earthfriendly wrote:
And for all Singlish advocates out there, I hope you never have to study or work overseas where you need to use English. Or you will find yourself having to learn a new system of pronuciation and speech so others can comprehend what you are saying
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not really. you probably speak mandarin most of the time in singapore and english only when talking to another race, which is probably why you have that problem.
earthfriendly wrote:
I believe the Singers' penchant for Singlish is due to their profound need for a sense of identity and rootedness. Growing up in SG, I feel a sense of rootlessness and being lost. This void results in many social problems e.g. lack of direction, blindly following what others are doing like keeping up with the Joneses, lack of confidence, preoccupation with material goods etc....
SG has been described as a society without a soul. One way to find one's soul is to go back to one's cultural roots. SG being a young nation does not have an evolved culture of its own. However, each group can always fall back on its own ethnic culture. Hopefully in the process, one becomes more enriched as a human and has less need for materialism and the tangibles.
that doesnt really have anything to do with this topic which is language.
in singapore, people can take the effort to learn english well in school and speak well if they wanted to. the thing is, everyone in singapore speaks their own language when talking with ppl of their own race, eg chinese speak mandarin with each other, malays speak malay with each other, only using english or singlish when speaking to people of other races. if you want singaporeans to start speaking better english, then you might as well remove all the other languages and force people to speak english all the time, which is not going to happen. the root of the 'problem' (i don't really think it is) is much deeper than just say, forcing people to speak better english or hiring 'ang mohs' to teach the students.
and anyway, why are you guys picking on singlish? i mean, why take things so seriously? if someone wants to speak singlish, so be it. it's their own choice, what happens when they go overseas and god forbid speak 'bad english' is their own problem. i've been travelling around the world for a few years now, i've met so many people from different countries, and the last thing you think in your mind is 'oh my god what bad english!'. it's about communication, if you can communicate, then what's the problem? when i was speaking with some friends from iran, russia, italy, they can barely speak english, i don't care about that! it's about communication. if you take english so seriously, that's your own problem. in this world, the bigger picture is communication. i don't understand why is it that someone would look down on others just because their english is not up to their standards. if you can judge a person based on that, then good for you.