Never ending story :)
ST
News: 25% say no need for Chinese to speak language
Click for the news report.
There is always always debate on making Chinese language the mandatory
"mother tongue" language for Chinese Singaporeans, which led
to many Singaporeans immgrating overseas so that their kids dont have
to study Mandarin. The interesting situation is that Singapore being a
immigrant society, made up of pple from different races, has however
chosen English as the main business language and the language to teach
subjects in schools till university due to pure economic reasons. Your
mother tongue language, depending on your race, Mandarin, Tamil or
Malay is only taught as a subject in primary and secondary school.So
you can see how proficient one's mother tongue is if you dont use it
in daily life. Some pple feel that English being the predominant
language in Singapore instead of your very own mother tongues,
alienates you from your ethnic roots, which i agree to a certain
extent, but I somehow cant help but marvel how did the government
manage to convince this multiracial population to adjust to it.
But regarding the benefits of being billingual, brings me back to the
memmories of AIESEC international conferences, where I can communicate
in English and Mandarin without a glitch, and would hit off with the
Taiwanese, China, Malaysia, and Hong Kong delegation( since i know
cantonese) instantly and at the same time have no problem expressing
myself in english or understanding all the " gua lou" ( foreigner)
haha european and american english, till this date, i feel very
thankful to my government for enforcing this billingual policy,
otherwise I would just be frustrated as hell in those conferences.
Sidelines:
Comment by my Malaysian friend on this article which made me laugh
right out! :"in malaysia, sometimes people say singaporeans think
they are whites speaking english but eat ice kachang and char kway
thew" ( singaporean food)....
News: 25% say no need for Chinese to speak language
Click for the news report.
There is always always debate on making Chinese language the mandatory
"mother tongue" language for Chinese Singaporeans, which led
to many Singaporeans immgrating overseas so that their kids dont have
to study Mandarin. The interesting situation is that Singapore being a
immigrant society, made up of pple from different races, has however
chosen English as the main business language and the language to teach
subjects in schools till university due to pure economic reasons. Your
mother tongue language, depending on your race, Mandarin, Tamil or
Malay is only taught as a subject in primary and secondary school.So
you can see how proficient one's mother tongue is if you dont use it
in daily life. Some pple feel that English being the predominant
language in Singapore instead of your very own mother tongues,
alienates you from your ethnic roots, which i agree to a certain
extent, but I somehow cant help but marvel how did the government
manage to convince this multiracial population to adjust to it.
But regarding the benefits of being billingual, brings me back to the
memmories of AIESEC international conferences, where I can communicate
in English and Mandarin without a glitch, and would hit off with the
Taiwanese, China, Malaysia, and Hong Kong delegation( since i know
cantonese) instantly and at the same time have no problem expressing
myself in english or understanding all the " gua lou" ( foreigner)
haha european and american english, till this date, i feel very
thankful to my government for enforcing this billingual policy,
otherwise I would just be frustrated as hell in those conferences.
Sidelines:
Comment by my Malaysian friend on this article which made me laugh
right out! :"in malaysia, sometimes people say singaporeans think
they are whites speaking english but eat ice kachang and char kway
thew" ( singaporean food)....
3 Comments:
Correct, Singaporean Gov might be very much visionary to train this generation to speak good English. However, a "half-tone" (slam in Chinese, meaning things not be done precisily/exactly) Chinese or English might not be a good idea. In terms of spelling, acsent and vacabulary, etc. Well, that's just my thought. Being bilingual is very cool, but being a bilingual speaking precise language might be even cooler. :)
By Vega, At 4:41 PM
yah huns, its not perfect of course, thats why our zealous government are having campaigns like the "Speak Mandarin", or more recently the "Speak Good English" campaign heh
By Ying, At 5:14 PM
Even though here in Thailand, we are not multi national. Still, nowadays i think we do need the campaign likes "Proper Thai" or "Good English" as well.
;-)
Miss ya dear
Weaw
By Weaw, At 12:11 PM
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