Singaporeans Becoming Barbarians ?

Singapore time 10.36 am 25th July 2007

Today and yestarday I visited Xiaxue's blog to look at the issue she raised about Steven Lim. After going through it, I find that she uses vulgarity to spice up her blog. Also many commentators use vulgarity.

I used to take part the forum in Google group soc.culture.singapore and others. There most posters also use vulgarity.

If this is carried on, we might become a nation of barbarians.

In the '70s, I use to board British tankers. The junior officers like to use vulgarity in their speech. I find this disgusting.

In the '90s I ferry pessengers in my taxi. Once I took 2 Indian young women from Britain and I was shocked the way they spoke. They used the same vulgarity as the British officers in tankers.

We are a nation of mostly Asians. Are we aping the British to speak the way they do ? I call this barbarian language. I would not mind if you use Hokien, Indian or Malay vulgar words as they are your mother tongue. But if you use English vulgarity in your words, you are considered barbarians.