17 October 2010

'One' Malaysia

今天早上去登山。
途中,无意中听见走在我前面两位小兄弟的对话。
当时他们看来正在为了一些卡通贴纸而争吵。

哥哥:"This is not mine one."
弟弟:"This is your one, real one."
哥哥:"This is not mine one, why are you always like that one? Give me back my one"

走在他们跟前的父亲听见俩兄弟的争执,忍不住转过头来。

父亲: Why you guys always like that one? Always want to quarrel one? Cannot be like that one!"

父子们对话中的英语用字,存在着很大的语病。那种是也‘one’,不是也‘one’的风格,我们却常常在很多马来西亚人的英语交谈中听见。除了本意之外,‘one’已经那么自然地用来表达华文语法的‘的’字。很多人在讲英文的时候,每一句话的尾端是不是也要杀出一个‘one'。好像如果没有加‘one’ ,句子就不完整似的。当然,在英文语法的角度来看,这是大错特错的。

受过的是十二年的华文基础教育,我当然没有资格说自己的英文比别人好。
只是想说刹那间,我忽然间完全明白什么是真正的One Malaysia 了。
哈哈哈!

4 comments:

  1. This is so true! I have to always remind myself not to put the 'one' at the back of the sentence too!

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  2. Min Min: Does Taiwanese tend to put 'one' behind the English sentence too? Hope that you are not living in 'Taione'.

    Ai Ping: It is not easy to omit the word 'one' if we compose our sentence in Mandarin or Hokkien before we say it.

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