Tuesday, December 16, 2008

What about proper use of other languages?

Dec 16, 2008

I WOULD like to ask about other languages, especially Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

Many young Chinese Singaporeans cannot speak their mother tongue properly, especially variety show hosts and radio deejays who misread or mispronounce Chinese words. More Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin now, but in a sentence you hear a mixture of 'lor, then, but'. This is really frustrating to hear.

Singapore is fortunate to be multicultural and we have the environment to master different languages. I hope the authorities will look into speaking other languages properly as well.


Kok Mei Hui (Ms)

[I was thinking about this just this morning. I had just ordered "yi ke lor mai kai, he liang ke siew mai" which was basically Mandarin mixed with Cantonese. In my defence, at two coffee shops, my order of "teh-o peng" invariably gets translated by the China workers as "teh-o Ping". The hokkien "teh-o peng" gets mangled into hokkien-mandarin.  As long as we all understand each other. :-)]

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