as we were having dinner one early Monday evening, a group of men occupied the table behind us.
it was an outdoors, cheap but delicious Chinese eatery where the chef tosses food up in the air for that extra "kick" & the flame is roaring big but as u see fried rice being tossed in the pan, you know it's heaven served in a cheap plastic plate.
so i was talking bout men right? well yes, of course I was!
anyways they came in, disheveled and all dirty and grim covered, obviously just back from a day's hard work. when i say that i honestly do not mean the typing furiously on the keyboard "hard work" or the been on the phone all day "hard work"
you could see the sweat and these men. and you know they worked physically hard during the day and this dinner was probably the only chance any of them got to sit down & rest.
as they occupied the table behind us, naturally i began eavesdropping on their conversation.
lo and behold they were speaking in Malay, broken Malay, filled with Hokkien anecdotes and English phrases they picked up from the news, but it was a Malay speaking conversation predominantly.
i turned around, and these men were of different skin colour and most likely from a very diverse cultural, not to mention religious background.
as simple and everyday as this may sound, i kept asking myself whether day-to-day events like this would carry on if children learn not to master the national language or the international language, but their mother tongue.
if children were nurtured to honour their mother tongue, while other languages are not deemed important.
would children, and men alike, need a common language, to converse? to have a common ground? to gel them together?
Can fellow men of different skin colours, sit down in a Chinese eatery 20 years later *regardless of the decision going to be made by the MOE* discussing American politics in Malay?
it was an outdoors, cheap but delicious Chinese eatery where the chef tosses food up in the air for that extra "kick" & the flame is roaring big but as u see fried rice being tossed in the pan, you know it's heaven served in a cheap plastic plate.
so i was talking bout men right? well yes, of course I was!
anyways they came in, disheveled and all dirty and grim covered, obviously just back from a day's hard work. when i say that i honestly do not mean the typing furiously on the keyboard "hard work" or the been on the phone all day "hard work"
you could see the sweat and these men. and you know they worked physically hard during the day and this dinner was probably the only chance any of them got to sit down & rest.
as they occupied the table behind us, naturally i began eavesdropping on their conversation.
lo and behold they were speaking in Malay, broken Malay, filled with Hokkien anecdotes and English phrases they picked up from the news, but it was a Malay speaking conversation predominantly.
i turned around, and these men were of different skin colour and most likely from a very diverse cultural, not to mention religious background.
as simple and everyday as this may sound, i kept asking myself whether day-to-day events like this would carry on if children learn not to master the national language or the international language, but their mother tongue.
if children were nurtured to honour their mother tongue, while other languages are not deemed important.
would children, and men alike, need a common language, to converse? to have a common ground? to gel them together?
Can fellow men of different skin colours, sit down in a Chinese eatery 20 years later *regardless of the decision going to be made by the MOE* discussing American politics in Malay?
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