"Why Singapore is so good at English"

[mungouk]

5 minutes ago, 歐博思 said:

He was speaking Scots, wasn't he?

 

Aye, albeit a very strong dialect of Scots.

 

What was your point?

 

 

 

[NinjaTurtle]

35 minutes ago, mungouk said:

Time to do some basic homework.

 

You mean I actually have to sit down and do some studying...?

[歐博思]

3 hours ago, mungouk said:

Aye, albeit a very strong dialect of Scots.

 

What was your point?

Because I didn't even understand 30% of it. If it were considered a variety of English, I'd say it would be the polar opposite of the students in the 11 Types of Students in an Exam video, who spoke a nice, clear international type English.

Tying my point back into OP's core question, I'd conjecture it has something to do with people's poor geographic knowledge. For example, I've had conversations like this:

 

"Are you still thinking about going to Thailand?"

"Taiwan, it's Taiwan I'm thinking of going to."

[NinjaTurtle]

It seems the video 11 Types of Students in an Exam is not a very good representation of what Singlish really sounds like.

 

Thanks one and all.
 

[mungouk]

This one is a bit more informative, albeit full of effects. 

 

If you'd rather not hear about the curse-words that (apparently) derive from Hokkien you should stop it at 3:30.

[mungouk]

11 hours ago, 歐博思 said:

If [Scots] were considered a variety of English

 

Maybe you didn't spot it because it was inside the hidden "hints" bit, but as I wrote earlier:

 

• The dialect is Doric, which is actually a dialect of Scots, not necessarily of English.  From my limited knowledge, there are theories that Scots evolved from Anglo-Saxon separately to English.  For a native English speaker it's quite something to hear what's arguably a different language and to understand some of it, whereas for Norwegians/Swedes, Afrikaaners/Dutch etc having mutually-intelligible brothers and sisters from elsewhere is nothing new.

[XiaoXi]

On 11/4/2018 at 9:32 PM, mungouk said:

It's also an official language of Hong Kong, India, Nepal and probably many others in the list which don't have English as the main language. 

I really don't think classes are all taught in English in Hong Kong...in fact I find their Mandarin ability seems to typically be better than their English ability (even though they would never admit it) which makes sense since it's so similar to Cantonese in contrast to English.

 

On 11/4/2018 at 9:32 PM, mungouk said:

All of these are way, way down the ranking. Most Indians have their schooling in "English medium" as well, so I'm very surprised as to where India ended up.

It's not the only language the classes are taught in and poorer areas don't have English medium. India has a fair few poor areas so that would take it down a fair few notches. 'Some' and 'all' can make a huge difference, especially with a population as large as India.

[mungouk]

Read the report. It's not a survey of the entire population, it's a survey of English learners conducted by English First. 

 

There is a comment in there about HK.... it seems that Mandarin is becoming more dominant in schools which could be pushing out English.   Still surprisingly low for a former "British colony" though.

 

[NinjaTurtle]

1 hour ago, mungouk said:

it seems that Mandarin is becoming more dominant in schools which could be pushing out English. 

 

This is a big development. I will be curious to see how this plays out in the next several years.

 

How much influence does the People's Republic of China have in Singapore?  Or is a 'change to Mandarin' merely reflect thoughts and ideas of people in Singapore?

[陳德聰]

35 minutes ago, NinjaTurtle said:

How much influence does the People's Republic of China have in Singapore?  Or is a 'change to Mandarin' merely reflect thoughts and ideas of people in Singapore?

In HK. Hong Kong. Not Singapore.

[XiaoXi]

8 hours ago, mungouk said:

Read the report. It's not a survey of the entire population, it's a survey of English learners conducted by English First. 

Yes that's why Singapore shouldn't be in there, it's for those who have another language as their primary language. Leastways, Singapore should be first..

 

8 hours ago, mungouk said:

There is a comment in there about HK.... it seems that Mandarin is becoming more dominant in schools which could be pushing out English.   Still surprisingly low for a former "British colony" though.

Their English is night and day compared with the mainland. Beyond that since they use Cantonese as their main language and all have to learn Mandarin to very high levels as well it's not surprising they wouldn't be as good as countries where English is the primary language. Also they're above France, Spain and Italy so you can hardly complain for a country located in Asia. Especially against France who are right next to England..

[NinjaTurtle]

Here is a good YouTube video on the languages of Singapore.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di_tr0q_G4k