An American YouTuber Chris Raney, has been criticised for a number of inaccuracies in a video guide to Singapore.
Raney is the host of Yellow Productions, a travel channel that focuses on making content about travel.
The video about Singapore was uploaded onto Facebook on 1 February 2022, with the video actually being filmed in 2016.
Raney described Singapore as being strict but safe, and that the public transport is cheap and the hawker food is good.
He then described the four official languages of Singapore, saying:
“Singapore has four official languages that include English, Mandarin, Malay, and an Indian language. But the official, official language is English. You’ll find everybody here pretty well speaks English.
The question is, is it an English that you understand?
English is Singapore is often referred to as Singlish because they add a lot of Chinese words into their English and add a lot of extra words at the end for emphasis, like ‘Hey, this line at the hawker center’s really busy, lah.’ And the lah is an emphasis type word.”
Netizens’ comments
- What is this Indian language you are referring about??What’s so difficult with yourself in mentioning that it’s TAMIL language??
- Alot of inaccuracies
- What do u mean by an Indian language? What Indian language ?
- Not sure when this video was filmed, but these couple of years, things have changed pretty a lot.
1. A lot of places are now cashless due to the pandemic. Even at hawker centres, one can scan QR codes at the stalls to make payments.
2. You do not need to buy an EZ-Link card anymore to take buses or trains. One can use contactless credit or debit cards to ride public transport and taxis.
3. Singlish is not our official language. It’s a creole, which we won’t use with foreigners. Most Singaporeans are pretty fluent in standard English.
4. Don’t be daunted by the rules. They are there for purposes and as long as you go about your lives normally, you won’t find yourself breaking most rules.