From the Newspaper, 5 Feb 2008
ENGLISH, as spoken by Singaporeans, is "weird". At least, that's what some TAIWAN CELEBRITIES think. And they wasted no time in making their opinions known on a variety programmes in Taiwan.
In the 28 Jan epsiodes of the popular variety show Mr Con and Ms Csi aka Kang Xi lai le, the hosts and guests were seen mocking Singaporeans speaking English or our very own Singlish.
ARROY SHEN, former member of COMICBOYZ, describe Singapore's English as " weird" because Singaporeans intone the second syllable of word upwards instead of downwards.He said that he was taught to shorten " thank you" to " thank". Only problem was, it sounded more like " dance" when he said it. ARROY also demonstrated how Singaporeans pronounce "SORRY" while he was on a recent two months stay in Singapore.
He repeatedly said "Sorry" in a very exaggerated manner, to much laughter from the show's hosts, Tsai Kang Yong and SELINA REN... He then showed how Singaporean pronounce " tissue paper", and this was again met with roaring laughter from the hosts and other guests. One host then laughingly commented Singaporean accents to the way THAI people speak English.
Xu Wei, an English teacher who was a guest on the same episode described an encounter with an immigration officer during her trip to Singapore. She spoke in Mandarin: "I was wearing a loose fitting dress and the officer ask me 'pegnant'? Pregnant? It than dawned on me that he mean if I am pregnant."
Another guest Ma Guoxian, made fun of how Singaporeans refer to older people as uncle and aunties. They are always "uncle" and " aunties" - just don't understand what they mean," he said. After this episodes was shown in Taiwan, a segment of it was posted on YouTube. And many furious comments from Singaporeans can be found from YouTube
Arroy apologized on his blog:
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/younghope&article_id=8234921#postComments
Read the comments from his blog, some are really hilarious!
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