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Tag: English

  • Malay Man Told To Learn Mandarin When Involved In Misunderstanding With PRC Waitress WHo Doesn’t Speak English

    Malay Man Told To Learn Mandarin When Involved In Misunderstanding With PRC Waitress WHo Doesn’t Speak English

    Went to a coffeeshop in Tuas, bought a can of coke zero an a bread ask the lady at the counter how much? And she replied in Chinese, so i told her in English pleased, but she keep repeating in Chinese… in a helpless situation i give her a $2 note and she look at me with such big eyes of hers and say out loud in Chinese which i still don’t understand and ask her how much?

    At that point a customer come forward and say it is $2.20 so i give her another $2 note. The Chinese lady accepted it but she still scolded me in Chinese so i told her in English, i don’t understand a single word you say and you don’t understand a single word i say why don’t you learn English so that you can easily communicate with your customers, and a man came forward and say why don’t you learn chinese too?

    And i ask him why should i? He goes on to say that Singapore is 80% Chinese and the goverment should made the chinese language as the national language not English.

    With that i told him that the national language of Singapore is MALAY and that he and that lady should learn MALAY since it is the national language of Singapore.

    He was looking rather angry at that point and i was readying myself for a fight when the owner of the coffeeshop came over and say sorry for the trouble that his staff has cause. I just walk away but what worrying me is what the man had said…….

     

    Source: Pak Dolmat

  • Kiasu Is Oxford English Dictionary’s Word Of The Day

    Kiasu Is Oxford English Dictionary’s Word Of The Day

    Singlish is often frowned upon as the poorer local cousin to the Queen’s English but do you know that some Singlish words have found their way into the hallowed Oxford English Dictionary (OED)?

    Along with promoting the latest December 2014 quarterly update – which contains new words such as BYOD (bring your own device), un-PC (not politically correct) and g’day – to its online database of 60 million words, OED also selected an interesting choice for its Word of the Day on Feb 11.

    “Kiasu” was featured. It is not the only Singlish word to be accepted by the OED. Does this mean we can play the word in Words With Friends now?

    In the meantime, here is a quick primer on Singlish in the OED.

    “Lah” and “sinseh” included in OED’s online debut

    OED’s maiden online version, which was launched in March 2000, contained the Singlish words “lah” and “sinseh”. Ironically, this inclusion was announced just a month before then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong launched the Speak Good English Movement, aimed at stamping out Singlish.

    “Lah” is described as a particle used with various kinds of pitch to convey the mood and attitude of the speaker, with examples such as “Don’t act tough lah” gleaned from author and former New Paper journalist Sylvia Toh.

    According to OED, “sinseh” refers to a traditional Chinese physician or herbalist in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

    Singaporeans’ favourite catchphrase was admitted in 2007

    “Kiasu” (noun and adjective) officially made it to the big time in March 2007, together with now-ubiquitous words such as wiki (which means quick and is also short for Wikipedia) and technopreneur.

    The term is used to refer to a person “governed by self-interest, typically manifesting as a selfish, grasping attitude arising from a fear of missing out on something.”

    Here is one of the examples cited: “I know I always think mean things of Alisa about her being kiasu and pretending not to study, but..I realise that she probably also feels insecure about her own intelligence.”

    How are new words chosen for the OED?

    Once a word gets into the dictionary, it is there to stay forever. OED reportedly adopts a conservative approach to language, keeping out newfangled words until they become widely used.

    An editorial team in charge of new words actively monitors the Oxford Reading Programme (an electronic collection of short extracts drawn from a huge variety of writing) and the Oxford English Corpus (entire documents sourced mostly from the Internet). If there is evidence that a new term is being used in a variety of different sources, it qualifies as a candidate.

    These are then selected for entry based on what the team judges to be the most significant or important, as well as being likely to stand the test of time.

    Former Straits Times journalist Janadas Devan also noted in a 2007 interview that the Internet has played a large role in legitimising some words approved by the OED.

    Why is OED’s Word of the Day special?

    OED claims each word is “carefully selected for a particular reason”, be it for the word’s interesting etymology, a long and fascinating history, or simply because it’s novel and amusing. It can also be connected with a particular event or important date.

    Why do you think “kiasu” was selected?

    Trivia: It will take approximately 753 years for every word in the dictionary to be featured in Word of the Day. And that is if nothing else is added.

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • 200 Complaints Lodged With Regard To The English-Speaking Competency Of Bus Captains

    200 Complaints Lodged With Regard To The English-Speaking Competency Of Bus Captains

    The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has received around 200 complaints regarding the language abilities of bus captains, most of which were on their ability to converse in English.

    Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew revealed this in a written reply to MP for Aljunied GRC Muhamad Faisal’s parliamentary question on the number of public feedback received with regard to the language abilities of bus captains.

    Mr Lui added that all bus captains are required to have a basic competency in conversational English before being deployed. Once LTA has received legitimate feedback, they will then inform the relevant public transport operators, who will send the bus captain for a refresher course.

    The bus captain will only be redeployed once he has passed a language test.

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • Pre-schoolers Speak Mixing of English and Mandarin Have Better Grasps of Languages

    Pre-schoolers Speak Mixing of English and Mandarin Have Better Grasps of Languages

    SINGAPORE: Parents and teachers tend to frown upon children speaking a mix of English and Mandarin, but a study done on pre-schoolers here has found that such a habit does not necessarily reflect a weaker command of either language.

    On the contrary, the study — which saw the participation of 51 pre-schoolers aged between five-and-a-half and six-and-a-half years old — found that children switch between these languages because they have the linguistic capacity to do so. In fact, those who switch between English and Mandarin more frequently were found to have a better command of the latter language.

    Assistant Professor Yow Wei Quin from the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), who conducted the study, said many parents and teachers discouraged children from switching between these languages, which she called “code-switching”.

    “Code-switching is a pretty common thing that Singaporeans do and there are people, parents and those whom I have worked with — teachers and pre-school principals — who say that code-switching, code-mixing seems pretty bad,” said Asst Prof Yow, who will present her findings at the Ministry of Education’s Mother Tongue Languages Symposium this Saturday.

    However, upon noting that there was a dearth of research to prove that code-switching is bad, she set out to discover more, within the context of Singapore. Over the course of nine months, Asst Prof Yow and her research team studied the way the children spoke during free play, language lessons, meals and group project time at two pre-schools. These children shared similar family profiles, with parents whose average highest education was a university degree and who spoke more English than Mandarin at home.

    To test their English receptive vocabulary, Asst Prof Yow and her team used the internationally-recognised Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, where children were required to identify the picture that depicts the word being read to them. To measure their competencies in both spontaneous English and Mandarin speech, they considered the number of unique word types used, the mean length and complexity, some aspects of grammar and complexity of their sentences.

    The team found that the children “code-switched” 14 per cent of the time, but this did not affect their English language skills. Those who switched between English and Mandarin more frequently displayed better Mandarin vocabulary and expressed themselves better in the language.

    The findings suggest that code-switching gives children the opportunity to speak Mandarin. “The children are not pressured to think that they must speak in a full Mandarin sentence. Whatever they know, they will just use (it),” she said.

    Asst Prof Yow hopes that with the findings, parents would not discourage their children from code-switching. However, she said it is important that parents continue to use full sentences in one language. Acknowledging the limitations of her study, she said she was considering an expansion of her research to include a study into the impact of switching between other mother tongue languages and measuring language competencies through the analysis of syntax, for example.

    Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/using-two-languages-in/1322760.html

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  • PRC Bus Drivers Should Learn English Language

    shahrilselamatbusdriverchina

    *SBS Drivers From China* – I’m fine having people from any part of the world working here in SG. This is God’s Earth and you can be anywhere you want to be. BUT I can’t take it when they can’t even speak simple English (or maybe they just refuse). Simple questions like ‘How much is the fare from X to Y?’ and ‘Does this bus pass by W?’. Most of them that I encountered were not polite (spoke with a stern face and unfriendly vocal tone) and they keep speaking back to me in the Chinese language. Apparently, nobody has taught them the important manners needed to be a front line service personnel, and please, you mean they don’t even know English? That’s absurd. This display of ugly attitude and inability to converse in a common language has got to stop, especially when you’re a service ambassador who meets hundreds, maybe thousands of people, mainly locals, everyday. Utter nonsense.

    Mohammad Shahril Bin Selamat

    Sharilselamatrockers

    Source: Natasha Aziz, Mohammad Shahril Selamat