2009/10: Impress. Inspire. Intoxicate.
Talking about good English – benjamin110478
In his blog, Walking on Water, benjaminchew110478 shares his thoughts on pronunciation in Singapore.
On communication:
‘Communication is subjective to the culture and environment it develops in. in a racial melting pot such as Singapore, where English is influenced by a conglomeration of other native languages such as Chinese, Malay, Tamil – much of spoken Singaporean English can be a “rojak” of these Asian (sic) languages.’
On pronunciation:
“There was on incident whereby I spoke to a taxi driver in a crisp English accent – not by deliberately putting on such an accent – but by actually abiding strictly to the phonetics of the English language. The poor bloke had a problem in understanding what I was trying to say.”
Well, to be realistic, our local taxi drivers probably aren’t quite used to hearing a request to drive to, oh let’s say the Marina Barrage, in an eloquent, carefully enunciated complete sentence.
It’s true we do need to articulate our words accurately but it’s good to sound natural as well. Adopting a foreign accent isn’t really much help if it makes it more difficult for others to understand us. Besides, we’re Singaporeans! We’re proud of it and I’m sure we can still get our message across and pronounce our words properly without sounding any less Singaporean! Our newscasters are rather good examples of this.
(By the way, I think its quite cheeky how benjaminchew110478 chose to refer to the taxi driver as “bloke”, which is actually a British slang for guy or man!)
In the end, it’s all about being understood…right?
After all those thoughts about communication and pronunciation, benjamin110478 wonders about the delicate balance of speaking accurately to a T, and speaking in a manner that will be best understood by the recipient even though it might not be in Standard English.
He writes:
“Anyway, should we be English purists and attempt to speak English in its purest, most pristine form and in so doing, risk sounding elitist? Or should we seek to communicate effectively, albeit allowing our standards of English to suit the person at the receiving end?”
He’s definitely got a point there. Hmm.
What do you think?
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