Thanks pal.

"做工, 作业 and 作文. Ok. Got it.

Sometimes for hanyu pinying, I is hard to know when there is a "h" and "g".
like ci or chi, zi or zhi, hard to remembers which sets of words with the "h" and which do not.
Same like zhan or zhang…etc. how to remember both sets of words.
Any tips…

Wu MaMa is my ex-neighbour. She visited me and log in with my laptop and forgot to log out. That’s made my later post showed under her name. She the only friend who back me up while my other friends don’t.


In fact I was inspired by her. That was many years back when I first heard her child calling “妈咪”, instantly I said “Very accurate and sound very nice”. That’s also make me want to set my child’s path for learning the correct things right from the beginning. If I didn’t accept her views years back. My child today will not be also calling me with the correct pronunciation. That is when I appreciate her value and become the next person pursuing correct pronunciation.
The problem her child is facing today is what mine going to suffer in few years time if there isn’t enough educated parent who supported going back to the original correct pronunciation.
It has been years and when my new born arrived, the situation didn’t improve… Now is my turn to feel the frustration myself and experience it… this turned me to started this topic.

Give your child(6 to 10years old) a simple hanyu pinying test and understand the score.
爸爸，妈妈，哥哥，姐姐，弟弟，妹妹。If the child scored 100%, does the child ever wonder why must they prounciating them differently in practice? If the child scored poorly and not convinced that all these years they pronounced them wrongly… That is why I didn’t want to lay this trap and looked stupid.
Can’t educate children this way and on the other hand promoting those mistakes.
A Chinese teacher(China National)in my child’s childcare shared with me that she found some Singaporean Chinese Teacher uncertain about their pronunciation and some textbook with such mistakes are not been pointed out. If she says this to a wrong person, the parent could fight back turned unhappy. I would sized the opportunity to learn more so that someday if there is a miss-marking, I could tell. I hope this is inspiring enough to motivate more people and perhaps it would be better in 2 years time.

Same goes to promoting English and demoting Singlish. Singlish has lots of short cut which make kids missed many polite words. “Eat Faster!”… instead of “Please hurry up” for many years, many kids felt uneasy when trying to be polite. They are not used to start with “Could you… Do you… Will you help…”. I felt that developing the child personality starts from young(at home). Although at higher academic level, they could score well, they are just natural having difficulties in saying things politely.

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.

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.

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

I’ve heard numerious complaints about our spoken Languages standard(parents of other nationality) and usually, I will pay more attention to those particular words or phrases. Some words are easy to be mis-used and get hooked, Eg. "got", "already","Never"… Etc. After replacing "Sure!" with "Can,can,can"(for instance) helps to make spoken English sounds much better. I realized that "Can" already comes from Hokkien "Egg Siagh" (didn’t know e correct spelling, just how it sounds) which many Hokkien used to end their conversation.

Like all campaigns, regardless it’s quit smoking/recycling/ban singish/speak proper mandarin/english campaigns… Need more people to participate inorder for it to work and improve the environment. Last week on 9.58 FM, they exchanged ideals about bringing up our standard… And this is very motivating.
Children picks up lines very quickly and if no body cares about speaking proper English/Mandarin, they will be badly affected… Since we have more educated parents(over e years) than before… It should helps. Let’s be inspired! 加油！

I am referring to improvement or progress within their means.


Environment is created by people. There are certain childcare centers with more china kids and more Australian for Australian School..etc, these are the environment where if you send your kids there… it is easier for them to speak certain language more fluently. For some reasons, I go for事在人为. Sometimes if one didn’t maintain certain skills, after a while or a long time… it will be lost. Eg. Some people learned Elementary Japanese and hadn’t the environment to speak Japanese.
I felt that we should progress and someday when we need to deal with huge foreign competition, we could take care of it easily.
Why am I addressing our problems on spoken languages… a very practical reason… no matter what we speak everyday… English as a First language and Mandarin as 2nd for mostly Chinese(because of that SG is very unique)… for at least 10 to 15 years(Schooling) and over 20... 30... 40 years of experience talking… It is very sad that some positions like customer service officers, credit cards/banks hotlines… our local is not speaking fluent enough to fill such position. Most Asian countries have their
own language and English as a foreign languages and they could speak very fluent English. They account for it better. Nowadays, filipinos filled professional position like nurses, bankers and senior officers. I also realized that hotlines for BOC, they hired many Chinese who speaks very good English.

Come on.. what’s else to share about our daily repeated mistakes… Let’s share and progress.

Hahaaa. Thanks All. Before my first write out was posted, i turned to friends who did better in school but obviously, they do not see the need and neither feel the impact despite their kids go for lots of tution. I did anticpant the outcome… the responds help ourselves see clearly which direction most people go and focus on. For friends who are in the same boat or having positive mindset, they will not look at that way. There is a common sign that when someone point out a mistakes, the later is not interested to understand further but buzy finding ways and mistakes to fire back. Start with my mistakes and let them have the passion to be conscious of those daily repeated mistakes from the general public. I didn’t say I’m good or better… They judged themselves. I stated facts that people by pass.


And there is a fact here for everybody. Says who that if a person is weak in writing chinese characters, this person is unable to recognised wrong pronunciation and phrases? Whose rule? Not true… People who are weak in this area might do better speaking and Vs.

Some folks might have this same experience. No matter what mistakes someone points out, so long it is a valid one, a conscious person will take
care of it will make lesser mistakes down the road. Especially certain particular mistakes. If he closed his door to a valid mistake, more mistakes were in the line and he will be years behind when he starts taking care of it.
He is also less likely to see problems quickly. Which explains why some daily repeated mistakes is forever despite most parents nowsdays were more educated from the previous generation. Of course this could be very subjective when other do not see it value when you do. The enivronment tells where we are.

Infact, we have more problems apart from language skills, gracious nation, poor customers services standard… We need more positive mindsets and people with foresight before we could feel or see the improvement. With certain qualities, we could polish our language skills and overcome other more difficult issues.

Sure empressplace. Appreciated a lot.

Initially, I thought local folks are quality seeking people and most of the people do not want to compromised it when they could afford it.
However I realized that is not the case when many people are giving excuses for getting something right and right in the first place.

I have handled massive objections till I turned speechless even for the way how I wanted to raise my own child. When my baby was calling me, all my friends, relatives and neighbors and the environment were saying my so-call “Ma1Mi3” was strange and wrong and correcting my child…. except for a few…
My China Friends are the ones who influence my child with many correct Mandarin pronunciation.

Almost all of my working colleagues and friends whom send their children to tuition and some all day long. Then I started to find out what has caused this problem.
Many have been speaking broken Mandarin, English/Singlish right from the start their child learn to speak but they were not able to recognized that… Instead they blamed on other kids from school to have taught their children for that.

Many of my friends barely speaks English and the whole family has been speaking Singlish since I know them(For many years until their children turns P1). They felt that they were from English speaking families and their children speaks like the adult. I told them people in the States and China(lived and worked there years back), don’t speak English nor Mandarin like us and they have less problem… their children could master the language at very young age. So I didn’t want to follow this vicious cycle. It’s not the children fault… Hence, I realized been observant and conscious speaks for itself and after that, we should start taking steps to improve and help ourselves. That is where I could identify some daily repeated mistakes and correct myself… implement in my own family, taught my child the correct one right from the beginning and share with people who may not have come across it. Try to maintain as much as possible… until the next overseas posting and rid on the environment to build strong languages foundation…. Till then, it is hard work right now.

Of course many people set different standard and no one is perfect. I just find it very hard to raise children to do well in languages when the environment does not support. I do not underestimate the power of having good languages skill because in today society been good is not good enough. Today… we have many nationality competing with us for the same Executive/Senior Executive position. We have English as our first language but if we didn’t cherish that, we didn’t speak better from candidates who come from countries having English as a 2nd or foreign language. I do not see the value of our young having this form of stress or lose out in this area, hence I hope more parents understand the meaning of having good languages skill.
Environment speaks for its… provide people are observant enough to tell. Everyone comes from different background and have a chance to change for the better if desired.

Hahahaa…

I know in no time, my child will be taught by the childcare teacher "Cannot throw", "Cannot touch", "Cannot take"… The principle and their teachers taught me that "Cannot" is proper English.
After reading what’s empressplace has mentioned… I recalled my colleagues (A German who started working in SG for 3 months) said over the phone "Can! Can! Can!" when trying to fix a time to pick up the rental car. Once he hung off, he laughed softly and said Singapore English is very cute.

I also spotted that out of 10 times people here said :"Never" actually refers to "Didn’t". "Didn’t see", "Didn’t take"… instead of "Never". This "Never" is widely hooked by people and many have difficulty getting the "Didn’t" back.