Spare a moment's thought for the difficult situation facing these children. At home, they speak Mandarin and Cantonese or Hokkien, but when they go out shopping they speak Malay, when they bump into Indian friends they speak Tamil, and with the local indigenous peoples they speak the native dialects. And to assure their future, they have to put great effort into studying English.
想像一下這些孩子的處境，在家裡，他們說華語和廣東話（或福建話）、上街購物說馬來文、碰到印度朋友說淡米爾文（印度文），和土著朋友們說土著方言，然後，為了日後的就業前途，還得拚命學英文。