Justin has been reading this book by local author Tan Hwee Hwee recently. It's called Foreign Bodies. I had become a fan of this author after I read her novel Mammon Inc 2 years ago. So this is the only other production she has. *Gimme more, puleeaze*
Here are some quotes which I find really interesting.
"Problems arose because of the foreign bodies within us – things that happened in our childhood, some big, some small, but all significant; they still control our lives today; things from our yesterdays that will decide what we drink, dream and doubt till the day we die. But you can’t see those things, because they are not on the outside. "
"Singlish is a type of Pidgin English, where English words are arranged according to the rule of Chinese, grammar and sentences are sprinkled with the occasional Chinese, Malay and Indian words. Singlish sounds like ‘broken’ English – to foreign ears it may sound intelligible, uneducated, even crude. It’s just the Singaporean way, the totally jumbled multi-lingual lingo – just part of our melting pot, rojak way of speech thought and life.
However, we didn’t speak ‘broken’ English because we lacked the ability to speak the Queen’s English; we spoke Singlish because with all its contortions of grammar and pronunciation, its new and localized vocabulary, Singlish expressed out thoughts in a way that the formal, perfectly enunciated, anal BBC World Service English never could. "
"Singaporeans are obsessed with grades. They believed in the positive correlation between moral fibre and good grades. So if one is a gestering boil on the anus of humanity, but achieves his 10As, his parents will still look at him like a cross between Einstein and Francis of Assisi."
Hey, how many of us can actually identify with these statements?
Maybe Ministry of Education should use this book as a literature text in Secondary schools, rather than those dumb books about Thai farmers.
Here are some quotes which I find really interesting.
"Problems arose because of the foreign bodies within us – things that happened in our childhood, some big, some small, but all significant; they still control our lives today; things from our yesterdays that will decide what we drink, dream and doubt till the day we die. But you can’t see those things, because they are not on the outside. "
"Singlish is a type of Pidgin English, where English words are arranged according to the rule of Chinese, grammar and sentences are sprinkled with the occasional Chinese, Malay and Indian words. Singlish sounds like ‘broken’ English – to foreign ears it may sound intelligible, uneducated, even crude. It’s just the Singaporean way, the totally jumbled multi-lingual lingo – just part of our melting pot, rojak way of speech thought and life.
However, we didn’t speak ‘broken’ English because we lacked the ability to speak the Queen’s English; we spoke Singlish because with all its contortions of grammar and pronunciation, its new and localized vocabulary, Singlish expressed out thoughts in a way that the formal, perfectly enunciated, anal BBC World Service English never could. "
"Singaporeans are obsessed with grades. They believed in the positive correlation between moral fibre and good grades. So if one is a gestering boil on the anus of humanity, but achieves his 10As, his parents will still look at him like a cross between Einstein and Francis of Assisi."
Hey, how many of us can actually identify with these statements?
Maybe Ministry of Education should use this book as a literature text in Secondary schools, rather than those dumb books about Thai farmers.
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