Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A concerned citizen wrote into the forum to complain (?) about the use of short form when children these days use SMS. The concern was with the pronunciation of certain words such as "finite" and "deadline". Of course, the blame was pushed to the schools as usual, questioning their methods of teaching, and whether teachers today realise the seriousness of this growing attitude. Therefore, I think it is certain to say that this letter was written by a parent, who by the looks of it, is very well English educated.
First we complain about a fear of a monolingual society, then we complain about the fear of the use of broken English, and then we push the blame to the government and the schools. Why can't it be the homes? Because our so "innocent" parents would like believe that their homes are the perfect environment for their children to grow up in, and any bad influence must have originated from the outside world. I'm no parent, and neither am I very concerned about the broken English that is used these days, because it serves as a form of entertainment to me. If people are not ashamed to put up such poorly constructed signs, language wise, why should we be ashamed of them?
The fear of languages in Singapore will never die out, because English speaking families will emphasize the importance of English, and Chinese speaking families will emphasize the importance of roots. Because some families value one language more than the other won't make it any more important. And I'm proud that I'm from Singapore not because I can speak two languages, which I really can't, but that I can properly pull off Singlish, which is an art.
I would blog about her, but anything I say would be too obvious now, and it's still too soon. Hence I shall bottle it up inside me for now, and perhaps one day when it's less obvious, or when the time is right, I'll let it out again. I hope what I said isn't already too obvious.
Dan
4:43 pm
