Singapore is primarily Anglophone. You could get buy speaking no Mandarin, but it
is impossible to get a lot of things done if you speak no English because
English is the language of business and governance. 70% of the population is ethnically Chinese. That does not mean that they all speak
Mandarin or any Chinese dialects. Peranakan Chinese speak primarily Malay and
English. Many of them speak a Chinese
dialect, but proficiency, particularly with the younger generation, varies. There are ethnic Chinese who are not
Peranakan, who have no fluency in any Chinese dialects.
And then, there is the other 30% of people in
Singapore who are not Chinese. Many of
us do know Mandarin and other dialects. I
speak Mandarin myself, and like any good Singaporean who served National
Service, I have some facility with Hokkien and Teowchew. But that does not mean I am obliged to use
Mandarin.
There are times, dealing with service people hired
from China, I have refused to use Mandarin just to make a point. We are not China. We are Singapore, and I expect everyone to
have some facility with English. If
companies insist on hiring Chinese who do not know English, I have no qualms
making things difficult by pretending I do not understand them, and insist on
seeing their manager. If I bothered to
learn their language, and learn Malay, I see no excuse for these people to not
know some English. I am not asking them
to elucidate the annotated works of William Shakespeare.
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