Why Pick On Us If You Are No Better?

What caught my attention this week was a blog from a celebrity on Stomp website. It's also featured in My Paper from SPH. The famous star blogger talked about the following Taiwanese variety show where the Taiwanese celebrities mock at Singaporean's accent. 

Since I'm neither from Taiwan nor Singapore, I just felt it as an entertainment show and not the big deal to talk about. They are just commenting and not criticizing. The words they used in the show are not those which S'poreans always pronounced wrongly. I guess these Taiwanese stars should come to my class to learn S'porean accent from my prof if they wanna put it on TV. They can learn Corat S'pore accent from him Popally leh. 

Anyway, my point here is not to judge who speaks better English, but the reaction of people on this topic. First, the star bloggers on Stomp questions how Taiwanese dare to mock S'pore while Taiwanese English is equally bad or even worse than S'poreans'. To summarize their arguments, these Taiwanese stars are childish and idiot for putting this on national TV. Then, the blogger questioned their credibility, saying "People say, whoever who has the money and success is the victor (though I do not always agree, but for this time round, I do)" (direct quote from Maia Lee, the star blogger) While reading other star bloggers' comments on so-called unofficial National-Blog (Stomp) regarding Taiwanese stars' ignorance on their national TV, I felt like ah... aren't they the same as these Taiwanese stars for being so ignorant? why does money have to do with Taiwanese's comments on English? they just wanna attack them. 

I'm neither anti-Singapore nor pro-Taiwanese but I must ask these star bloggers and those commented on youtube if they have ever asked that question to themselves, which was raised by again themselves, "Why Pick On Us If You Are No Better?" Have they ever picked other foreigners in Singapore for their bad English though the former is no better. 

I've been with Icon for 3 years helping exchange students settling down in Singapore and from what I heard from these students (including native English speakers from the US, UK and Canada), S'poreans laugh at their English for being non-Singapore standard. Whenever I go shopping with them, I'm the translator of King's or American English to the so-claimed-by-the-blogger standard Singapore English. Oh man, it's really funny to see how these coffee-shop aunties laughing at Ang Moh for speaking in non-understandable English. Some aunties even tried to correct them to speak in a proper way. lol.... It's not just English but sometimes dialect. Whenever I took a cab back to my previous place, I was always mocked by the taxi driver for not pronouncing Hoy Fatt Rd correctly, especially the Chinese. They always said "Ah, Hoy Fatt (their correct pronunciation)! Not Hoy Fatt (my wrong one though I don't know the difference)!" giving me a "stupid-don't-you-even-know-how-to-pronounce-this look. Though quite annoyed, I didn't say anything 'cos they might have the impression that I'm a local Chinese. I'm surprised the bloggers didn't spare a thought that the Taiwanese might have an impression that every Singaporean speaks English as their first language (that's how it's portrayed in media overseas including in my country where everyone doesn't know Mandarin, Tamil & Bahasa are also used.) The blogger said she'd be okay if Taiwanese criticized S'porean's Mandarin cos English is also a second language in S'pore like Taiwan, and she questioned why they criticized other's weakness in second language ability while theirs is even worse. But, did she ask herself that's how other countries think while S'pore is claiming to be the English speaking country in Asia?

Anyway, a lot of non-native English speakers among exchange students are ostracized by their groupmates for either speaking low standard or super high standard English. My personal experience says as long as we speak in Singapore accent (not singlish particularly), it's ok to be part of the group 'cos some locals won't be patient to listen to us if we speak very bad English in the group project. On the other hand, if someone speaks a very good English with correct grammar in full sentence, they are like "ah... can cut short or not?" I remember when I went to Kopitiam with one non-local friend, he said "May I have a cup of tea, please?". Then the aunty became confused and asked him "ermm... wat? tea or coffee?" I later then told him not to be so polite and say full sentence in S'pore. It's ok to say "1 chicken rice take away" instead of "Can I have a box of chicken rice to take away, please?" 

Well, every country has its own accent and it won't end if we are criticizing each other while we ourselves are not perfect. I always asked my Burmese friends how good their Burmese English is while they were criticizing Singaporean's English. Not to my surprise, those who criticize speak very poor English with super strong Burmese accent. It's needless to say there these friends of mine always get picked by their Singaporean friends for poor English with Burmese accent. But, what my friends commented are also not wrong. Not to mention an ordinary S'porean, our prestigious librarian always announce every night "Level five is closing in FIFTING minutes. Please move to level Too, Tree and Four if you wish Tu remain in Da library." It's so embarrassing in front of my American friends that a pre-recorded announcement of a library has very poor pronunciation. 

Having said that, am I also a good English speaker to criticize this? NO! I have problems pronouncing "a" and "e" clearly sometimes. But, at least I tried my best to improve and don't take such comments as mocking at me cos I was really bad. I remembered my S'porean Indian friends laughed at me in year 2 for pronouncing "bank" as "bunk". If I write bank in Burmese, 'a' and 'e' have the same sound. I'm still having that problem in Japanese. I always say "bankyou" (study=benkyou), "sansei" (teacher=sensei). But my Japanese friends never laughed at me. Instead they tried to correct me. While I was doing a project this year, my Malay friend gave a casual remarks about me to her Indian friend, whose English is superb among S'poreans I've ever seen, that my pronunciation is so poor. Then during the presentation, another Indian friend in our group pronounce cafe as "kafe". (oh btw, she doesn't have Indian accent).  It's quite amusing to see such things - ppl mocking at others but they themselves are also bad. 

Click here for the response video by Singaporeans to show how bad Taiwanese English is.

Star bloggers' comments on Taiwanese celebrities.

I'd say it's a very patriotic response, but it'll make other people think how narrow-minded S'pore is due to that person.  I won't be surprised to see comments from such people on my blog questioning how good my English is or how well Burmese speak English. I'd say it's pretty bad cos English is not official language in my country like in Taiwan. The majority of Burmese can't even speak English at all. But, there are people who has a better accent than the majority of Singaporeans do.