The other day there was a letter from a reader, Wee Hung Lih ( see Today 9th Nov. 2006) who confidently stated that , and I quote, “I can see myself only as a Singaporean, born and bred in a multi-ethnic environement” . I completely agree with him. He is my kind of person , a rare person, who had the courage to stand up for his own convictions. He was responding to a letter in the same newspaper from Wong Hoong Hooi, who argued that all Singapore Chinese should speak Mandarin and not pretend they are ‘ang moh’.

I know that there are many people, Chinese, Malay or Indian who think like that and for whom their language is important for their sense of identity. But not everybody, including yours truly, feels the way Mr. Wong does.

This reminds me of a language detail I see on a movie trailer on TV which said that the Cantonese movie would be subtitled in English and Chinese!
Is Cantonese not Chinese?!

Related Posts