bobypf wrote:I have a singaporean colleague who speaks great English. He's actually one of the few really good english speaking people I've met here. He also speaks Mandarin but he says he hates it and also that everyone must learn to speak good English in the first place. He told me once that he's disgusted to hear when young singporeans speak in Mandarin between them.
that's silly, and maybe a little close-minded. why begrudge another language? what is so disgusting about hearing young Singaporeans speak Mandarin? and why pick on mandarin specifically?
the exact statistics are not at hand, but a majority of ethnic Chinese in Singapore speak Chinese at home. yet the exposure hasn't really helped singaporeans here speak better chinese. so it's not true that, as YankStuckinSuiss implied above, if more spoke chinese here the chinese will get better. in fact the same brand of localized chinese (or english, for that matter) that the government is trying to get rid of will still continue to propagate through the community. the education system that you see today only came into existence maybe at most forty years ago. so we have a whole generation of older speakers who picked up chinese/english through channels other than school, and then this form of language is passed down to the newer generations. but there is a mildly discernible difference between the chinese spoken by the generation above me and the generation below me. you can attribute that to education or government campaigns and programs. regardless of where that improvement is coming from, singapore is probably going to need a few more decades before the language spoken here will reach an acceptable standard.
still, the chinese here will probably never be anything like mainland Mandarin, surely. that'll happen when quebecois becomes français first.
Better accents. T
