Cogito ergo scribo

There's this loud-mouth fat guy who has been coming to our office lately. I don't know who the hell he is and why he is so "friend-friend" with my colleagues from the other department. He's a Singaporean Chinese who speaks in American accent. Really, just like an American.

Well, i have nothing against Asian who speaks with an angmo accent. I, myself, don't really speak in Manglish or Singlish either. I do find it annoying though, if an American-wannabe keeps on talking with all the slag at the top of his voice until i couldn't concentrate on browsing the Web and reading other blogs my work . Imagine having these phrases sprung out of nowhere in your office all the time (with a strong American accent): "No kiddin', man...", "I'm tellin' you, man...", "Alriiiite, you're the man...", "F*ck off, man...", "That's load of shit, man...", "You scared the hell out of me, man..." ... Grrrr, i sure felt like slapping the hell out of him, and then shove a load of shit down his throat until he chokes so hard that he can just shut the f*ck up. How'd ya like that, man?!  

Anyway, what has this guy gotta to with today's topic? Well, he made a comment today to my colleague about Malaysian Chinese don't speak good Mandarin. This is really ironic, coming from a person who speaks Mandarin like a stinking banana man his second language and couldn't even complete a proper Mandarin sentence without any English words in between. Again, i don't have an issue with people who speak in a mixture of Mandarin and English, for i often talk in such way as well. However, i do detest Singaporeans who think of themselves as having superior standard of Chinese over Malaysians, when in fact most of them couldn't even differentiate the simple character "彬" (bin) from "林" (lin). Seriously, many colleagues of mine (Singaporean) had difficulties pronouncing my name in Chinese characters and had often mistakenly thought of it as "林". Imagine my nickname would then become "LinLin"... *shudder*

I think many Malaysians who work in Singapore or watch Singapore TV shows are quite used to being made fun of about the way we speak Mandarin. I gotta confess that sometimes i would also tease my friends from other parts of Malaysia who speak Mandarin with a strong dialect accent (such as people from Penang with Hokkien accent and people from KL with Cantonese accent). People from JB, under the influence of Singapore media, normally speak Mandarin with accent more akin to Singapore's. However, we still have our own colloquialism that differs from them, which sometimes becomes a point of banter.

For instances, Malaysians may say "不得空" (pronounced incorrectly as bù dè kòng) when we are not free, whereas Singaporeans would say "没有空" ("mei you kong"). We also like to add the word "几" ("ji") as an adverb to amplify some expressions, such as "几有钱" ("ji you qian"), "几好吃" ("ji hao chi"), "几生气" ("ji sheng qi"), while Singaporeans would use the word "多" ("duo"), "很" ("hen") or "非常" ("fei chang") instead. In several Singapore drama series with scripts that had characters from Malaysia, what the actors did was to mimic how we talk, especially with emphasis on such slag in their speech. Oh, and of course, normally they will also portray the Malaysian character as less sophisticated, wearing outdated clothing, but then that is out of the topic of this post.

So back to what the fake American guy who claimed that we speak bad Mandarin as compared to his people, well, i do agree to certain extent. Singaporeans are indeed more accurate on the pronunciation, thanks to their government's effort in curbing all dialects and their decade-long Speak Mandarin Campaign, whereas Malaysian Mandarin is influenced by the dialects of different regions.

However, the ability to speak Mandarin in the right pronunciation has absolutely no bearing or whatsoever on the person's level of Chinese language. When it comes to writing, reading, Chinese literature and cultures, i'm very sure that Malaysian Chinese are better than Singaporeans. After all, Malaysia is the only country outside China (the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) to have a complete Chinese education system. To gauge a person's level of Chinese language based on his/her pronunciation is a huge mistake. Many Chinese from mainland China or Hong Kong don't speak good Mandarin as well but they sure know more about the Chinese language than any Singaporean. One good example would be 金庸 ("Jin Yong", or Louis Cha Liang Yong), a renowned writer of Chinese martial arts novels, whose achievements in Chinese literature is irrefutable but speaks Mandarin with a strong Zhe-Jiang accent.

So what if you are 几厉害 ("ji li hai") in speaking Mandarin? There are more to a language than merely getting the pronunciation right.

Labels: malaysia, singapore