I’ve just spent the last half an hour watching three Kaneshiro Takeshi 金城武 interviews (lol), having read about him in the New Paper today (the shame!). The first was an interview in Cantonese, the second an CNN interview (video divided into 3 parts) conducted in English and finally one in Japanese. I’ve got to say this guy’s mastered the art of switching between languages. In the Cantonese interview, there are a couple of situations when he, unable to express in Cantonese, switches to Mandarin without missing a beat. I’m insanely jealous. If that happened to me, stutter would first come, followed by complete silence. It’s as if my brain were a receiver that’s been jammed by radio interference. Of course it’s not like I don’t understand at all when I’m spoken to in a language that out of my comfort zone (meaning: anything other than English). It’s just that comprehension ability does not necessarily mean the ability to express. Singaporeans in general seem to be really good at code-switching; I’m inapt, there’s no doubt about it.
