新加坡人满口错误, 何时会改善？ 快了! 大家快加油, 面对挑战!

[verykiasu2010]

General99all:

Here is a tough one. How do we say \"Please Cc me in all future emails\" in proper Mandarin. Anyone knows?

以后的邮件请抄送一份给我.

[General99all]

Yes. "抄送"， hear many people talking to their china supplier "请放我进去”or "放我在里面”。 I think "请在来往的邮件中，抄送给我。" is also correct.

[General99all]

Last Thur, 9.58fm 4.15pm talked about building confident in children and reduce "错败感”。 I personally felt that if the child has been speaking using correct grammar and phrases from young, this has helped the child to be more confident than some who don’t.

Have anyone ever wonder… Every morning i wake my child and say "…快上学了","爸妈也来不急上班了"。But each time, we bump into neighbours(with their kids) in the lift or void deck, you won’t hear people using the phrases I did. I was wondering, where does the "读书" come from? If it was from English, people here don’t "say go to study", they say "go to School" but the mandarin part "学校"has not been widely used. But the "做工" and the English version of "going off to work" matches. Why?
Yah, i am also puzzle with "做工＂and "工作", why the 2 ＂zuo" is of different character.

[Wu MaMa]

我侥幸的看到你的文章，也对这事件有些看法。又喜又悲。喜是因为有人关心我们所面对的问题，悲是因为你的呼吁行动失败。只有少数人要用标准的发音和正确的词汇是不能够进步的。说实在的, 教育本要从家里开始，而越标准越好。我的孩子上了学后不敢在同学和老师面前叫我”妈咪”，改用ma3 mi4因为他怕人家会以为他是中国孩子也怕没有朋友。说话用的词也跟随他的环境的成度。有时候一急也会说错话 “我生气你”, (他的朋友常用的语法)。我们对他的栽培和要求也让他认为是过高的。


你问我们是否有条件? 我说有条件没环境不如说没条件。
听过“孟母三迁”吗？新加坡面积不大，那就是迁到海外了。

不过现在,在百货公司和学校都能碰到中国人。所以我们的环境还在改变。我同意” 孩子能在无形中轻松的掌握好双语”, 我们是大人… 不关是什么情况,我都不希望我的孩子是受害者。我希望其他家长们也能多注意,多灌输标准的语言。

[antebellum]

I just read the first few pages of this thread, and to those people who mocked at General99all’s mistakes, I hope that you can reflect on what you have done. Will you say the same thing if you were talking to General99all face to face ? The internet allows you to hide behind a nickname and say whatever you like without any concern about other people’s feelings, but that does not mean that it is right to do so.

[antebellum]

General99all ,

The problem is that most parents and caregivers do not know what are the correct grammar and phrases. Although the bilingual policy has been around for so many years, how many adults do you know are very good at speaking mandarin ? The language used in our work place is predominantly English unless you are a Chinese teacher or if you work for the Chinese newspaper. Otherwise most adults do not have a chance to speak Mandarin. Most of my colleagues cannot hold a proper conversation in Mandarin, though all of them learned Chinese in school. I believe that most adults do not even read any Chinese novels or Chinese newspapers after they left school.

So it is not that parents do not want to speak to their kids using grammatically correct Mandarin, it is because they are not capable of doing so.

Instead of complaining about the mistakes, we should look into how to improve the standards of mandarin. We cannot depend on school teachers to teach because kids do not spend enough time with them. The best way to learn proper mandarin is to read Chinese books every day, and also to listen to perfect mandarin from good TV shows from China.

Wu MaMa:

教育本要从家里开始，而越标准越好。

I absolutely agree with this. However, please note that Singaporeans are not native speakers of Mandarin. Many Singaporeans are more comfortable with speaking dialect such as Cantonese, Hokkien, etc, and many grew up speaking English. Our bilingual policy has not been successful in producing adults who are capable of speaking mandarin fluently and correctly. The worst part is that many adults make mistakes when they speak Mandarin, and they don't even know that they are wrong.

[Wu MaMa]

Thanks antebellum,

Yes. You made very good points. Why we could take a chance to salvage our Mandarin standard is because we are Chinese (if we are) and that’s should made us naturally acknowledge that Mandarin is our Mother tongue. In fact, it is an advantage for us to polish up because of what we are. It is even harder for other races to learn Mandarin… thousands of Chinese characters… so tricky to explain why write this character instead of that character (for the same terms). I shared some daily common Mandarin phrases (just a few) that is enough to cover us. There isn’t a lot to take care of for our daily regular used Mandarin phrases. Not rub into cheng yu, that is too tough.

Thanks Toddles and Wu MaMa,
"因为希望能减少两个语言之间的混淆" and "我说有条件没环境不如说没条件"。 You shared something helpful and true indeed. 好样的!
我们本来就应该尽把那些需要改善都做好来帮助和卫护我们的社会。 之前我说有很多人(受过教育)还是喜欢"All kind of mix"…etc, 其实是在帮助他们找到借口,给他们台阶下。
我完全同意两位妈妈的信念”教育本要从家里开始，而越标准越好.” 谢谢您的分享。

我的信念是找出什么地方不足后，找原因，从家里开始改. 尽量建立基础。
这样当您的孩子已经听惯了也说惯了 ” 这个碗热粥很烫, 别被烫伤了”, (eg. Till 6 years old), 即使他上了学周围的朋友都说 "粥很烧”, 他也能保持自己的水准。
相信很多受过教育的父母说惯了说 "粥很烧”(over 40 years), 现在有很多宝宝也都在学 "烧” , 那么之后要改会变得更加辛苦。

Though most of us speaks English fairly well at work but many a times, we do made mistakes like saying “You want some coffee” … have been doing that without the “Do” for the past 30/40 years… “Do you like some coffee?”… so used to it that even when we speaks to Ah Mo, we speaks too fast and forgot to start with the “Do…”. We might sounds a little rude even we didn’t mean it. Same goes to “never” instead of “didn’t”. We are also lacking of patient and effort … to polish up our English.
Just sharing with you, Ban Singlish Movement… I took note of what are daily spoken broken English… there are over 150 sentences.

I know there is no perfection but I think educated parent could do something to save their innocent toddles from continuing this vicious cycle. Sad to say that If I didn’t want my child to pick up line like “You want to call what, you go and call… faster eat lah”… I have to reframe from taking my child out to the food court in the shopping mall. Children at the playground “See there, the cat is black color one”, instead of “Look there, that cat is black”. In the library, “this book is not I want one, I want one is the other one”… it is naturally to feel good in this kind of environment or many families have started to feel uncomfortable? These are places we go regularly and perhaps forever.

Perhaps by salvaging the TOP TEN Most common mistakes, that makes our languages sound much better. Just need more people to play active roles and sharing tips.

来! 来! 来! 来多一点建议正面的分享。
For better quality life!
国庆日快乐!

[Wu MaMa]

Oh antebellum… I forgot to thank you for making those fair statement. There is high possibility to have lengthy criticize on me… could go really nasty and bad. I will not be angry, it is just a reflection of various type of mindset we have here to contribute to our society. Senses will only make senses to people with brains. Anyway the views published in the internet doesn’t represent majority group, we have no clue how much positive mindset via negative energy out there. We just have to know where and what we are in our environment, and relocate for better results.


一个人是否有智慧和内涵,从什么样的背景,教育程度是可以从他的谈吐看出来的。
Once again Thanks.

[empressplace]

Wu MaMa:

Thanks Toddles and Wu MaMa,
\"因为希望能减少两个语言之间的混淆\" and \"我说有条件没环境不如说没条件\"。 You shared something helpful and true indeed. 好样的!

Wu MaMa - are you General99all? Why is Wu MaMa thanking Wu MaMa?!

[empressplace]

Wu MaMa:

Oh antebellum... I forgot to thank you for making those fair statement. There is high possibility to have lengthy criticize on me... could go really nasty and bad. I will not be angry, it is just a reflection of various type of mindset we have here to contribute to our society. .

The criticism was on General99all, not on Wu MaMa. So Wu MaMa= General99all?