English is not our language

Publié le par charloroco

in SIngapore. One of my colleague (Chinese Singaporean) told me one day :

" Yes we use English just for communicating with others..." Yes I always hear my collegues speak Chinese around me...I don't think I will communicate with them a lot!!!!! Oh yes maybe, "hi,bye,smile...". I don't know why but if you want to work in Singapore, you should learn some Mandarin. They speak English but this is not their first language. Maybe they are reserved so they daren't discuss with u...

Sometimes it remind me Malta...an island where people speak Maltese and English...

Ah If Malay and Tamil hadn't  lived in Singapore, the Island-Country would have been a sort of "Taiwan"?Oh yes prolly richer.

Yes I have many questions to ask!

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Commenter cet article
L
Lin
14/03/2007 23:14
Well, in case you didin't know, Taiwan's native inhibitants are not chinese. They are the local aborigines. In China, il existe aussi des "aborigines" qui semble chinois, mais ils ne sonts pas chinois.
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C
charloroco
16/03/2007 03:55
yes but there are many chinese with Tchanf Tchai tchek (dun remember his name lah) who fleed the Mao's communism!
L
Lin
14/03/2007 23:11
Well the fact is, english is totally our first language. Our history is really short, and there's been alot of changes in our educational system. There's been a time where there's a different between "chinese school" and "english school", which produced "chinese educated individuals" and "english educated individuals". However the government had decided to change this, and from the late 70s, every school in singapore use english as the medium of language to teach all subjects, and hence resulting in english being our first language. It's a same to note that our "mother tongue" is infact our second language. There's a total generation gap here. Majority of the young generation can communicate in english, it's just a matter of whether they want to or not. And I'm sure your collegues are pulling your leg. Maybe it's only that small group of them who uses chinese to communicate, but they are totally fine with english too. So they are just trying to make a "signature" here. When I'm with my friends, I communicate in chinese too, but I'm perfectly fine if my friends switched to english in the middle of the conversation. This is the uniqueness of the singaporean culture. We speak in "rojak" mixture of languages.
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C
charloroco
16/03/2007 03:50
yes bilingual...<br /> !
L
Lin
13/03/2007 20:20
Firsty, you're so .... so... wrong about Taiwan and us... We are very different.<br /> Second, Indian speak Tamil, Tamil is a language. And Malays are the natives here in Singapore in case you didn't know. <br /> Last but not least, english IS our first language. We can speak proper english, it's just that we don't feel like it... haha :P
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C
charloroco
14/03/2007 01:53
I mean That Singapore would have been another country where there are only Chinese in an island. An island like Taiwan! Of course u haven't the same culture, the same Chinese language! <br /> I knew that Malays were the first inhabitants...Now it has changed!<br /> I dun think English is your first language....!Those who don't speak Chinese have to use it.