SINGAPORE: Whenever my family makes plans to eat at a Chinese restaurant, I brace myself for the dreaded task of making a reservation in Mandarin.
Rightly or wrongly, I assume that speaking English will result in difficulties. So, firstly I have to look up the word for “reservation” in Chinese, because I can never remember. Then I rehearse my lines aloud.
I take a few deep breaths before dialling. When a staff member picks up – sometimes sounding very irritated – I panic and my Mandarin comes out in a garble.
The long pause that follows makes me die a little inside. Then the killer blow: “Huh? Shuo shen me? (What did you say?)”
I weigh my options: Do I make another attempt to speak Chinese, or abort and ask for an English-speaking server?
If your Mandarin is as bad as mine – or if you can’t speak it at all – you can probably relate. Recent incidents that went viral in Singapore have highlighted the intricacies of language in our multicultural society, sparking spirited discussions on English proficiency as a marker of social integration and whether English should be the main language used in public.
A Malay delivery rider shared on TikTok in March that he was late on an order because he couldn’t locate the food stall – it had Chinese-only signage that he could not read.
A week before that incident, a customer took to social media to complain about an NTUC FairPrice employee not speaking English, arguing that the Mandarin-speaking employee should not be in a customer-facing role.