新加坡国家信约
Xīnjiāpō guójiā xìn yuē
It’s 3 more weeks to Singapore’s 57th birthday!
Have you heard of our national pledge in Chinese?
Hanyu pinyin version:
Wǒmen shì xīnjiāpō gōngmín,
shìyuàn bù fēn zhǒngzú, yányǔ, zōngjiào,
tuánjié yīzhì,
jiànshè gōngzhèng píngděng de mínzhǔ shèhuì,
bìng wèi shíxiàn guójiā zhī xìngfú, fánróng yǔ jìnbù, gòngtóng nǔlì.
I recently asked my 6.5year old if he’d like to try to translate Singapore’s national pledge from English into Chinese.
He recites the English pledge in school, so I know that he knows the words by memory.
👦🏻: “我们…. Something something 新加坡…”
We didn’t get very far past the first phrase 😝
and there are big words to understand even in English.
But it definitely got us thinking and talking about what values are important to us as a nation.
We noticed that the sequence of terms and phrasing are different in both languages! There’s a certain cadence to the Chinese version too 😍
It occurred to me that maybe it’ll be better,
if I show my kids the Mandarin version
and let them match the English terms from memory!
Save this post,
and try reading this with your child!