Failed system?

Recently read a friend's anguish blog post on the "failed" education system in Singapore.  Can't fault her for her disgust in the standard of English spoken/ written by her peers/ or whatever that she had came across. (she being a lit undergrad, naturally passionate about English language.)

To a certain extent, the advent of the Internet and the text-message has resulted in the deteriorating level of written English. Oh well.. it is not easy to master both the English language and the Chinese language. As the old saying goes - Jack of all trades, master of none.

Me = I'm a product of the old-education system whereby a selection of my cohort are given the opportunity to study both the English language and mother tongue as it's 1st language upon enrollment into one of the Secondary School under the SAP scheme... ( Think that they used to term it "EL 1 & CL1) and if I wanted to, I could take on a 3rd language as well..  Frankly, I prefer the use of mandarin compared to English, firstly, that was my sole source of spoken tongue till Primary One.. (till i was forced to learn English cuz my class - being the class with elder siblings in the school, hence the sole class with 10+ Malay students.. cuz my sch is a hokkien-clan related sch.. VERY cheena one.. Imagine.. the school actually has this incentive award - "Speak Good English" award to get the students to speak in english (rather than the mother tongue). The winner get to wear the "award" - a badge for one month? For the record, in my 6 years @ TNS, I only got it ONCE.. haha. that speaks for the level of English..  And yep, it's the worst subject in my Os, the sole B in the seas of sharp pointy alphabets.. {spoiler!)

English, though being the universal tongue, isn't a pure language too.. Click on the wiki link for details. So what's the fuss of Singaporean speaking Singlish? After all, it's like the common dialect of the nation. But yup do it at the appropriate time - such as informal gathering.. Certainly, not in those black-tie events.. or you risk being the joke of the day...

After all, we aren't natives of England, hence please don't fault us for failing to speak Queen's English or with the "much-coveted" American accent/ slang.  On the contrary, being of Asian desent, ought not we(the Singaporeans) be fluent in their respective mother tongue, be it Mandarin, Malay or Tamil?


Oh well.. although I prefer the western/english media (written/music/literature), I ain't potato nor banana.. (Potato - a term describing the chinese taking to the western culture etc) Banana - with similar meaning, just that it's more vivid - Banana - yellow skin, white flesh. Very apt  description of a non-chinese speaking Chinese!

After all, language is meant for communication. Question: Which is of greater importance - to write/converse in a manner in which is free of grammatical errors (written form), or in the case of conversation - the perfection pronunciation of each & every word. Yet, not all may understand... Note: Not everyone is linguistically-inclined.

Personally, being brought up in highly cheena environment, naturally, my preferred conversing language is Mandarin. I should be able to pass off as a Taiwanese (just that my command of vocab ain't that extensive..) and yes, i do fumble with the occasional *h or without h Or the n or ng sound" And yes, the poor grammatical sentence structure of a Singaporean irks me too.. But, i won't go to the extent of correcting their pronunciation/ sentence structure right in their face - if we are purely conversing - why the hassle?  If it really get on your nerves, do it subtly... or risk irking the party you are correcting.

Perhaps that explains why I can grasp the Japanese language easier than French ( my ge module in ntu.. ) And frankly, i forgotten most of my french already... haha..

That's enough for now.... :) Man, sounds like a topic for a GP essay... haha

nah, this post not found in the multiply blog.