Learning the mother tongue is hell for most Singaporeans and for some of us in KL too! I was virtually forced to learn Mandarin which has never been my favorite language. In school, I have always wondered what the hell Mandarin was for... those days, China was still wading in mud. The Malaysian government speaks Malay, the business circle uses English, KLites speak Cantonese and city folks attend SRK, not SRJK!
It was not until I went to university where I actually spoke Mandarin coz there were simply too much of my course-mates from Mandarin-speaking community. Apparently, aside from KL, Ipoh & Penang, the rest of Malaysia speaks Mandarin. So I had no choice but to 讲华语。And when I ended up in JB, thank God I had some knowledge of Mandarin. Everyone speaks it and the Chinese hawker stalls here do not have English or Malay wordings! All in all, I must be grateful that somehow I was forced to pick it up. In today's world, knowing Mandarin is definitely and advantage. And now, China is no longer wading in mud, it is swimming in gold!
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