Stereotypes of non-native English speakers.

From reading the story “Mother Tongue”, my topic I chose was to talk about the “stereotypes of non-native English Speakers.  Firstly, I strongly feel the need to express the intellectual representation of non-english speakers. Coming from Malaysia, we have many different races, whom of which all of our races speak there own language; Malay, Chinese, and Indian. Some speak better English than others, however that does not make them any less intelligent. Even in India, there are 23 official languages and most of them do not speak English. There was a point in my life when I was learning English I was told that my pronounciation was very good and my English was improving. I was very overly confident at this time, living in Malaysia, where the locals don’t speak fluent English. Whenever they made mistakes I always thought to myself how blessed I am to be of a mixed culture to be given the opportunity to learn English.  It sounds really demeaning, but people do ask this question, “Her English is so bad, is she not educated?”   I realized this was wrong. Why? Worldwide, Just because someone speaks broken English DOES NOT mean that they are not educated. They’re communication skills aren’t strong as they are taught in another language. Do communication skills hinder their intelligence? No it doesn’t. Einstein did not mutter a word until he was aged 9. Today he is widely regarded as the most intelligent man to discover the two pillars in modern physica. Standard English is regarded as being the “correct English.” Where as in singapore, Singlish is an entirely sole language on its own and is regarded as a proper language that everybody understands, even some of it being spoken in chinese and Malay. Another big stereotype is that non-English speakers tend to be arrogant and ignorant. As in they can’t be bothered to learn English. This stereotype is false information as non-English speakers are typically always encouraged from young to learn the English language as it opens more doors for youngsters in university and living abroad. Another stereotype would be that non-english speakers are broad minded as they only speak one language and have probably never lived abroad. I strongly acknowledge that there are many bilingual individuals speak more than two languages but still speak broken English. All of these which they are associated that non-English speakers do not expand as they can be in a community that only speaks the same language where they cannot expand.

http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Bilingualism-in-Young-Children--Separating-Fact-fr.aspx

http://ask.metafilter.com/10731/What-are-the-stereotypes-of-the-native-English-speakers-accent-as-perceived-by-nonEnglishspeakers

http://everything2.com/title/language+stereotypes