I came across this video of a Taiwanese variety show known as ” 康熙来了” (Kang Xi Lai Le).
The hosts and guests of the show were all taking turns firing their mouths at how bad Singaporean’s pronunciation of English words is.
Citing various personal experiences, they gave their edition of what they thought our pronunciation was like; the way they heard it.
Note that, the many examples they gave were all based on words that doesn’t make up much of a proper sentence.
“Uncle”, “Auntie”, “Thanks”, “Sorry”, “Tissue Paper” (the way the idiot said Tissue Paper, along with his expression, was really retarded) and “Hurry Up”.
It’s true that most of us speak somewhat similarly to whatever they portrayed in this particular episode.
Therefore, whatever they said in the show didn’t piss me off that badly. What ticked me off was the condescending attitude they held on to while putting a whole nation down.
There is nothing wrong with speaking with an accent since everyone in the world is separated by geographical & cultural differences. Singaporeans speak our kind of English and British have their own authentic British accent. One simple English word may sound totally different when spoken by natives of different English-speaking communities. If the word is used correctly and the listener is open to receiving the message being transmitted, no accent will pose much of a fatal obstacle. It is, thus, the persons’ integrities involved in the communication process who should be judged and not the languages, accents or whatever that tag along with their identities.
The male guest who was citing the example on “Dance” = “Thanks” and spoke his version of the “Singaporean” accent in a disdainful tone, said something like this, “My friend (presumably Singaporean from the context) thinks he’s teaching me English by asking me to say ‘Thanks’.”; with “Thanks” being the acronym for “Thank you”.
First, “thanks” is not a new word for the rest of the world. It’s a word in the dictionary defined as an informal expression for gratitude and appreciation.
The fact that he disregarded his “friend’s” goodwill in sharing with him the commonly used phrase in Singapore just made me feel that he’s a person who’s full of himself, but not necessarily capable in any aspect that he thinks he’s really good at – or at least, in English.
I guess I did get pissed in the end. It’s not so much so as having national pride, but there are people in Singapore who can speak grammatically-correct English with correct pronunciation for most English words (without any influence from American/Australian/British/Irish accents). I am not talking about myself because I pronounced “Socrates” name wrongly the other day, just to get corrected by Eric in split second timing; he might have broken the world record.
He seem to have a thing for correcting my pronunciation. It’s not like I give him many chances to. Oh, and he corrected me for “Plato” too. Damn him.
Orangeline