It came up in a conversation at school yesterday. Someone said that people from other countries actually recognize our Singlish accent and it even appears in games, you can actually chose the character to speak with a Singlish accent. I said that Singlish wasn’t something that Singaporeans should be proud of and someone replied that we should be proud of it because it’s our accent, am I implying that Indians, Russians, French people speaking English with an accent is bad? I rebuked that they have those accents because of their mother tongue, but for us English is our first language, we should be speaking and pronouncing English correctly instead of taking pride in our mispronunciations, grammar mistakes, made up words and those lehs, lahs, and lohs. It frustrates me so badly when local shows like Phua Chu Kang emphasizes on our Singlish accents thinking that it is funny. I don’t like the way I speak. I remember that shock I got when I landed in Singapore after a really long holiday, and heard, for the first time in months, Singaporeans speaking English. I remember thinking ‘Is this how I sound too? It sounds horrible!’ I hate feeling inadequate speaking to people from other countries. The English I speak is not English; it’s this horrible sounding monotonous cousin of English.
On the other hand, someone else brought up another perspective that Singlish sounds like that because it is English with a mixture of Malay and Chinese, and as Singaporeans, we constantly pride ourselves in being a multi-racial society. Singlish reflects that multi-racial culture we have, and it is something that we should be proud.
Even though I do agree with that, I still wish that Singapore was a multi-racial country whose people could speak English accurately. I will always wish that I spoke English differently.
What do you think of Singlish?
Labels: Musings
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