Bad English

I cringed whenever my sister-in-law (sil) uses broken English or incorrect pronunciation to speak to Ying Ying. For example,

"What you doing?"

"Where papa go?"

"Papa go where?"

"This one not for you!"

"Come eat your dinner!"

"Eat biscuit dun running!"

"Who buy for you?"

A few days ago, I heard her singing happily to herself, "I'm a little teapot, short and sPout..." It should be sTout, my dear. -_-

For goodness sake, she cant even pronounce Ying Ying's name properly ok. Just the other day, I overheard a distant relative on my husband's side asked my sil for Ying Ying's name. I didn't hear my sil's reply but I did hear the relative asking, "How to spell?" My sil mumbled something and then the relative laughed out loud, saying something like "Orrr... FaiTH lah... I thought you said FAYE! Chey! Say properly mah..."

Well, my fil's English is slightly better than my sil. But he still uses bad English like, "What you talking?" OR "What talking you?" Sometimes he does it on purpose to tease Ying Ying. But I find it really irritating and NOT funny at all.

My own mother is no better in her spoken English. There was once we heard her pronounced balloon as "ber-lawn", mouth as "mao" and milo as "mee-lok".

I mean, if they can't speak English properly, they can always speak to her in Mandarin what... This is really a bad influence on Ying Ying's language development. :(

And why does my sil use bad English almost all the time? Because she is not highly educated to begin with. It is quite sad actually - she stopped schooling at P8 and didn't even get a chance to study at a secondary school. If given a chance now, she would have gone on to complete her 10-year education and probably get a place at the ITE after that. So I suggested to husband that he should persuade his sister to go for some language courses at the CC or something instead of watching TV at home every single day. But he thinks old dogs like her cannot learn new tricks. Anyway, I doubt she would be interested also. Sigh!!!