ronbo
2007-12-01 08:12:55
Alek actually only speaks English, but school officials viewed him as Latino first and placed him accordingly.
In Singapore, everyone learns English – it’s the official language – along with their “mother tongue”, which is either Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. This can be a problem for the Peranakan minority that is ethnically Chinese but culturally Malay. A Peranakan friend of mine, who spoke as much Chinese as she did Swedish, needed extensive tutoring in Mandarin because the schools refused to treat her as Malay.
