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Thank you Pitch Media Asia for having me as a guest in Episode 6 of Sounds of Our City Podcast to talk about "The Languages of Singapore".
The interview location was at Swiss Hotel Merchant Court at Clarke Quay, Singapore River. My father's shop was just across the road at New Market Street and the hotel location was where my father's godown (warehouse) used to be. Read Bridge connects the hotel side of the river bank to the other side where my father used to live. He lived in a tiny room in a shop house with my mum and six of my siblings. We lived there until we got a two-bedroom flat at Redhill Close. Then, it was such a big relief in terms of space by the standards of those days. However by today's standards, we were still cramped up like sardines.
The hotel area is where the Teochew quarters used to be. Teochews are seafarers and traders and we are used to live near rivers and ports. So once upon a time, you would find Teochews around the Singapore River and Hougang (the river behind). There are still more Teochews living in Hougang till this day.
For more about how Singapore used to be in the 1960s, click here (warning: a very long, but worthy article to read.)
To get enough gigs as an actor in Singapore, one has to be multi-lingual. I act in English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew. I have also acted in Malay, Japanese and Thai. The same act delivered in a different language evokes a different emotion. I don't know why it is so exactly and can only guess that subconsciously there must be a powerful association among the sounds, meaning and memories that results in the different emotions.
It is an advantage to be able to speak different languages. When I speak the language native to the place, the locals lean towards me and I often get away with a lot of things. :)
UPDATE:
To know about languages of Singapore and listen to the full interview, click here.
https://soundcloud.com/soundsofourcity/languages-of-singapore-part-2-mandarin-teochew
For my interview by "A Hero's Journey", click here.
For my interview by Lush Magazine, click here.
For my interview by Internet Radio 988, click here.
For my interview by RSVP, click here
