OH no, not another thing on the Little Nyonya. Haven't we been peranakanned enough, from day one of Jeanette Aw-shucks?

PICTURE: MEDIACORP

But seriously. Because all Singapore had something to say about the most successful series to hit our Chinese television screens - since Man In The Net - let me join in with my dua sen.

My only beef (make it rendang) with the recent Channel 8 hit show is one of language.

As any true blue Straits-born bibik and baba worth his generations of family recipes know only too comfortingly well, Peranakans do not speak Mandarin.

I would go even so far as to say they cannot articulate Mandarin.

Susah-only, the tones.

(Peranakans famously used to call Chinese-educated 'shi-pu-shi', who in turn referred to English-educated as 'fare-fare-fare'.)

Hold on to your buah keluaks - before you hurl it (make sure it's filled first, with outrage and indignation also jadi), I do not refer to the NewGen who've benefitted from an effectively bilingual education.

From time historical, the Peranakan household tongue has been English and Malay.

Yes, Hokkien as well, a minimum, which dialect too is articulated in a distinct accent, almost to render it British English, words like 'tng' (soup) and 'toh-por' (dishcloth) for example.

'Siapa tidak dancing ki-lowteng'. ('Those not dancing go upstairs' in Malay-English-Hokkien, pronounced in pukka).

This is the lingua franca of any kosher baba home, and any bibik's painful attempt at Mandarin would again produce it, the sentence, the way English is read aloud.

When I give directions to the taxi driver in dialect Chinese, he sniffily remarks: 'You baba lang ah?'

Us baba-langs find it jarring and incredible to the ear to hear Peranakan heritage and culture dramatised in Mandarin, aieeeee, macham mana.

To my unapologetic monolingual upbringing, it is the same as if a series on Admiral Cheng Ho was to be done in Spanish, or the adventures of Hang Tuah told in Finnish.

Not dubbed, but produced in.

Little Nyonya is a soap opera (any baba home is a hotbed of one) and there will always be two schools of thought about the production.

(Two kebayas and a kerosang and they call it Peranakan it seems.)

Good acting, too bad about capturing the rhythm and music of Peranakan life, but how can you research body language-kan? The tok panjang was authentic, pity about the dialogue-belah.

The story could have been set in south America come to that, the way those telenovellas Isaura (Brazil 1974) and Oshin (Japan 1983) crossed television borders.

Begin with changing her name to Si-Niang-Niang, where got Yue-niang one?

Having merepek-ed (said all that), now long story short (virtually non-existent in baba home).

Therefore is Little Nyonya an insult to, and ignorant of, the history and the heritage of the Straits-born culture?

I see it as a salute. If there's a single good out of colonisation, it's the English language, which has paved our inroad to globalisation smooth.

The perceived gentrified Peranakans practically formed the bridge between empire and local culture. Knowing this history, making a TV series with it, with no hard feelings, this is to be applauded.

(Ah lah, what's a sanggul and a kasut manek between cross-cultures today?)

Singapore's population is now homogenous, what we are we owe to that history.

There is no divide, no more, really, between the Chinese- and the English-speaking.

How Little Nyonya engaged all Singapore is the proof (in the koay pie ti.)

Globalisation is in our DNA, and this is what makes us uniquely Singapore.

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