Johann Low

金曜日, 11月 21, 2003

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Ytd when i was queueing up for my fried rice, i overheard 2 pri sch gals asking them mum how to say " put e chilli aside" in Mandarin. I was kinda taken aback by disgust. These 2 gals are at least Pri 3 and they cant speak simple Mandarin ?

I dun think this is only e case in Singapore but there was a hot topic regarding this issue some time back. Some Singaporean Chinese have e bloody cheek to say Mandarin is a difficult language and its a torture to learn it. So wtf have their parents been teaching them ? Whatever their bloody excuses are, Mandarin is their mother tongue and they bloody well learn it !

Another thing which made me to realise is how mixed up the "English" and "Mandarin" are in Singapore. After in working in BC, those "English" puntuated with "lahs,"lohs","mahs","le(s)","de(s)" and what have u can make me squirm...a fine illustration is e entry below. ( this is not the ultimate, another similar entry is the killer which can be located in my archives ) No doubt its a very localised "language" but it certainly dun reflect well. Worse case is having adults ( eg 24 yr olds ) :P speaking them like nobody's biz.

Does anyone realise our Mandarin is something which alot of Mainland Chinese n Taiwanese dun understand ? Most likely, e sole reason is we use too many English terms in our "mandarin" Its kinda embarassing. I rem how e situation was like when my ex lecturer was explaining our course n e things we did in our course to a grp of visiting Mainland Chinese.

Singapore is indeed a multi racial society. Its so "multi" that each individual race dun seem to have its roots anymore esp e Singaporean Chinese. E local Chinese cant speak proper Mandarin and English. Even e dialects, do u know that Hokkien is a written form of language in Taiwan and its call min nan yu ? Simply listen to the song in Channel U "Pi Li Huo" n look at the lyrics, u will realise how diff Taiwanese "hokkien" is to e local one. E hokkien in local context is prob used for scolding people and it certainly looks like it.

"nb, cb, ccb, knn, knnbccb" n e list goes on. :P

elow at 1:17 午前 |

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