#one to one English classes in singapore

[kiyaonline]

English classes in singapore | kiya learning

English classes in Singapore help students to get accustomed to the language and grammar of the subject. Join Kiya Learning English classes in Singapore.

[classesbykiyaonline]

English classes in singapore | kiya learning

English classes in Singapore help students to get accustomed to the language and grammar of the subject. Join Kiya Learning English classes in Singapore.

[onlinekiya]

English classes in singapore | kiya learning

English classes in Singapore help students to get accustomed to the language and grammar of the subject. Join Kiya Learning English classes in Singapore.

[kiya-123]

English classes in singapore | kiya learning

Become a master of English with Kiya Learning. We provide phonics classes, English spoken, and many more for your children. We offer online 1:1 English classes in singapore by our expert teachers.

[santanasaintmendes]

singapore lovin’ had me a blast 

part2! to the cosmic girl records

¡Cosmic Girl Records!

summary: going to Singapore to support your boyfriend, stealing Alex’s girlfriend and beefing with lando, nothing’s changed really 

olliebearman x reader & platonic!grid x reader

fc!: gorgeous girls and couples on pinterest all credits go to rightful owners of the photos used below 

a/n: also the timeline and the whole universe in what these smau’s are based in are very different to irl, ollie’s in f1 already and he drives for ferrari, lewis is still in mercedes because it made more sense kind of? I’ll fill in the gaps as we go lol

disclaimer!: there may be some sensitive jokes that may be hurtful to some people, they are all there just for the humour and to make the story more enjoyable, please don’t come after me 😭

also i’m sorry for the english and french slander against lando and pierre it’s purely for humour😔 please don’t take the comments to heart

a/n: the lovely @yawn-zi gave me the courage to post the second part to the cosmic girl records, i hope you didn’t get in trouble for laughing during portuguese class! and a big thank you to @nichmeddarso who rebloged part1 with all those tags it was greatly appreciated!

here you go, enjoy!

liked by landonorris, olliebearman, georgerussell64, lilymhe, alex_albon and 3,849,383 others

unfortunatelyy/n: next stop, Singapore! btw, the sunset was a paid actor ❤️

tagged olliebearman 

view 2,473,282 comments 

 landonorris: for anyone who asks, it was traumatising sitting next to the two of them on the flight

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 unfortunatelyy/n: so bitter damn 

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 landonorris: BECAUSE WE MISSED OUR PLANE 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: NOT MY FAULT 

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 landonorris: IT WAS MOST DEFINITELY YOUR FAULT 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: OKAY I’M SORRY I LEFT MY PASSPORT IN THE TAXI BUT STILL 

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 landonorris: mhm, sure 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: “mHm sUrE” 🇬🇧🤓☕

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 landonorris: DIE.

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 user1: NAH SHE DID HIM SO DIRTY 

user7: always count on y/n to keep an aesthetically pleasing instagram page 

liked by unfortunatelyy/n

 olliebearman: you wouldn’t be able to guess how many times she made me retake that first pic 

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 landonorris: i can 🙄

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 unfortunatelyy/n: BOTH OF YOU SHUSH 

 user2: does she actually have a job or does she just follow ollie around 😐

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 user3: yes she has a job???

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 user4: it's called taking a vacation, google it?

 lilymhe: can’t wait to see you soon bb 🥰

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 alex_albon: you have a boyfriend???? me??

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 unfortunatelyy/n: @alex_albon stop being so delusional you sound crazy 

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 alex_albon: @lilymhe are you really going to let her bully me 😰

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 lilymhe: . . .

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 alex_albon: 😦

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 unfortunatelyy/n: the man was too stunned to speak 😱

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 alex_albon: 🖕

 user5: it’s not a y/n insta post without y/n and lily terrorising alex in the comments section 

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 user6: and y/n and lando bickering like the 5 year olds that they are 

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, georgerussell64, charles_leclerc, olliebearman and 4,489,383 others 

unfortunatelyy/n: some sightseeing and exploring before the weekend with my wifey and . . .  boyfriend?

tagged olliebearman and lilymhe 

view 3,682,838 comments 

 user1: Ollie’s officially the third wheel now 😔

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 user11: a moment of silence for another fallen soldier 🫡

i

user2: HELP THE FIRST AND SECOND PIC HAVE ME ROLLING ON THE GROUND 

liked by unfortunatelyy/n

 lilymhe: loved exploring with you. . . and your friend Steve!

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 user3: HELP

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 unfortunatelyy/n: it’s okay! he won’t be a problem after this weekend 😃

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 olliebearman: 😦

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 user4: homie’s traumatised 

 alex_albon: . . . it’s okay really. I’m fine. I’m fine.

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 user5: not alex going through all 5 stages of grief 

liked by unfortunatelyy/n 

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 user6: I can’t tell which one he’s up to 

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 user5: . . . neither can i. 

 user7: she’s STUNNING, Ollie better sleep with one eye open tonight 

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 olliebearman: 😰

 user8: ollie on any of y/n’s insta posts after reading the comments: 😮😰😔

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 user10: literally anyone really 😭

 alex_albon: @charles_leclerc @georgerussell64 when does it end 😭 please, i’m a desperate man 

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 georgerussell64: we lied 😔

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charles_leclerc: it never does. 

 user9: where’s lando, it’s not a y/n post without him commenting something absurd 

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 landonorris: i have been summoned. 

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 user9: WHAT DID I DO 😰

 landonorris: oh so now you have a boyfriend AND a wife? 🤨

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 unfortunatelyy/n: i thought i could finally post something without you attacking me in my comments section. I WAS WRONG. 

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 landonorris: 🤷‍♂️

liked by olliebearman, landonorris, lilymhe, georgerussell64, charles_leclerc and 5,728,282 others 

unfortunatelyy/n: as long as i'm with you, I've got a smile on my face 

tagged olliebearman 

view 4,282,992 comments 

olliebearman: ❤️

liked by unfortunatelyy/n 

user3: couple goals fr 

 user5: THE FIRST PIC I CAN’T DECIDE WHO DO WE THINK WON GUYS 

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 user6: y/n, duh. 

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 olliebearman: unfortunately, that is correct 😔

 unfortunatelyy/n: that’s me flipping off lando in the distance in the second pic by the way 

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 landonorris: i should be getting paid for taking all these yucky photos of you guys and this is how you repay me?

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 unfortunatelyy/n: guys what do we think? Has being single finally hit him?

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 landonorris: that’s it, i’ve had enough, i’m releasing THE video 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: OH YOU WOULDN’T DARE

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 landonorris: oh yes I would, watch me. 

 user1: HELP WHAT ARE THE CHILDREN TALKING ABOUT 

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 user9: IDK BUT I CAN’T TELL IF THEY’RE JOKING OR NOT 

user10: this turned into a war zone so quickly 

liked by charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, carlossainz55, pierregasly, danielricciardo and 11,749,383 others

unfortunatelyy/n: and due to personal reasons, a human by the name of Lando Norris shan't be getting mentioned in any future posts, so enjoy ✨

tagged landonorris 

view 12,483,372 comments 

user1: SHE DID NOT HOLD BACK

user2: he’s such an icon fr 

user3: he’s never beating the babygirl allegations after this i'm afraid 😔

user4: “thank you y/n” they all said in unison 

liked by unfortunatelyy/n

 landonorris: I SAID I WAS SORRY LIKE 50 TIMES WHAT MORE DO U WANT 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: i only accept apologies in cash 

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 landonorris: well damn no apology for you then 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: YOU’RE LITERALLY A MILLIONAIRE??? |

 landonorris: and your point?

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 unfortunatelyy/n: i hope you accidentally get a fish burger next time you go for takeout 

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 user10: oop she really went there 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: and i hope you realise after it’s too late 

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 landonorris: GASP. HOW DARE YOU

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 unfortunatelyy/n: 😃

 carlossainz55: *saves photos to camera roll 

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 landonorris: wow. 

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 carlossainz55: for memories, you know?

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 landonorris: “fOr mEmOriEs yOu kNoW?” SHUT UP YOU MUPPET, YOU’RE REALLY NO HELP YOU KNOW

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 carlossainz55: so aggressive geez 

user5: lando’s fighting for his life in the comments section

 pierregasly: lando in the third pic: UWU

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 landonorris: I- SHUT UP YOU FRENCH HO HO HO BAGUETTE BABY MAN

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 user8: absolutely violated 

unfortunatelyy/n: i’ve sworn to secrecy but since SOMEONE CAN’T KEEP A SECRET, i guess I can’t too. The second pic is me when i forced lando to cook fish for me, hence the disgusted face. it’s safe to say he did not talk to me for 6 months straight after 

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 user6: Y/N, professional exposer 

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 landonorris: HOW COULD YOU, YOU PINKY SWEARED I HATE YOU

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 carlossainz55: @unfortunatelyy/n: teach me your ways 🙏

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 unfortunatelyy/n: a magician never reveals their secrets, but i’m no magician so sure 

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 user 7: HELP STOP EXPOSING LANDO 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: never 😤

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 landonorris: 😭

liked by olliebearman, kimi.antonelli, charles_leclerc, arthur_leclerc and 7,483,832 others 

unfortunatelyy/n: always and forever proud of you 🐻

tagged olliebearman 

view 6,382,392 comments 

 olliebearman: oh so that’s why you wanted that photo ☹️

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 unfortunatelyy/n: sorry love! ❤️

user1: as i clicked into the notification, i thought “at last, a normal sensible post from y/n” i have never been more wrong, WHAT IS THAT SECOND PHOTO Y/N

liked by unfortunatelyy/n 

user2: a relationship like theirs, it's a need not a want 

user3: from spilling pasta on her to becoming her man, talk about upgrades 😌

 kimi.antonelli: @unfortunatelyy/n what about the photo I sent for your post

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 olliebearman: WHAT PHOTO 

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 kimi.antonelli: . . . there’s no photo i have no idea what you’re talking about there’s no photo ahaha

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 arthur_leclerc: @unfortunatelyy/n what about MY photo of Ollie

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 dinobeganovic_: @unfortunatelyy/n and mine?

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 maya_weug: @unfortunatelyy/n mine?

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 olliebearman: Y/N ANSWER THEM WHAT PHOTOS 

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 unfortunatelyy/n: . . . there’s no photos are you crazy ahahah

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 user4: the gaslighting goes hard 😭

a/n: thank you everyone for the love that part 1 got! I really appreciated all the likes and reblogs that the post got, i hope you enjoyed part 2 to the cosmic girl records universe. This part was a bit shorter than the first and I have 3 more parts that i’m working on that should be out soon. Thank you and bye for now! 🫶🏻🫶🏻

also should i make a tag list for the series? 🤔

[southeastasianists]

Singapore’s prosperity has long set it apart from many other former British colonies. There is another difference, too: Singapore has clung to honouring its former colonial ruler — and it wants to keep doing so.

Special accolade has gone to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who is considered to have founded modern Singapore in the early 1800s. For decades, Singapore’s textbooks credited Raffles with transforming the island from a “sleepy fishing village” into a thriving seaport. He has been the central character in a larger official narrative that says imperial Britain had set up Singapore for success as an independent nation.

Dedications to Raffles dot the landscape of Singapore. A business district, schools and dozens of other buildings bear his name. Two 2.5-metre likenesses of the man loom large in downtown Singapore.

But a new statue of Raffles, installed in a park in May, has revived a debate about the legacy of colonialism in Singapore. On one side is the broader establishment, which has held up British colonial rule positively. On the other are those who want a closer inspection of the empire that Raffles represented and the racial inequity he left behind, even as Singapore became wealthy.

This divide has surfaced before, perhaps most prominently a few years ago when Singapore celebrated the bicentennial of Raffles’ arrival on the island. Now, the new statue has set off a fresh debate, with critics pointing out that other countries have for years been taking down monuments to historical figures associated with slavery or imperialism, or both.

“The thing about Raffles is that, unfortunately I think, it has been delivered as a hagiography rather than just history,” said Alfian Sa’at, a playwright who wants to see the Raffles statues destroyed. “It’s so strange — the idea that one would defend colonial practice. It goes against the grain on what’s happening in many parts of the world.”

The new statue of Raffles stands next to one of his friend Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist, at Fort Canning Park. Tan Kee Wee, an economist who pooled $330,000 with his siblings to commission the statues, said he wanted to commemorate the pair’s role in founding Singapore’s first botanic gardens, which were his frequent childhood haunt. He donated the sculptures in his parents’ name to the National Parks Board.

Opponents have also criticised the government for allowing the statue to go up at the park because it was the site of the tomb of precolonial Malay kings. The parks board said it considered historical relevance in the installation of the sculptures.

Questions about the statue have even been raised in Singapore’s parliament. In June, Desmond Lee, the minister for national development, responded to one by saying that Singapore did not glorify its colonial history. At the same time, Lee added, “We need not be afraid of the past.”

The plaque for the Raffles statue explains how Singapore’s first botanic gardens “cultivated plants of economic importance, particularly spices”. That, critics said, was a euphemism for their actual purpose: cash crops for the British Empire.

Tan defended the legacy of British colonialists in Singapore, saying they “didn’t come and kill Singaporeans”.

He added: “Singapore was treated well by the British. So why all this bitterness?”

Far from benign

But colonial Britain was far from benign. For instance, it treated nonwhite residents of Singapore as second-class citizens. Raffles created a town plan for Singapore that segregated people into different racial enclaves. And he did not interact with the locals, said Kwa Chong Guan, a historian.

“He was very much a corporate company man, just concerned with what he assumed to be the English East India Co’s interests,” Kwa said.

Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819 as Britain was looking to compete with the Dutch in the Malacca Strait, a crucial waterway to China. At the time, Singapore was under the sway of the kingdom of Johor in present-day Malaysia. Raffles exploited a succession dispute in Johor to secure a treaty that allowed the East India Company to set up a trading post in Singapore.

Within a handful of years, Singapore was officially a British territory. Convict labour, largely from the Indian subcontinent, was crucial to its economic development. So, too, were Chinese immigrants, which included wealthy traders and poor labourers.

Singapore achieved self-governance in 1959, then briefly joined Malaysia before becoming an independent republic in 1965. It has since built one of the world’s most open economies and among its busiest ports, as well as a bustling regional financial hub.

In recent years, the government has acknowledged, in small ways, the need to expand the narrative of Singapore’s founding beyond Raffles. Its textbooks now reflect that the island was a thriving centre of regional trade for hundreds of years before Raffles arrived.

In 2019, officials cast the commemoration of Raffles’ arrival as also a celebration of others who built Singapore. A Raffles statue was painted over as if to disappear into the backdrop. Placed next to it, though only for the duration of the event, were four other sculptures of early settlers, including that of Sang Nila Utama, a Malay prince who founded what was called Singapura in 1299.

To some historians and intellectuals, such gestures are merely symbolic and ignore the reckoning Singapore needs to have with its colonial past. British rule introduced racist stereotypes about nonwhites, such as that of the “lazy” Malay, an Indigenous group in Singapore, that has had a lasting effect on public attitudes. Colonialism led to racial divisions that, in many ways, persist to this day in the city-state that is now dominated by ethnic Chinese.

“If you only focus on one man and the so-called benevolent aspect of colonialism, and you don’t try to associate or think about the negative part too much, isn’t that a kind of blindness, or deliberate amnesia?” said Sai Siew Min, an independent historian. (Story continues below)

Role of race

Race relations played a role in Raffles’ ascension in Singaporean lore. Soon after Singapore became independent, the governing People’s Action Party — which remains in power decades later — decided to officially declare Raffles the founder of Singapore. Years later, S Rajaratnam, who was then the foreign minister, said that anointing a Malay, Chinese or Indian as its founder would have been fraught.

“So we put up an Englishman — a neutral, so there will be no dissension,” Rajaratnam said.

The decision was also meant to indicate that Singapore remained open to the West and free markets.

In a 1983 speech, Rajaratnam acknowledged that Raffles’ attitude toward the “nonwhite races was that without British overlordship the natives would not amount to much”.

Critics of the Raffles statues also argue that his legacy should reflect his time on the island of Java. Although Raffles outlawed slavery in Singapore, he allowed trading of slaves in Java, including children as young as 13, according to Tim Hannigan, who wrote a book about Raffles.

The new statues of Raffles and Wallich were created by Andrew Lacey, a British artist. The sculptures evoke the two men as apparitions — symbolism that Lacey said represented the world’s evolution away from the West.

Lacey said he had “wrangled” with the public reaction toward his sculptures and he had no qualms if Singaporeans wanted to take them down, destroy them or replace their heads with the Malay gardeners who were instrumental in creating the botanic gardens.

“I was cognisant of the complexities of making any dead white male,” he said of Raffles. “I wasn’t cognisant of the degree of complexity around him.”

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

SH’s post does not differ too much from A Night in Nola - at TOTC2024

"Sassenach" in Gaelic just means English person. Sasana/ Sasainn means England. Its use' has survived in Scotland as - 'Aa dinna ken = I don't know'. The earliest evidence for Sassenach is from 1757, in the writing of the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett, So, the word “Sassenach" is not related to the word “outsider”.

SH has appropriated the word Sassenach from Outlander for personal gain and is attempting to distance himself with different versions to justify the name of his whisky as Outlander comes to an end.🙄

How long should these awards last?

The San Francisco World Spirits Competition is the largest award show, around 90.0% of spirits that enter this competition and in the Singapore World Spirits Competition ‘win a medal’ 🥇🥈🥉. That’s a guess the judges are not very strict. Tasting whisky is very subjective; you may or may not agree with any so-called expert panel. That leads to the question of how to know if you like whisky before buying it.

Wonder how many phone calls or letters SH receives every week asking him to participate in a spirit award show.

I do give them credit that spirits are blind-tasting, but one thing is important, judges do talk to each other and try to influence. This leads us to the whisky reason. To buy a bottle of whisky because a shelf talker mentioned it ‘won’ an award.

Spirits buyers without much knowledge of spirits (i.e. SH’s female fans) do like to see ‘awards’ on retail shelf talkers. It makes them feel good about their purchase. Most also have no clue there is more than 1 award show or anything about how they work or worse some of them don’t drink.

A huge flaw in every award show is there may be another side to it thought to get an award. If everyone “wins” then they keep coming back and paying to enter “competitions.” Hey everyone likes to be a winner!

SH fans taste his products and tell him what He wants to hear. But, On the other hand, actual customers, and whisky connoisseurs tell what they think. That is the best award! After you enter competitions and win in all of them, that is enough. The contest has no real merit, send a check or transfer per spirit entered along with the bottles for award consideration.

If SH comes back again and again to the same whisky and gin competitions with the limited edition from previous years, then his friend and partner feel honoured even if no one has any clue of ​​his partner's contribution to the alcohol business 🤷‍♀️

Posted 7th September 2024

[virtuouswhitehatorganization]

Specs (Villainous Oc)

Name: Shi Xian 

Headcannon Voice Actor: Brandon Soo Hoo (English) ; Abraham Vega (Spanish)

Affiliations: PEACE; Elite 

Sexuality: Straight

Abilities: Magical glasses that grant him multiple powers depending on which color his lenses he switches between. 

Residence: Taiwan (formerly) ; Marin City

Relatives: Shi Shu (grandmother); Shi Huizhong (grandfather)

Occupation: Superhero; Pawnshop Employee (formerly)

Ethnicity: Taiwanese 

Personality: He's a smarmy wise alec who likes to make wisecracks and belittle those he looks down on. He also share's teammates sadistic love for killing villains, especially those who he perceives as easy picking. He is also a prankster who loves pulling jokes on people with not even his teammates being immune. He shows great loyalty to his team and gets defensive if anyone is really hurt. He also very smug and can underestimate his opponent due to believing in his abilities. He also loves spouting big words and facts to bettitle other intelligence. 

Background: Originally from Singapore he was raised as an orphan by his grandparents who kept an antique shop and sold a multitude of different objects. However, one day they were accosted by some members of the tirade who were interested in some glasses that found their way into their shop but his grandparents declined and the members later came back to take them by killing them. He would be devastated by his grandparents' death and decided to use the glasses to get back at the triad for killing his grandparents. He would go vigilante using his new found specs to get back at the triad members in memory of his grandparents. He later joined PEACE where he would be recruited into the Elect as a member. 

* He knows Chinese and English 

* He loves old school kung fu movies. 

* Despite his intelligence, he never went officially to university. 

* He was top in his class as a child. 

* He is very well read. 

* He has a huge book collection in Chinese and English. 

Created through picrew.me/en/image_maker/12905…

[umichenginabroad]

Swinging by Singapore (Week 4)

Hello from Singapore! Having always wanted to travel to Southeast Asia, I was ecstatic to learn that one of my roommates had a similar dream. I couldn’t believe it when we started discussing the trip just two weeks in advance, but I seized the opportunity to immerse myself in a new culture. My schooling at UNSW is split between the Summer semester which runs from Jan 2 - Feb 5 and term 1 which runs from Feb 11 - May 9. During the summer semester, I have been taking a single Ecotourism class which is entirely asynchronous until the end of January when the class takes a trip to the Great Barrier Reef! This meant that I could travel with no fear of missing class. After a 9hr flight, Lauren, Charlotte, Shaunak, Evan and I landed in Singapore and got right to exploring. The Jewel is a mall containing the world’s largest indoor waterfall located just outside the Changi Airport. As soon as we got off the plane and laid eyes on the beauty we were speechless. Luscious trees and shrubbery surrounded the waterfall and staggered up all around it. The light shone through the windowed ceiling and made me forget about any stress I ever had. We might as well have been standing in a jungle. The surrounding mall was just as exciting. Several minutes were spent wandering around the Pokemon store where I got a pack of cards in honor of my ever growing childhood collection. The chocolate croll I got at a little bakery stand was one of the best things I had ever eaten in an airport. After 2 hours of exploring, it was clear to me that airports in the US need to step up their game. 

Utilizing the very reliable train system known as the MRT, we made our way to our AirBnB located in Little India. For reference, Singapore is a melting pot of cultures with a 74% Chinese, 14% Malaysian, and 9% Indian population. This means that when you look around, all signage is in Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English. The fact that English is widely spoken across the country made transport and communication extremely easy and not something we had to worry about. After settling into our single room with just enough space for our beds and bags, we made our way towards Kampong Gelam which is Singapore’s Muslim Quarter and the site of the remarkable Sultan Mosque. Starving, we found a restaurant for dinner which was full of new foods and a particular favorite of mine – Kothu Paratha which I’d only ever had at my favorite Indian restaurant in Ann Arbor. We called it a night soon after that, but I was excited to be on a new continent and get right to exploring. 

The next day we hit all the major stops including Gardens by the Bay, the Cloud Forest, and Marino Bay Sands. The first two attractions, like the Jewel, emphasized the appreciation for nature that Singapore has as many of its major attractions are centered around greenery. 

Pictured first is Gardens by the Bay. Second is me in the Cloud Forest!

Nearby was a Hawker Center called Satay by the Bay where we got lunch. Hawker Centers in Singapore are essentially large food courts with countless stalls of diverse Indian, Chinese, and Malaysian foods and drinks for incredible prices. On average, you could get a whole meal for about $5 and a side drink for another $1 so needless to say I seized the opportunity to try as many foods as possible. That lunch I had chicken satay, my first ever stingray, carrot cake (a dish local to Singapore containing absolutely no carrot nor cake), and pineapple juice. I can’t even begin to describe how delicious everything tasted so I’m afraid you’ll just have to imagine through the picture below. 

Hawker Centers like that one are scattered all throughout the city, so we made it a rule to seek them out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At Marino Bay Sands, one of the most unique buildings I have ever stepped foot in, we made our way to a restaurant called Lavo at the highest floor where we got drinks, incredible views, and a 20-layered chocolate peanut butter cake. We may have been exhausted from walking around all day, but we did not leave until that cake plate was clean, even if it meant spending the next hour there. 

Marino Bay Sands is the building pictured above followed by the equally-as-intimidating chocolate cake.

The next day we ventured to Sentosa Island where you could take cable cars across the island and see the beautiful beaches and various amusement parks. Though the weather wasn’t in our favor, it was nice to see what beaches look like outside of Australia since they reminded me of just how lucky I am to be living on Coogee. Sentosa was followed by Chinatown and Clarke Quay in the evening, both of which are full of rich culture and were a pleasure to roam in. Before our flight to Bali, we concluded our trip with the MacRitchie Treetop Walk where we were greeted by monkeys and even more beautiful greenery. 

Though we were only able to spend a few days there, I fully intend on returning to Singapore one day and making my way to those Hawker Centers. Until then, back to exploring Australia!

David Bayer

Biomedical Engineering

University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia

[valpoupdates]

FEBRUARY CALENDAR POSTING...

So much to see, so much to do, so little time ! Lucky for you, here in the Valparaíso Region, we keep track of it just for you ! Unless stated otherwise, these activities are optional. Residents do not have to take part in these if they don't wish to ! These can be used for threads throughout the month but new threads can't be started for these activities once the month is up. Please track the valpocalendar tag to stay updated month to month ( ©️ )

Casablanca Activities:

February 3rd-4th: Aire Libre will be hosting two romance-a-thon nights, one in Spanish and one in English (with Spanish closed captioning).  There will be a Valentine’s Day themed snack box consisting of a metal heart popcorn bowl, pink popcorn, a variety of candy, and heart-shaped alfajores provided by Dulce Sueño’s Sweets and Treats.

February 3rd 5 PM: La vida de los peces: Andrés se reencuentra con su antiguo amor. 7 PM: Play: Dos personas buscan amor, pero nunca se encuentran. 10:00 PM: Los Fuertes: Lucas y Antonio empiezan un gran amor. February 4th 5 PM: Shrek: Un ogro y un burro tienen una aventura. 7 PM: Crazy Rich Asians: El novio de Rachel Chu, una profesora de economía, tiene un gran secreto. 10 PM: The Notebook: Duke lee una historia romántica a una paciente.

February 8th: Casablanca Blooms and Coffee will be hosting two Valentine’s Day-themed events: from 5 PM - 6 PM will be a bouquet-making class where you can create a beautiful bouquet for a loved one, and from 6 PM - 7 PM will be a coffee blending class where you can create your own sweet blend.

February 14th: Dulce Sueño’s Sweets and Treats is hosting a Valentine’s Day dessert decorating session from 12 PM - 2 PM.  Come decorate cookies, brownies, and mini-cakes; then take home your goodies and share them with your loved ones.

Quilpué Activities:

February 9th: Caos Tattoos is hosting the Anti-Romance Tattoo Sale.  There will be affordable flash sheets around themes of anti-love and heartbreak.

February 18th: The Annual Beastly Brunch is happening again at the Quilpué Zoo from 11 PM - 1 PM.  Feast on delicious bites and sip brunch cocktails while learning and celebrating the feathered friends you have in your own backyard!  Brunch will be served.

February 22nd: Plantas Altas is having their Customer Appreciation Day. Plants will be up to 40% off, and there will be complimentary food and a DJ.  First 40 customers get a free t-shirt or tote bag with the store logo.

Valparaíso Activities:

February 1st: A Santa Moneda resident has some dozen leftover tickets for Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has offered to fly people out to Carnival for a small fee. Carnival takes place February 9th-17th, and it is one of the largest yearly festivals in Brazil that celebrates their history, culture, and traditions. The itinerary is already made, hotel rooms have been booked, and VIP events have been reserved; all you need to do is reach out to Santa Moneda Front Desk and we can get you in touch with the resident. Serious inquiries only!

February 10th: Parque Cultural de Valparaíso is hosting a Lunar New Year Festival from 12 PM - 9 PM, celebrating the Year of the Wood Dragon. There will be foods from many different countries that celebrate the holiday, including China, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, and Malaysia, stalls that sell clothes, art, and knick-knacks, lion dancing, and presentations and reading corners for people of all ages to learn more about the history, culture, and traditions behind the holiday from each country. The festival will close out with fireworks.

February 23rd: The Universidad de Bellas Artes Poets play against the Pontifical Catholic University Pumas at 6 PM. Come show your school spirit or come support your local fútbol team.

February 24th: Biblioteca Santiago Severín is hosting a community shred day from 8 AM - 8 PM. With a small donation, you can bring any personal papers and documents to be shredded.  Volunteers are still needed; if interested, please sign up on our website, <santiagoseverin.cl>. 

Viña del Mar Activities:

February 11th-24th: The Ballet de Valparaíso will be performing Cinderella at The Teatro Municipal. Come laugh, be surprised, and fall in love with a new interpretation of an age-old fairytale.

February 14th: There will be speed dating in the Jardín Botánico Nacional from 2 PM - 4 PM, with complimentary coffee provided by Combi Coffee. Casual attire; no sign ups necessary.

February 17th: There is free admission for all tours, all day, at Castillo Wulff. If you and your kids or friends are looking for a fun way to pass the time, come learn about the beautiful, historic castle overlooking the sea.

February 25th - March 1st: The Quinta Vergara Amphitheater is hosting the LXII Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña. It is the oldest and largest music festival in Latin America; the 6-day festival is broadcasted on the radio, television, and online streaming platforms. This year’s headlines include Maná, Peso Pluma, Allison Mandel, Andrea Bocelli with special guest Matteo Bocelli, Maria Becerra, and more!

February 29th: The restaurant inside the Casino de Viña del Mar is a popular place for people to get proposed to, and on Leap Year, that popularity dramatically increases as women will propose to their significant others.  No one knows when this tradition started, but it’s been going on for years; the restaurant even has a special menu for this day. Come grab a table and watch some potential impromptu proposals! Who cares if the rumors say most of them are staged!

[thistransient]

Ah, a perfect illustration for me to muse about KL.

- For some reason I expected KL to follow a similar flow; after all, I was also going back after ten years (and thereby redoing a somewhat malcontent experience with the ex). However, I made many tactical errors here. I did not make solid plans, I waffled and faffed about, unable to decide if I was staying here or going there (inevitably, I stayed as it required the least effort), I had no real meaningful social interaction, I stayed in a hotel with no breakfast, I was bereft when faced with description-less menus in down-to-earth local establishments ("what do you recommend?" or "which is your favourite?" to the server is a very dangerous question indeed). I feel somewhat remorseful that I did not commit to a bit, either complete sloth and hipster cafes, or truly dedicated tourist-ing. I also stayed directly on Jalan Petaling, and found in a strange way (okay maybe I'm really stretching for a complaint here) it detracted from the fun of going in search of the place to be if you're staying smack in the middle of it.

- When I went to Seoul I did research. I had plans. Things to see! Places to go! I stayed at a guesthouse and had some friendly interaction with the host, and daily provided breakfast. Most places I ate at had picture menus for wayward foreigners, or at least I was familiar enough with Korean food and Hangul to figure things out. It was suitable weather for rambling around. I was having a bittersweet life transition ending Chinese class, and revisiting Korea after ten years!

It was also not the weather for extended trotting about outside (I did eventually partake in the time-honoured tropical tradition of walking around the giant multi-storey AC'd mall though).

- This is not to say I didn't enjoy the hipster cafes and art spaces (once I actually got out of bed). Or staying in a hotel room bigger than my own apartment, with nice bedding (even if I never figured out how to turn on the hot water in the shower). But in hindsight it feels kind of a coagulated blur. When I was there, it was an elastic eternity, and now that I'm back, almost as if I never left. Perhaps I simply wasn't in the right frame of mind, or perhaps I was just somewhat brainwashed by the blaring music from the bars across the street until 3 or 4 AM my first few nights there.

- I will say though, I had a very heartening experience being gendered unequivocally correctly around 99% of the time. One thing about Chinese is that with no spoken gendered pronouns and a formal "you", it is very hard to tell how people are perceiving me in Taiwan until they are trying to redirect me to a different bathroom, which is really not the optimal situation in which to find this out. Malaysia is very into the sir/ma'am honorifics. I suspect there is also some effect had by a more conservative, illegal-homosexuality sort of culture where clothes and styling are great determiners of which box one gets sorted into, vs Taipei where it's fair game to assume that maybe you look like that cause you're just really, really gay?

- The metro escalators in KL go much faster than I'm used to an escalator going (I'm not complaining). The metro in KL is also disjointed and confusing and the ticket machines are uncooperative for wrangling.

- I don't want to judge a group of people on a whole based on their hospitality personas, so I'll just say at the least, Malay Malaysians working in customer service are very charming and friendly.

- I really intended to eat a ton of fruit and then I just...didn't, maybe because I am used to buying fruit whole in multi-kilo volumes and eating it at home, but the hotel was not conducive to that at all (no mini fridge, no knives).

- Every time I go to Singapore/Indonesia/Malaysia I come away wanting to learn Malay/Indonesian because it is just so delightful to look at the stack of languages in one piece of signage and have no real idea which word matches up to which in English. (Well, that's not entirely correct, I can recognise some basic things à la "saya suka makan pisang" after those two weeks couchsurfing in Sumatera some years ago. But then, I'm always torn because if I want to learn an Austronesian language I should really just go for Filipino so I can actually understand half my tumblr dash- I cracked open a teach-yourself sort of book at a hostel in Cebu once and my brain simply refused to unlatch its death grip on Chinese at the time, but maybe there's room for another grammar system in there now?)

- On the plane back there were (or so it sounded) at least two children who threw a fit and screamed bloody murder at full lung capacity (I am really not exaggerating here, it was impressive) when we experienced turbulence during takeoff and landing, but I had already put in my hotel earplugs, and simply smiled to myself thinking of how I'd learned, through a visit to Teotihuacán one year, that when the Aztecs sacrificed children to the rain god, the more they cried the better the rains were expected to be.

- For the first time ever at Taoyuan Airport the immigration officer examined my passport in minute detail (even some kind of little magnifying glass thing?) and asked how long I was staying, which reminded me a) I forgot to make myself look presentable and b) I claim to live here but I actually have zero guaranteed right to it at the moment (sleep deprived and not having eaten since breakfast, this threatened to send me into an emotional spiral until I reminded myself of those compounding factors and decided to save that thought for after dinner). I said I was leaving on the 19th (because that is the date for which I still have an unused exit flight). The officer seemed pacified and stamped me in for another 90 days. But maybe it is time to finally put some effort into reestablishing my formal alien residency.

- Last but not least, maybe I should have stayed in KL cause apparently Taiwan is having a heatwave and it's gonna be 39C tomorrow, and KL will be a chilly 31 or so.

[aroundtheworldwithphillyfogg]

October 31st, 1872: Singapore

The “Rangoon” weighed anchor at Singapore the next day at four a.m., to receive coal, having gained half a day on the prescribed time of her arrival. Phileas Fogg noted this gain in his journal, and then, accompanied by Aouda, who betrayed a desire for a walk on shore, disembarked.

Fix, who suspected Mr. Fogg’s every movement, followed them cautiously, without being himself perceived; while Passepartout, laughing in his sleeve at Fix’s manœuvres, went about his usual errands.

The island of Singapore is not imposing in aspect, for there are no mountains; yet its appearance is not without attractions. It is a park checkered by pleasant highways and avenues. A handsome carriage, drawn by a sleek pair of New Holland horses, carried Phileas Fogg and Aouda into the midst of rows of palms with brilliant foliage, and of clove-trees, whereof the cloves form the heart of a half-open flower. Pepper plants replaced the prickly hedges of European fields; sago-bushes, large ferns with gorgeous branches, varied the aspect of this tropical clime; while nutmeg-trees in full foliage filled the air with a penetrating perfume. Agile and grinning bands of monkeys skipped about in the trees, nor were tigers wanting in the jungles.

After a drive of two hours through the country, Aouda and Mr. Fogg returned to the town, which is a vast collection of heavy-looking, irregular houses, surrounded by charming gardens rich in tropical fruits and plants; and at ten o’clock they re-embarked, closely followed by the detective, who had kept them constantly in sight.

Passepartout, who had been purchasing several dozen mangoes—a fruit as large as good-sized apples, of a dark-brown colour outside and a bright red within, and whose white pulp, melting in the mouth, affords gourmands a delicious sensation—was waiting for them on deck. He was only too glad to offer some mangoes to Aouda, who thanked him very gracefully for them.

At eleven o’clock the “Rangoon” rode out of Singapore harbour, and in a few hours the high mountains of Malacca, with their forests, inhabited by the most beautifully-furred tigers in the world, were lost to view. Singapore is distant some thirteen hundred miles from the island of Hong Kong, which is a little English colony near the Chinese coast. Phileas Fogg hoped to accomplish the journey in six days, so as to be in time for the steamer which would leave on the 6th of November for Yokohama, the principal Japanese port.

The “Rangoon” had a large quota of passengers, many of whom disembarked at Singapore, among them a number of Indians, Ceylonese, Chinamen, Malays, and Portuguese, mostly second-class travellers.

The weather, which had hitherto been fine, changed with the last quarter of the moon. The sea rolled heavily, and the wind at intervals rose almost to a storm, but happily blew from the south-west, and thus aided the steamer’s progress. The captain as often as possible put up his sails, and under the double action of steam and sail the vessel made rapid progress along the coasts of Anam and Cochin China. Owing to the defective construction of the “Rangoon,” however, unusual precautions became necessary in unfavourable weather; but the loss of time which resulted from this cause, while it nearly drove Passepartout out of his senses, did not seem to affect his master in the least. Passepartout blamed the captain, the engineer, and the crew, and consigned all who were connected with the ship to the land where the pepper grows. Perhaps the thought of the gas, which was remorselessly burning at his expense in Saville Row, had something to do with his hot impatience.

“You are in a great hurry, then,” said Fix to him one day, “to reach Hong Kong?”

“A very great hurry!”

“Mr. Fogg, I suppose, is anxious to catch the steamer for Yokohama?”

“Terribly anxious.”

“You believe in this journey around the world, then?”

“Absolutely. Don’t you, Mr. Fix?”

“I? I don’t believe a word of it.”

“You’re a sly dog!” said Passepartout, winking at him.

This expression rather disturbed Fix, without his knowing why. Had the Frenchman guessed his real purpose? He knew not what to think. But how could Passepartout have discovered that he was a detective? Yet, in speaking as he did, the man evidently meant more than he expressed.

[wordsaloud]

entry 1: change/get to know me

16th August 2023

change is the only constant in life.

21 years and i still struggle to internalise, let alone embrace change. it’s tough to embrace something that you can’t expect, something with the potential to make or break your life.

yes, hi. before we get any further into this entry, i’m nelly. 21. undergraduate. from singapore. and very, very lost.

i know that at this age, it’s commonly known as a transitional period where we’re starting school, ending school, starting our careers, moving overseas and whatnot. basically going all over the place, just hoping we’re making the right decisions for the sake of our future.

i graduated polytechnic in may 2022 and decided to take a gap year. i was already working as an intern during my last semester of polytechnic, so the transition into the industry wasn’t too abrupt. but still, it was the period when I also decided it was time for me to sustain myself. i stopped taking allowance money from my dad, i paid for my own bills, my food and all other expenditures and i was even giving my parents money.

this was a change, alright. but it was a controlled change. so still, not too bad right?

1st December 2023, 11:00pm

so. um. a little change of plans. and a little fast forward into time. the words above were written just days before my world felt like it was collapsing into me. my initial intended message of this entry to you, was to embrace change. i was also kind of hoping that i could convince myself that life right now isn’t too bad afterall.

but boy, i didn’t even manage to finish this entry before life bit me in the ass.

don’t get me wrong, nothing drastic happened. things in uni just got too overwhelming to quickly. academically, physically and boy…. emotionally.

to be fair, i didn’t even want to be in uni in the first place. but yknow, asian parents. so frankly speaking, i came into uni with not an ounce of proactiveness and initiative in my system. i knew nothing about the uni curriculum, the syllabus, requirements.

but at the end of the day, i was simply still a singaporean child yearning for academic validation. and when i realised i wasn’t doing too well, i panicked and i spiralled. for months. everyday i wake up and all i would feel is immense dread. for most of the struggle, my issue was feeling alone.

i think i can speak for most uni goers that there are no constants in uni. especially if you’re in a double major programme. unless you’re really lucky. there are no form classes like in poly/jc, no close rapport with your lecturers, and for the past few months i still feel like i’m still introducing myself with people. so i, have not been very lucky in that sense. my only friend in uni is my roommate, and she studies computer sciences. me? linguistics and english. most of my programme related ‘friends’ are all on a hi-bye basis. so that sucks.

i wanted so desperately to belong in some type of friend group or just have one constant friend, but to no avail. and i eventually just stopped trying. i still felt alone, though. just doesn’t feel too bad if i don’t try anymore, you know what i mean?

yeah, so i was struggling with trying to catch up with my module contents and i always just kept thinking about how it would feel if i had somebody else to struggle with, you know? the semester has ended, and this still hasn’t changed for me. but i’ve made peace with it. you can’t force friendships and i’m okay with that.

i, however, did spiral for months and it affected my relationship because i was relying too much on her emotionally. i was asking too much from her. since i didn’t have any uni friends, every lament, every whine, every complain went through her ears. and i won’t go too deep into it, but it did affect our relationship for a while and to be honest, it’s still kinda rocky now. but that’s a story for another entry.

along the way though, it felt like something changed inside of me. in a good way. maybe i was tired of constantly throwing myself a pity party instead of doing the shit i needed to do. maybe it was because i joined other things in school that didn’t make school feel like absolute hell.

it was a risk, of course– to add more things into my schedule when i was already struggling with what i already had on my plate. but god, they were such blessings. i am so eternally grateful for my dance cca. it’s not like we’re besties, but every time i came into practice i always just felt like i belonged. they treated me like it. it’s something that i didn’t, and still don’t feel in my programme. so it was really so, so refreshing.

after i joined, we were practising for a big scale performance so it was trainings after trainings after trainings and i was so so busy but so, so determined and excited. it gave me some sort of purpose as well as an outlet to destress physically in between rushing assignments and studying for my finals.

it’s semester break now. yay i survived one semester of uni! 7 more to go. it’s needless to say that i have more time on my hands, but i also have a lot i wanna do. go back to the gym, spend more time with my loved ones, write more! and of course, to NOT repeat my mistakes of this semester. so i’ll be reading up on my next semester texts to give myself a headstart.

anyways, i apologise. this is my first entry. so structure and content distribution wise, i’m not too sure what’s the right way to go about it. just take it as a little get-to-know-me piece hehe.

maybe you can let me know! did you read through the whole thing? did you get bored? was it tmi?

thank you for reading, remember to be kind to yourself <3

till the next entry, friends!

nelly.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 77: How kids learn language in Singapore - Interview with Woon Fei Ting

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘How kids learn language in Singapore - Interview with Woon Fei Ting’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch. I’m here with Woon Fei Ting who’s a Research Associate and the Lab Manager at the Brain, Language & Intersensory Perception Lab at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about kids in multilingual environments. We’d like to extend a huge thanks to Dr. Suzy Styles, who heads the BLIP lab at NTU, for hosting me in Singapore! Check out our interview with Suzy about which words sound spiky across languages. See the link in the show notes. But first, some announcements. We’re doing another Lingthusiasm liveshow just a few days after this episode goes up. The liveshow is online at 4:00 p.m. on February the 18th, for me in Montreal, or 8:00 a.m. on the 19th for Lauren in Melbourne, 2023. Follow the link in the show notes fore more time zones. This liveshow is a Q&A about language and gender with returning special guest, Dr. Kirby Conrod. You may remember Kirby from their very popular episode about the grammar of “singular they,” so we’re bringing them back for more informal discussion which you can participate in. You can ask your language and gender-y questions or share your examples and stories in the comments on Patreon or in the AMA questions channel on Discord in advance or bring them along to the liveshow. You can join the Lingthusiasm liveshow by becoming a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher. This is also the tier that has access to our monthly bonus episodes – most recently, a chat between me and Lauren about what’s coming up in the year ahead, including our plans to keep giving you regular episodes while Lauren’s on parental leave. Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to the liveshow, monthly bonus episodes, and more.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hello, Fei Ting, welcome to the show!

Fei Ting: Hi, thanks for having me. This is the first time I’m doing any kind of interview and the first time being on a podcast.

Gretchen: Amazing! We’re excited to be your very first time. Can we start with the question that we ask all of our guests? How did you get into linguistics?

Fei Ting: My younger sibling was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was maybe around the age of 9 or 10, then she started going for English language classes to help her spell. That was when my older sibling and I started realising that we display a lot of the same quote-unquote “symptoms,” or we have the same struggles. I started doing a little bit of reading and got really interested in this idea of, oh, maybe we’re all dyslexic, but then she got a diagnosis because it was a lot more prominent, or it came out a lot more in her day-to-day schooling. Later on in high school, my high school is right next to a school for children with cerebral palsy. I would go over once a week to be a teaching assistant to help out if the teachers need any help. One of the things that we did was to bring the children to their speech therapy sessions. The speech therapist there at that time was a very nice lady. She was from India. She was teaching some of these children how to pronounce particular consonants or vowel sounds as best as they could. She spoke with a really heavy accent. I thought to myself, “Well, these children are Singaporean children, and they’re receiving speech therapy in an accent that is unfamiliar to them” –

Gretchen: Yeah, is this gonna be any use for them?

Fei Ting: Yeah, and they are – well, a lot of them have a lot of, as you can imagine, modal difficulties, some of them with language development difficulties. When they mimic, they also mimic the accent as well.

Gretchen: So, they’re gonna be mimicking her accent, which is a perfectly fine accent to have but not what the rest of their family and community have.

Fei Ting: Yeah. At that time, I was just thinking about, okay, this is a cool job. I had never come across speech therapy before in my life. I didn’t even know what it was. So, when I first learned about it, I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool!” But at the same time, I also thought, “Maybe this is what I wanna do in the future.” I set out looking at which universities to go to, what do I have to do to become a speech therapist. It led me on to this path of going to university for linguistics, and then I taught for a little bit. I taught for about 4 years.

Gretchen: Teaching what?

Fei Ting: Teaching English after graduation. In between, I did some volunteering work, and I looked at the overall job market for speech therapy in Singapore. The thing about it in Singapore is a lot of our speech therapists don’t really get to do a lot of speech therapy per se.

Gretchen: Oh, that seems like it’s not the thing you came into the job for.

Fei Ting: A lot of them end up doing elderly care, swallowing therapy with patients that might have suffered from a stroke.

Gretchen: But you were excited about working with kids.

Fei Ting: Yeah. I was told by almost every speech therapist that there isn’t that much focus on research right now because they are hoping that a lot of people just graduate with a master’s in speech therapy and then go work in a hospital. Then you will likely not be working with children.

Gretchen: I guess there’s the question of like, what are Singaporean children quote-unquote “expected” to be able to do at a certain age or is there even research on what their typically developing peers would be able to do in this context that would help you devise therapy programmes for kids.

Fei Ting: At that point, no. I think right now as well – this is the current work that we’re doing, right, looking at children growing up in Singapore, which is a really multilingual environment. The documentation of regular kids, we don’t have good documentation of that yet, and therefore, you can think about how, for children that have some sort of language delay or developmental disorders, we don’t have therapy that might be tailored to our variety of English and the other languages that we speak here.

Gretchen: I feel like something that I’ve heard from people in more monolingual or monolingual-ish language environments in Canada/the US is “Oh, well, my sibling got diagnosed with dyslexia or something, and so my parents stopped speaking our heritage language to the kid because they thought it would confuse them, and they did only English.” We know that lots of people are multilingual, and this is fine, but there isn’t a good amount of knowledge about what does it look like to develop in a multilingual environment where this is normal and expected and everyone is doing this. It would cause difficulties to not be able to function in that multilingual space because you can’t talk to your grandparents, or you can’t talk to people in some stores that you go into. That’s also part of what you need for functioning in a language is having access to multiple language spaces.

Fei Ting: That’s exactly right. In Singapore – well, I think this is unfortunate – some of the children who are diagnosed with dyslexia earlier on, they will be given recommendations to not do the – well, we call it here the “mother tongue languages,” which in schools are taught as Mandarin Chinese, Malay, or Tamil. The recommendation is, well, don’t do your mother tongue language as a subject.

Gretchen: Only do English, and that’s it.

Fei Ting: Only do English, yeah, which as you mentioned, it then becomes difficult for the child to converse with people around them or their family members who might not be using English.

Gretchen: Right. Because the norm of the research that’s been happening on kids with various developmental disabilities has been doing it on monolingual populations, which then makes it seem like you need to be monolingual in order to benefit from the various kinds of therapies that people do.

Fei Ting: The common misconception is, if you’re already struggling in one, and that one language is usually English, then let’s not burden your brain with a second one. But languages are so different. Mandarin Chinese is radically different compared to English both in the way it looks as well as the structure, so processing of Mandarin Chinese is also different. There isn’t enough research right now to support saying that a child who is English-Mandarin bilingual will benefit from not having to do Mandarin as a subject in school.

Gretchen: I mean, the brain is very flexible, very plastic, and so the things you make the brain do, it almost makes me wonder if being exposed to more languages would help because you’re giving the brain more practice in doing language stuff, but I dunno if there’s data on this.

Fei Ting: Well, we don’t know enough.

Gretchen: But you’re not currently a speech therapist.

Fei Ting: No, I’m not.

Gretchen: You work in a language lab. How did that happen, and what are you working on now?

Fei Ting: I did my undergraduate degree in linguistics, which I loved. It was fantastic. I think for the first time when our professors were like, “Let’s do research on the languages that you speak,” it was the first time that I thought, “Oh, you mean I can study Singapore English, like Singlish, in an academic setting? You mean it’s worthy of being studied?” I think that was the first thing. Then later on, after graduation, because I had looked at what speech therapy is and isn’t in Singapore currently, I thought, “Well, maybe I should go and do some work, earn some money, and then think about whether or not I wanna do grad school,” and then I think eventually settled on just my love for research more than being a therapist or going out and practicing in a clinical setting. I decided to pursue my master’s, and then after that, I just stayed with the same lab.

Gretchen: As a day-to-day level, as a lab manager, you’re working with and supervising the various studies that are being run by the professors and students and people in the lab. Yeah, what do you do as a lab manager?

Fei Ting: The number one thing is coordinating the different studies that go on. We have studies that are carried out independently by our PhD students. We also have studies that we run as a group amongst all of our research assistants and our student assistants, and then just making sure that everything is running on schedule. I also do a lot of prep before any study’s been conducted. We write all of our surveys. We make sure that all of the equipment is well set up. Then there is also the administrative side of things, which is the boring and less-glamorous part of research.

Gretchen: This is working on writing grants or filling out paperwork to get permission to work with children. You have to go through the ethics board and tell them, “No, we’re not gonna harm the children. It’s gonna be fine. They’re just gonna look at some pictures and hear some sounds or something.” If you’ve got equipment – like you’ve got an EEG machine, which is the electrode cap that you put on your head, and you can see the brain waves going. I guess that probably needs to be maintained.

Fei Ting: We need to watch that very thoroughly. We need to train our students when they come into the lab on how to use it. We have interns come in every summer, and they do good work with us. I also manage all of our interns and, I think, help our students or our undergrads see what’s the reality behind doing research. I think, very often, they might think about grad school, or they might think about moving into the field of academia after graduation, just seeing the glam side of things, or looking at papers that are being published, or books that are being written.

Gretchen: And papers look very polished, right. Like, “Oh, we did this thing. We had 32 infants. They came in and did this.” It doesn’t tell you like, “This infant started crying, and so we had to exclude them,” or like, “These infants – we tried to call their parents, and they wouldn’t reply to our messages, and so they wouldn’t come in. We actually tried to get 52, but only 32 came.”

Fei Ting: Yes, the day-to-day of it is very mundane. A lot of the work that we are focusing now on is understanding the linguistic landscape for children growing up in Singapore, so we wanna find out what’s going on at home: Who is talking to them, and in what languages, and in what proportion? The best way to do that right now is to send them home with a little recorder.

Gretchen: I’ve seen this recorder. It’s sort of the size of a credit card but thicker. You put it in a shirt that the child wears, and it has a little Velcro pocket, so it doesn’t fall it. Then it runs, and the kid can run around, and you’re not trying to keep them in front of a mic where they have to stay still, which because they’re toddlers, they’re not gonna do that. You can hear anything that the infant says and also anything that someone says, like an adult or an older child, says around them.

Fei Ting: That’s right. That recorder goes on for about 10-16 hours on its own. When we get that recording back, the humans have to go listen to these recordings. We do a lot of transcription work. That is one of the day-to-day mundane things. It’s not exciting. You sit in front of a computer, and you open up a file, and you’re listening, maybe, for an hour before you have to stop because it’s just too much. We do a lot of fine-grained transcription. We’re not only noting down the words that are being said, we are also looking at who’s saying it; we’re counting the number of turns; we’re making it for the different languages. Right now, I’m speaking English, but the day-to-day conversation for a Singaporean household might be English plus a lot of other things that are going on. Maybe it’s different from what we conventionally understand as code-switching or the way that code-switching is being described in textbooks is that you switch very elegantly from one language to the other in a nice, wrapped up sentence.

Gretchen: Right. So, it’s saying like, okay, I’m gonna say this bit in, for me, English, and then French or something, and I’m going back and forth. This implies that these two languages are distinct entities that I’m switching back and forth between them. But if you’ve grown up in a multilingual household your whole life, and your parents have also grown up in a multilingual household, what you’re also doing is producing the whole spectrum in a way that’s like how people have produced it around you but also may be a little bit different.

Fei Ting: It’s not “clean” code switching. It happens within an utterance. People swap out words, and sometimes it’s conscious, sometimes it’s unconscious, sometimes it’s deliberate to make a point. The way that we describe it, or I like to think about it, is if you have a salad bowl of different components – you have your tomatoes; you have your cucumber and onions – as I’m speaking to a different person, I can decide which part of the salad I wanna pick, which ingredient I wanna pick. It’s not a clean switch. For me, it would be English and Mandarin. It's not a clean switch between the two. Then, of course, there’s this very exciting thing called “Singlish.”

Gretchen: This is stuff that’s unique to Singapore. “Singlish” seems to imply that it’s English-y, but there’s stuff from lots of languages involved.

Fei Ting: When I was in university, and when we first looked at it from a very academic setting, it’s often described as a “creoloid.” It’s a little bit like a creole but maybe not. Then people have explained to it say that, oh, the backbone of Singlish is English, and then it’s added with all these vocabulary from non-English languages.

Gretchen: This is gonna be like Chinese but less Mandarin.

Fei Ting: Less Mandarin, for sure. More Hokkien. In some other parts of the world, “Hokkien” is also referred to as “Min Nan.” Then some Cantonese, some Teochew, Hakka, and then some Malay, and some Tamil.

Gretchen: So, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka are all Chinese varieties within that, and then Malay and Tamil are separate from other regions of the world. These are all groups that have been part of Singapore.

Fei Ting: We were colonised by the British for a long time. Before that time, we didn’t really have people living on the island. Well, historically, if you look at it, there were fishermen or fishing villages, but largely this island is uninhabited. Then when the British came, and they decide to develop this place, or this island, as a port, obviously, lots of people came for work opportunities. We saw a lot of migration from modern-day south part of China, so the Guangzhou/Guangdong region. We also saw some migration from modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia and then from the southern part of India. That’s why the Indian language that’s spoken here, predominantly, by people at that time was Tamil instead of Hindi, for example.

Gretchen: These are the big ethnic groups in Singapore’s history. And then when people are coming into contact with them, they get mixed together – people using words from all sorts of sources. This is what kids are exposed to in the home. It’s not just “Oh, here’s Chinese. Here’s Mandarin,” which is the most famous version of Chinese, “but also here are words from Hokkien or Teochew or these other varieties,” and also, I guess, probably depending on the kid’s heritage, whether they’re gonna have more Malay words or more Tamil words or more Chinese words.

Fei Ting: That’s right.

Gretchen: What does this look like when you’re trying to say, “Here are the results that we have. This is what kids are getting exposed to”?

Fei Ting: I think the thing that we didn’t expect was to do so much language documentation as part of this project. Because what we wanna do is find out, you know, what are kids growing up hearing. But then, along the way, because we were collecting all of this data, we are also documenting what is the current state of things for what Singlish sounds like or what we can say what Singlish is in a household right now. If we look at the Singapore census, the last one was taken in 2020, a huge number of the younger population now say that English is the predominant home language. It has crossed the 50% threshold for the younger age groups. That’s a first in our country’s history. You can also imagine that the English here or the Singlish here is changing rapidly compared to my parents’ or my grandparents’ era.

Gretchen: What people are doing is changing. If you say English is a dominant home language, that’s picking one out of probably there are still several languages being spoken in this mixed way.

Fei Ting: Understanding what Singlish is is one thing, and then when we are writing it in our paper, how do we make ourselves well understood for an audience that is unfamiliar with research in a non-standard variety. One of the things that we tried explaining is this term that we use called “red-dot.” We have a current study going on called “Red-dot Baby-talk” where we have a list of words that we come up with based on what we know Singaporean parents use with their children, and we’re asking Singaporeans, “At what age do you think a child would know this word?” and “Would you use this word with a child?”

Gretchen: Just to back up for second. “Red-dot” is a term for Singapore, right, because if you look at a big map of the world, it’s a city state, effectively, it’s about the size of a red dot on a map. So, this is an affectionate way of referring to Singapore-specific words.

Fei Ting: Mm-hmm, yeah. One of the words would be “pom pom.” I might say it to a child after they’ve had a long day, and they’re sweaty, and I say, “Okay, now it’s time to pom-pom.”

Gretchen: Is this like “have a bath” or “a shower” or something?

Fei Ting: Yeah! That’s right. We don’t know – at least I have no idea – where that word came from. My guess is it’s from one of these Chinese varieties that we talked about just now, but I’m not 100% certain.

Gretchen: Right. Because it doesn’t have a clear etymology linked to any particular language. It’s just this is a word people use in Singapore with kids.

Fei Ting: Then we have “zut-zut,” which is the thing that you give to a crying child.

Gretchen: Like a candy or something, or a toy?

Fei Ting: Like a pacifier.

Gretchen: “Pacifier,” “binky,” “dummy” – I’ve heard a lot of words for it – “soother.”

Fei Ting: Then we also have the word “sayang.” “sayang” is – well, originated from Malay, but the use of it in Malay, it’s very different from the use of it in Singlish. In Malay, it can be used as a verb to mean, like, “love.” It can also be used as a term of affection. You can call someone your “sayang,” your “darling.” But in Singlish, it’s this action of stroking very gently. If you see a little cat, you might tell your child to “sayang” the cat.

Gretchen: “Make sure you do it gently and don’t pull the cat’s fur and their tail and make them scratch you.”

Fei Ting: If someone in that context is using the word “sayang,” I wouldn’t necessarily say that that person is code switching into Malay.

Gretchen: Right, because it has a different meaning in Malay, and they’re not using it with that meaning.

Fei Ting: And I’m not a Malay speaker, so when I use the word “sayang,” I can’t say that I’m code switching into Malay. I’ve just chosen a token in Singlish.

Gretchen: I can see how they’re used in a child-specific context, but there’re other parts of Singlish that are just part of the everyday vocabulary for adults and stuff as well.

Fei Ting: Yes, yes, yes, that’s right. So, you’ve been here a few days now, and food is a big thing in Singapore, and when food is good or when things are going well, in a good scenario, we can say, “shiok.”

Gretchen: I’ve seen this on some signs. It seems to be – I was walking in one of the streets, and they were saying, “shiok” because they were trying to say, “This food is good,” and it’s good in a Singaporean sort of way. I think the sign said, “Shiok lah,” which was maybe a little bit trying to be really heavy on the Singlish thing because “lah” is this famous word in Singlish that is used as a particle at the end of sentences for a lot of different purposes.

Fei Ting: For a lot of different purposes. We have a lot of these sentence-final, utterance-final particles. Origin of it is from Chinese varieties. We have “lah,” “leh,” “meh,” “hor,” “liao” – maybe lots of other ones that I’m missing right now.

Gretchen: There’s probably a whole list. I mean, we can link to some things about Singlish if people want to get a larger picture of what’s going on. This is not the teach-us-Singlish-in-half-an-hour episode. But yeah, the one that I’ve heard people say a fair bit is “lah” because it seems to be pretty common. It’s like a confirmation or question.

Fei Ting: Confirmation. It’s also sometimes used to make something sound final and definitive. Like if you ask me if I could do something, and I say, “Can lah.”

Gretchen: This gets us to another one that I’ve also heard people use which is “Can” by itself as sort of a response to questions or whether something can happen. I was in a cab, and the cab driver said, “Can?”, as in, “Can you get out okay?”, or “Are you doing this?”, and I guess I probably should’ve responded, “Can,” but I don’t have this naturally yet. Maybe if I’m here a little bit longer.

Fei Ting: You can say, “Can,” or “Can can.” “Can can” is to confirm that you can actually do something, or it can happen.

Gretchen: I think the closest thing that I have to that in my English is “Can do,” which still drops the subject or doesn’t have the subject there, but for some reason I want the “do” to be there – “Can do.” Or like, “I can,” “I think I can,” compared to, I heard someone say, “Think can,” where I would say, “I think I can.”

Fei Ting: Over here “Think can” or “I think can” is very well-formed. “I think I can” is –

Gretchen: Almost too much?

Fei Ting: Yeah, almost too much.

Gretchen: Or you’re being very emphatic about that it’s “I” think I can – may “you” don’t. This is probably Chinese influence, right?

Fei Ting: Yeah. If we think about Chinese as a language that determines the topic of the sentence first, and then you add comments to that topic, that’s why we can go about dropping the subject or dropping a lot of these modal verbs. One of the studies that we did previously was, well, one of our undergrads started this project. We ask people to look at different menus and order the same dish but to imagine themselves in three different settings. The first setting is the menu is printed on really nice, fancy paper, and fancy font, and it’s supposed to mimic a fancy restaurant. The second menu is in casual font, and the setting is a hip café. Then the last one, we didn’t have a menu, but it was just a picture of a hawker centre stall front.

Gretchen: The hawker centres have a whole bunch of little marketplaces but indoors. They have all these food stalls. You go around from each one and you sit – I think of them as cafeteria tables. You sit out at them. You have a tray, and you get food and drinks and desserts and stuff from different places. This is very informal.

Fei Ting: Yeah, very, very informal. We had undergrads come in and order the same dish which is the dish of laksa.

Gretchen: Which I’ve now had. It was very good. It’s kind of a spicy soup.

Fei Ting: Yeah. And then the instruction was that, when they ordered it, they have to ask for more chili, and they should ask to take it away.

Gretchen: Just to give them more things to say.

Fei Ting: Yeah. So, when people are imagining themselves in a very fancy restaurant, they might say, “Can I please have a bowl of laksa? Can you add more chili? And I would like to have it taken away.”

Gretchen: These very full sentences and trying to be polite and add this extra ornamentation around that.

Fei Ting: Mm-hmm. Then when you do a syntax analysis on it, I mean, we draw grammar trees, you end up with a very complex grammar tree or quite a number of grammar trees just to explain this one scenario. But when they’re given a picture of a hawker stall, and they’re supposed to imagine a very informal setting, they can say something like, “Aunty, one laksa, more chili, takeaway.”

Gretchen: “Aunty, one laksa, more chili, takeaway,” just saying each of the bits of information without, “Oh, please, if you don’t mind, can I have this.”

Fei Ting: You don’t need the “Can I have…” You don’t need the extra verbs or the extra sentence structure. It’s just the topic – “one laksa,” and then “more chili,” and then “takeaway.”

Gretchen: And this is not rude. This is polite. This is a normal thing you say. And you’ve said “Aunty” because you’re addressing the stall owner as “Aunty” or “Uncle,” based on who they are, which is polite.

Fei Ting: That’s also another thing about – I think you hear it here in Singapore. You also would hear it in Malaysia. This calling everyone “Aunty” and “Uncle” even though they’re not related to you if they are somewhere like the age your parents might be, and then you just – “Aunty,” “Uncle” – everyone is.

Gretchen: You have other words for people who are closer in age to you or younger?

Fei Ting: Not quite.

Gretchen: It’s more about elders.

Fei Ting: It’s more for elders. If I approach, like – or if I’m in a cab – the “Taxi Uncle” might address me as “Xiao Mei,” like “Little Girl” or “Young Girl.” Or if I’m ordering something, and they wanna be nice and polite, they might say, “Mei Nü,” which is “Pretty Girl.” Even though –

Gretchen: They’re not hitting on you. This is just a polite thing to say.

Fei Ting: Yeah. But usually you will hear them say “Xiao Mei,” which is “Little Girl,” to a female and then “Xiao Di” to a guy ordering something.

Gretchen: Because you have that age thing. In French, I’m used to people addressing me as “Madame” or “Mademoiselle.” There was a period when I was getting 50/50, and now it’s mostly “Madame,” so clearly people think I’ve gotten older. But there was a period when it depended on what on wore for which one I would get. How strangers address you in public is just –

Fei Ting: If my mom were to go to the market, for example, she might address someone working there as “Aunty,” and then they will also address her as “Aunty.”

Gretchen: We’re both at the right age where we could have nieces and nephews, so we’re both “Aunties” now.

Fei Ting: And that’s perfectly fine.

Gretchen: You’ve also been doing some interesting things with research methodology and how to get this audio data, apart from bringing parents into the lab and having them talk to kids.

Fei Ting: Well, with COVID, everything was interrupted. I think people who are doing research – everyone would commiserate over our lack of ability to reach out to parents with little kids. We did a years-long study on Zoom.

Gretchen: So, you get parents talking to their kids on Zoom. Kids aren’t always very good at interacting with a computer, with the technology.

Fei Ting: We had 8- to 36-month-olds. The task was for their parents to describe to them a wordless picture book on Zoom. Sometimes, like you said, some kids are clearly not interested.

Gretchen: But at least having a picture book to look at gives them something to do on camera and not just like, “C’mon, talk! Talk to the nice research aunty.”

Fei Ting: Exactly. Because the picture book is wordless, it’s up to them in what language they would like to do the task in. Some parents get very excited about describing every single thing on the screen instead of just following along the main storyline. Sometimes, they will break off to “Oh, you remember, we saw an elephant” – because in the book, there is an elephant – and then they might, “the other day” or “the other time, we went to the zoo. We saw an elephant. You remember.” And then they might go on talking about other things, which is a nice thing about wordless picture books, actually.

Gretchen: It just gives them some stimulus to talk about, rather than just being like, “Okay, here we are in front of a computer. All we can talk about is the computer.” Now, you’ve got the elephant as a topic of conversation.

Fei Ting: And I don’t know about kids growing up in this COVID period. Maybe they’ve gotten used to seeing another human onscreen. We didn’t have kids who were like, “Ah, this is so weird. I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

Gretchen: Because they’re already talking to, probably, other friends and family members and things using Zoom because they’re pandemic babies.

Fei Ting: Exactly. We had some funny things that happened. This brings back to the reality of doing research. Sometimes, I would have parents carry the laptop they were talking to me on, on Zoom, and chasing after their kid, or like, “Ah, just come back here. This nice lady is waiting for us to finish the story,” and things like that happened. Or because we’re recording them in their home, sometimes someone walks into the room that they’re in. These sort of unexpected scenarios do pop up from time to time, but we’re really happy with the data that we managed to collect.

Gretchen: Do you have results for that yet?

Fei Ting: We have a methods paper out because, as part of the study, we ran it as a micro-longitudinal intervention study.

Gretchen: What does that mean?

Fei Ting: The intervention that we ran was for the parents. We wanted to see if giving parents tips – concrete tips – on what they can do with their child to improve or to add on to the kind of talk they can have with their child, whether or not that would influence or change the way that they would communicate with their kids. The baseline was describing the wordless picture book the first time, and then they would go through an intervention for –

Gretchen: So, they would get text messages every day for 28 days that would say things like, “Have you considered singing songs with your kid?”, or “When you see pictures, talking about what’s in the pictures,” or something like that?

Fei Ting: Every day we gave them a tip. The tips start out really easy like doing some counting, and then the last we tell parents about concepts that might be a bit more advanced, things like mental state verbs – so verbs like “I think” or “I wonder.” There is literature to show that when you use mental state verbs with your child, 1). you’re helping them imagine scenarios they are not in, right, think about it from someone else’s perspective. So, this ties in with this thing called the “theory of mind.” Then when you use these words, especially in English, your sentences get a bit more complex.

Gretchen: Because if you’re saying, “I think this,” and then you have to have another sentence in there, which is not quite the same thing if you’re doing like, “Think can.”

Fei Ting: Exactly. After 28 days, we see them again on Zoom for the same video call picture book description. Then we ran it as an RTT – randomised control trial.

Gretchen: So, they’re randomly in one group that has these 28 tips in between, and then another group that has something less.

Fei Ting: The other group, we only gave them one email a week. There’re no concrete tips. It’s just emphasising on how important it is to talk to their child. But because the way we advertise it, we said, “You can sign up. We’ll give you some tips.”

Gretchen: Ah, so this was important to make parents wanna participate in the study because they think they’re doing something good for their child by getting some tips there. Because there’s lots of reasons people wanna participate in studies. Sometimes, you pay them. Sometimes, the kid gets a toy or something. But also, in this case they wanted to feel like they were getting some help with raising a kid.

Fei Ting: Yeah. After the first 28 days and then after we saw them for a second time point, we swapped both groups of parents around. If you had intervention, now you’re in the non-intervention group, and you only got one email per week. Then the parents who didn’t get the tips previously, they now got a message every day.

Gretchen: So, are you sitting there texting all the parents individually? Or do you have an automatic system?

Fei Ting: No, we don’t. Our research assistant, Shaza, she was doing all the texting. Because it was a rolling sign up programme –

Gretchen: You have some people who are on Day 2, and some people who’re on Day 20, and they each need to get a different message. It’s almost complicated to program.

Fei Ting: It’s difficult. She would text them at 10:00 in the morning and say, “Today’s tip is this.” And then with each tip, we would also give a link to our website where they can read more if they wanted to. In the evening, around 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., she would text them again and say, “Hi Parent, did you try our tip today? How did you find it?” That’s the other unique part of our intervention because a lot of the times when people are in an intervention, they’re left alone for the entirety, and then at the end they might be given a feedback survey.

Gretchen: It’s almost just as much about having the support for talking about what parenting was like and reflecting on using language with their child that they feel like they got some sort of emotional support out of it.

Fei Ting: Yeah. Or any kind of interaction. Because at that time, well, we started collecting data June of 2020.

Gretchen: This is lockdown.

Fei Ting: Lockdown, right. A lot of parents were working from home. People couldn’t see their family members. So, having a researcher to talk to might be nice.

Gretchen: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s kind of nice.

Fei Ting: Or a lot of children, if they were going to infant care or day care, all of that had stopped.

Gretchen: Of course.

Fei Ting: I guess for a lot of parents, it was like, “Oh, I’m given some kind of support!”

Gretchen: It would be interesting, I guess, to try to figure out how much of that was pandemic or lockdown specific, especially if the parent is becoming the child’s only or primary source of language input in a way that, if they’re going to child care or preschool or seeing their relatives and stuff like that, they wouldn’t be as much dependent on one or two people for talking with the child all the time as language input, they would have a broader community access.

Fei Ting: That’s right. I think that was one of the things that parents have told us, like, “Oh, yeah, language input has changed.” It’s not something that they actively thought about, but then they’re like, “Oh, yeah, my kid’s not getting that much Malay because, well, my mom speaks to them in Malay, but now we can’t visit grandma anymore.”

Gretchen: This changes the way that the language input goes.

Fei Ting: We have a methods paper out. We are still transcribing.

Gretchen: Transcribing takes so long.

Fei Ting: It does.

Gretchen: I think the estimate that I learned in grad school was, like, for every one minute of audio, it takes an hour to transcribe.

Fei Ting: That’s the pace that we’re going at. We have been very blessed with lots of great transcribers and student assistants who’ve come in and helped us, so we are almost there. We’re very happy that we have 142 parents and families that stayed with us through all three time points. I think it’s a little rare to see that for a longitudinal study involving children.

Gretchen: They had nothing else to do in lockdown, so they stayed in your study.

Fei Ting: Yeah, I like to think that. And I also like to think that we were nice, and they found it useful.

Gretchen: To have the supportive text messages every day.

Fei Ting: We’re going into the next stage where we will be doing some analysis. We’re counting number of turns taken. We’re counting number of words and the diversity of words being used and whether or not people swapped or changed or code switched in any way.

Gretchen: And then you end up with, also, this linguistic landscape of how people are talking in their homes, at least, when they have a kid around. And you can see which bits there. When you’re talking about code switching, you can say, “Okay, these words are in English. These words are specifically in Hokkien or Mandarin. These words are in Tamil or Malay,” but you also have the Singlish-specific words, the Red-dot words, that are hard to pin down for one particular language.

Fei Ting: We’ve essentially written our own little dictionary, actually.

Gretchen: That’s great!

Fei Ting: Along the way, we were like, ah, there’s this word that’s come up, but because a lot of Singlish hasn’t been codified or documented, there is no one way to spell it.

Gretchen: Of course. Because it’s mostly spoken.

Fei Ting: If we’ve decided to spell it one way, we always have to check with other Singlish speakers around us, and then – we don’t wanna say, “Oh, we’re spelling it this way, and this way must be right.” We’re saying, “We have to come up with something.”

Gretchen: You have to pick one because if you wanna say, “Okay, for every hundred words that this parent says, 30 of them are in Malay, 50 of them are in English, 23 of them are in Singlish/Red-dot words.” It’s hard to pin down exactly which of them are from where, but you need to be able to look through and say, “This one word, ‘shiok,’ is being used this many times in the whole corpus,” not “We spelled it 14 different ways, and so we have no idea how many times it’s being used,” just for your own internal purposes, which isn’t to say that someone else is wrong for using a different spelling.

Fei Ting: That’s right. We wanna be very open about it, so we have a Wiki page that’s open for anyone who wants to come and look at our transcription conventions. Our dictionary is also open access, so people can come in and take a look at that, at how we’ve decided to codify certain things just because we need it for our own, like you mentioned, counts and things like that. The other part of our project is working with speech engineers. I’m sure you’re familiar with Siri and Google, right.

Gretchen: I talk into the – they transcribe me, they understand me. But I notice even when I’m speaking French to them, which I don’t have a native French accent, they’re not very good at transcribing what I’m saying in a language that isn’t like the very Paris French that they’re trained on. I bet this happens with Singlish.

Fei Ting: It’s a challenge. It’s difficult in Singlish. It’s difficult when people switch between or among the languages so rapidly. We had a PhD student from the engineering department that was on this project, and he was looking at how do you do automatic language identification on the recordings that we collected because –

Gretchen: This could save you a lot of time if it works.

Fei Ting: If it works. But it’s also a really challenging problem. One, it’s that it’s not the standard variety and then the other thing is it’s child directed. They don’t have good solutions for child-directed speech yet.

Gretchen: Because people talk differently to children. They maybe use, depending on the language, like a broader range of pitches, or higher pitches, maybe they talk a bit slower, they have child-specific vocabulary, like this word for “pacifier” which has a lot of child-specific words in different languages or different varieties. This is not the kind of thing that language models are trained on. They’re training on journalists talking on the news in this very formal context.

Fei Ting: That’s right. Our PhD student has done really great work. We also work with our speech engineers at Johns Hopkins University. Whenever we have meetings with them, I tell them, “Oh, I’m so sorry for our” – our data set’s really problematic. I know that. I understand that. But they see it as a great challenge.

Gretchen: Right. And if all you’re doing is news stuff, it’s less interesting or relevant. Maybe it’s a problem, but maybe the algorithms that were not accounting for it are the problem.

Fei Ting: Exactly. Our language models are only as good as the data that we train them on. They all come with a certain set of biases.

Gretchen: Absolutely.

Fei Ting: Right now, the bias is non-child-directed language.

Gretchen: And non-Singaporean language.

Fei Ting: Non-Singaporean language. It’s been interesting just looking at our data from their point of view as well. There’s gonna be more and more reliance on AI in the future, for sure, not just for our line of work but just part of our day-to-day living. If AI is supposed to accommodate the natural languages of the world, then it should be able to do this.

Gretchen: And it should actually be trained on how people talk in multilingual environments. Fei Ting, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Fei Ting: Thanks for having me.

Gretchen: If you could leave people knowing one thing about linguistics, what would it be?

Fei Ting: I think it would be that there’s still a lot that we don’t know. I think the brain is a fascinating organ, and a lot of what we do know about what the brain does when it comes to language processing and language acquisition, we know it from a very monolingual English point of view. Most of the people around the world are non-monolingual speakers, and a lot of them don’t speak English, so if we wanna know how this organ that we have works when it comes to language acquisition and language processing, then we need more research on non-monolingual English-speaking populations.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, “Not Judging Your Grammar, Just Analysing It” stickers, IPA posters, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Lauren tweets and blogs as Superlinguo. And our guest, Woon Fei Ting, can be found as @FeitingW on Twitter, and the lab is Facebook.com/bliplabntu. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes, and you wish there were more? You can get access to an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month plus our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Have you gotten really into linguistics, and you wish you had more people to talk with about it? Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans. Plus, all patrons help keep the show ad-free. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language. Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Fei Ting: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[macflorendo]

THANK YOU to life!

This is my Eulogy.

First. I would like to thank Life and God for giving me the opportunity to live and experience a taste of this world.

TO MY FAMILY. Thank you for raising me well. I am not me without any single of you. I may not express as much as needed but I want you to know that I LOVE YOU. See you soon!

I may not be the best son, not the best brother. I don’t wish to be one but I would like to believe that we are destined to be the way we are. Well, that’s where I learn from my lessons from anyway - all my mistakes.

TO THE ENVIRONMENT. I am so proud to have joined Cuernos de Negros Mountaineers Club, Inc. of Silliman University for teaching me how to love the environment. Because of that, I was able to travel to 5 countries (USA, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand) for FREE to attend different environmental programs and its alumni engagements.

Aside from being able to see different parts of the world. I am fortunate to learn that there is a problem that we need to do something about. Our children’s lives are at stake.

-

MUSIC, MAGIC, & MOVING PICTURES. MY PASSIONS. I cannot thank you enough. We have been through the happiest and most difficult times of my life. When there’s no one else to talk to and hang out with, you were there.

You even got me jobs!

-

SOUTH KOREA. You are my second home country. You made me realize that I am part of the world, a global citizen. There is the potential of anyone to make a difference even to another individual in the world. Thank you Silliman University and Hannam University for this opportunity!

I am happy I am able to learn Korean so I could understand you. Now, I am giving back by learning your language too. South Korea is beautiful. I know most of you are tired of the pressure in your country. But please, never forget your passions and purpose. There’s more to the world than getting a “good” job and lots of money.

-

EVENTS.

2011 - Moved to Dumaguete to study in Silliman University, Dumaguete City. I lived in Vernon Hall inside the campus, lived in an apartment for summer class, and then lived with mom and sister until I graduated.

2013 - I was exchange student to Hannam University in Daejeon, South Korea. That was my first time abroad. I took up Korean Language classes, Faith and Film, and Advance VIdeo Production Class. I taught English to students during my free time and that’s where I got my allowance.

2015 - I became an academic fellow on Environmental Issues under Young Southeasts Leaders Initiative. We went to Hawaii, Colorado, and Washington DC.

- I founded Food Rescue Philippines (formerly Food Rescue ASEAN)

2016 - I graduated Cum Laude from Silliman University.

March 2020. There’s an ongoing virus called COVID-19 infecting people around the world. Who knows what will happen next? We will not be always safe. I live in a dorm, I live with other people. They may be carrying the disease. I hope not. I have one roommate who still goes to work at this time. I hope he won’t bring the disease in the dorm. There’s currently 187 infected patients in the Philippines and recovery rate has not moved at all.

July 2020.  COVID cases are not easing down here in the Philippines. I heard stories of the government just making money out of this situation…

2021 - 2022. Met the worst person in my life. But thank you for making me wiser and way better.

MARCH 2023 - I got hired as Food Rescue Supervisor at Scholars of Sustenance. This is a dream come true. I used to bike and work with volunteers for this advocacy but I now work with a bigger organization that can create more impact.

JULY 2023. I will be turning 30 in 2025. I want to focus on meaningful and valuable work. I also want to create opportunities for myself and others to grow financially, and spriritually.

- 

I am happy that I have experienced many jobs. I realized that I can do so much more, and at the same time, I know I will have options when any career I would choose won’t work.

-

LOVE. Love is a BURST of emotions that happen in your body. That feeling is temporary. When choosing a partner, remember BURST.

B - Believe in each other.

U - Understand each other.

R - Respect each other.

S - Support each other.

T - Trust Each Other

-

MEANING OF MEANING

Meaning starts with ME. Everything you do should start and would meaning something to you.

MEAN has three meanings.

1. what do you mean to say

2. you are so mean

3. what does it mean

MEANING is present tense. Is it something that you currently do. It should be something that you are doing now.

-

A MESSAGE TO MY YOUNGER SELF/TO MY CHILDREN/ TO YOUNG PEOPLE:

1. Exercise more. Play more.

2. Get long hair and donate.

3. Grow a beard! (DONE)

4. Talk to more people. (ALWAYS)

5. Go to more places. Be more adventurous. (BE MORE SPECIFIC)

-

A MESSAGE TO MY FUTURE SELF:

1. Hope you are still doing what you love; performing really good magic, doing something for the environment, helping people, and sharing what you know.

2. Stay fit.

3. Be financially secure.

4. Always learn.

5. Network more. Meet more people.

6. Don’t work for a boring company with boring people.

-

TRAVELS

Countries I traveled to..

2013 - South Korea - Seoul, Daejeon, Busan, Chuncheon, Okcheon, Jeonju

2015 -  USA - Hawaii, Colorado, Washington DC

2015 - Singapore

2015 - Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur

2016 - Thailand, Bangkok

2016 - Cambodia, Siem Reap

2017 - South Korea - Seoul, Daejeon, Pohang, Busan

2020 - Japan - Osaka, Nagoya

2022 - France - Paris

2023 - Thailand - Bangkok

PHILIPPINES

1. Zamboanga

2. Dumaguete

3. Manila

4. Cebu

5. Davao

6. Iloilo

7. Palawan - Puerto Princesa

8. Baguio

9. Tagaytay

10. Bohol

11. Siquijor

12. La Union

13. Zambales

14. Dapitan

15. Bacolod

16. Boracay

17. La Union

18. Pampanga

19. Bulacan

To be continued…

Edited 5/9/2019

Edited 10/2/2019

Edited 3/18/2020

Edited 3/29/2020

Edited 7/23/2020

Edited 9/6/2021

Edited 1/1/2022

Edited 4/14/2022

Edited 7/11/2022

Edited 7/1/2023