i tell you ah..Speak Good English ok..

This evening i was at the Launch of the Speak Good English Movement 2007 at Timbre Music Bistro with my boss Nic.

i tell you ah, the food veri nice leh. Though only finger food, but the food no stop! i always like their pizza, thin thin one, veri crispy. You may even get extra ingredients - the leaves and branches that drop down and bang on our table...

Ha.

Hee. The above paragraph came from a spontaneous cheeky dose of Singlish. A quote from the guest-of-honour Minister of State for Education, RAdm (NS) Lui Tuck Yew: People talk about a desire to learn proper English, but I have never heard any foreigner wanting to learn good Singlish.

Could there really be a day when Singlish becomes the official national language of Singapore? I do not think so, and i do not hope so. Even though i do not speak proper English all the time (i was brought up in a Chinese-speaking family), i make conscious efforts to learn to do so. This does not mean using bombastic English words when i speak or talking in a slang. We can all speak simple standard English as confident individuals who can communicate and convey to almost anyone and anywhere in the world.

Yet to me this whole movement means more than communication. I am concerned about the trend of distorting established standards (for many things) for our own pleasures and accepting the evolutionised 'standards' as the new norm, ie. cohabitation became an alternate lifestyle for a couple in love, and explained to benefit the couple in knowing each other better before marriage.

I am not against pushing ourselves beyond boundaries to get better. But the value and beauty of the basic should not be lost. 'Broken' English, as its name sounds, is never as beautiful as proper English expressed. Cohabitation (and sex before marriage), as intimate a physical bondage may be, can never overwrite the physical and divine covenant of marriage.

"...if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules." (2 Timothy 2:5)


To end on a light sidenote, Timbre is a really nice tree-dotted haven to enjoy simple good food! =)