MADAM Karen Goh hit the nail on the head when she highlighted the wrong use of the word 'got' ('Get 'got' out of the speaking vocabulary', last Wednesday). That reminded me of the TV advertisement by Courts in which TV comedy character Phua Chu Kang said: 'What you want they got offer.'

Like Madam Goh, my wife and I are guilty of wrongly using the word 'got', no matter how hard we try to converse in proper English.

This is partly because of our thinking process. When we want to find out about something, we think as we would speak in Hokkien, so we say something like, 'Today at school got scolded or not?'

When I form sentences as I would write them, my mind naturally engages better English. But I lapse into Singlish when I converse informally. I suppose it is impossible to completely wipe out Singlish because most of us speak informally. In fact, if we use proper English when speaking informally, we may be mistaken as being snobbish.

I am glad Madam Goh and her family make a conscious effort to converse in proper English, which gives them the chance to learn good oral English in an environment that will not give rise to wrong impressions.

Patrick Sio

This article was first published in The Straits Times.