By Foong Woei Wan

WORST

The fake Singapore on local TV

This chronic problem has become more glaring this year. Owing to linguistic restrictions, many Channel 8 dramas take place in an HDB theme park that has been scrubbed of Singlish, incorrect Mandarin and Chinese dialects.

And although the dialect drama Eat Already? 2 has been held up as an exception to the rule, it actually makes as little sense as the Land Of Proper Mandarin. The Singapore it depicts – a country where white-collar parents speak Hokkien, not English, to their only child and young strangers burst into Cantonese, as if the Speak Mandarin Campaign was never imposed on their generation – is just as implausible as the Singapore where no one speaks Singlish.

Source: Straits Times

Categorised in EN, The Straits Times.