chinese statements.

This generation grew up in a predominantly Mandarin-speaking home environment. And when young children are exposed to wrong sentence structures in a language, they tend to stick with them.

Learning a language requires one to be proficient in reading, writing, listening and speaking. It would probably take a few generations before English becomes spoken and written well enough to be considered our mother tongue.

Also, there is confusion over the definition of a mother tongue in Singapore’s education system. It usually refers to a person’s first language. However, children here learn their ethnic language as a second language, despite it being termed a mother tongue.

Finally, there is the matter of keeping one’s cultural roots. Even as Singaporeans nowadays are less proficient in their mother tongue and, at the same time, are not using proper English, let us not forget that both languages are integral to each respective community.

I bemoan that my generation has already lost the chance to learn our Chinese dialects, which would have been important in understanding our history and culture. Our mother tongues should not be now pushed into the wilderness just because we use English daily.

It is our de facto language in that sense, yet Singlish is still embarrassingly present in our everyday lives. So, until Singaporeans can speak English properly, let us not designate it a mother tongue.