Surely we speak better english than any brits or yankees who don
go to grammer schools, but while we'd like to believe we have
mastered english, singaporean english is still not recognised as
standard english for teaching other non english speaking students,
anywhere. Even language schools in singapore like Lorna Wiston and
Julia Gabriels employ only Native English Speaking teachers, i have
not yet seen any singaporean there.
angmohs who master chinese language are mostly in China and Taiwan.
Besides, in singapore you won't even know if they can speak chinese
because we will speak to them in english.
Chinese in china don need english if they stay in China because
china market is big enough. When it comes to facing the globalized
world, 1% of chinese speak english means 13 million chinese
speaking english and chinese! what kind of competition are
singaporeans facing ?? Knowing english may be good enough, so far,
but if china is becoming a significant player in this globalized
world, we have to decide how we should engage them, or are we
waiting for them to engage us?
Staying in singapore, do I really need english? my lousy hokkien is
good enough, and may be a few word of broken english, add a few
words of mandarin i can speak good singlish.
No matter what people say or laugh, we better be prepared to ensure
we have the last laugh.
