1. +
Liwen Huang
ENG101-01N
Instructor: Brian Ray
University of North Carolina
at Greensboro
+
When Singaporeans speak English
Just forget about grammar and pronunciation for a while

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Introduction
Some background
Singapore is a Southeast However, when people go to
Asian country and his official Singapore, they found they
language is English. Besides could not understand what
that, 75% of Singaporean is Singaporeans talked about
Chinese, so the majority of them actually. How come that
can speak Chinese, including happened? At first, let us listen
Mandarin, Cantonese and to a Singaporean speak English.
Hokkien Chinese. On the other SIMI IPhone4S in Singapore.
hand, Singaporeans usually After listening to this audio
speak English in their daily lives online, could you understand
and they do not think they have what they said and how much
a strange accent when they could you understand?
speak English.
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3. When
Singaporean
+ speak
English
What and Why Singlish?
First and foremost, Singapore English, and they bring the Malaysian English to the Singapore
Singlish, has six main parts, which are English. In recent year, Singapore has a strong
English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, economic relationship with the U.S., so the
Malaysian, and Indian languages. Singlish Singaporean learn a lot of American English and use it
is an English-based creole language, which to the daily life. All of them cause the Singlish has
is a kind of creole language. After that, the different characteristics from diverse languages all
creole language “is a stable natural over the world and this unique phenomenon of
language developed from the mixing of Singlish becomes a unique character of Singapore. As
parent languages; creoles differ from everyone knows that Singapore is not only an
pidgins (which are believed by scholars to International trading and financial, but also a tourist
be necessary precedents of creoles) in country. Moreover, Singapore is a multicultural
that they have been nativized by children country, which has many different races.
as their primary language, making them Consequently, many tourists come to Singapore
have features of natural languages that because they are attracted by the unique situation of
are normally missing from pidgins” cross culture of Singapore, especially the language.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_lan Demonstrating this point, Lubna Alsagoff observes
guage). that ‘English, although one language, has many voices
Before talking about Singlish, people in order to realize ‘different cultural ways of thinking
have to know about their history. and behaving, characteristic of the Singaporean
Singapore was the colony of British from experience’ (see also Bhatt 2005: 25)’” (342).
1819 to 1965. Therefore, during that Additionally, Singlish is not only a branch of Standard
period, the standard official language is English, but also a bridge, which connect with
British English. Moreover, most of different languages and cultures because Singlish
Singaporeans are the immigration from commixes English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien,
China, so they speak English with Chinese Malaysian and Indian languages and all of these
slang and accents more or less. Besides people can understand and communicate with others
that, few decades years ago, Singapore by Singlish. Therefore, as Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime
was combined with Malaysia. As a result, Minister of Singapore, said, “today the lingua franca is
many Malaysians immigrate to Singapore English, or Singlish (Lee 2005)” (342).
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The Grammar of Singlish
At first, the grammar of Singlish does not have so 3. Here it is the slowness of the printer
many differences between the standard English, but it that is tropicalized (6).
absorbs Chinese and other languages grammar more Another common grammar of Singlish is “Copula-
or less because of multicultural situation. deletion (6)”, which means that in some situations, the
The most frequent situation of Singlish grammar is copula verb is disappeared in Singlish conversation.
topic-prominence, which is “the topic of the sentence For understanding this point, Jakob R. E. Leimgruber
at the beginning of the sentence” (5). This kind of made some examples.
grammar is from Chinese and Malay (Tan 2003). For 1. That boat ∅ very short one. (iii.C.2.f)
easy understanding, this is an example from Tan. 2. My uncle ∅ staying there. (ii.M.1.m)
1. Zh`e bˇen shu ̄ woˇ qu` nia ́n du ́-guo. 3. What ∅ your dialect? Panjabi? (ii.I.1.m)
这本书我去年读过。 4. The place ∅ called Sungei Buloh.
This clf book 1sg last year read-exp (iii.M.gr)
‘I read this book last year.’ (Tan 2003: This unique grammar, using in English, is from
6)(5) Mandarin. Mandarin does not use copula verb. As a
Besides that, not only noun phrase can be the topic in result, when Singaporeans speak English in their daily
Singlish. For instance, lives, they usually ignore the copula verb.
2. Too slow lah, I find that printer. (Bao
and Lye 2005: 279)
4

5. SSB (Standard Southern British)
+ eCONomy ecoNOMic
aCADemy acaDEMic
eCONomy aCADemy
Pronunciation SEP (Singapore English Pronunciation)
eCONonomic
of Singlish aCADemic(DAVID DETERDING and ROBERT HVITFELDT, 1994).
Additionally, in Singapore, people usually emphasize ‘I’, ‘you’, and ‘me’ in one sentence.
In some cases, they are stressed in ‘have’ in conversation.
Besides the grammar
Finally, the third distinction is vowels. In Singlish, it does have long and short vowels.
differences, there is another
As a result,
unforgettable difference
seat/sit cart/cut caught/cot fool/full bed/bad
between Standard English
these five pairs of words have same pronunciation in Singapore English (DAVID
and Singapore English. It is
DETERDING and ROBERT HVITFELDT, 1994).
the pronunciations of
Singlish. There is an audio of
Singlish chat and could you
find out what are
pronunciation differences
between Singlish and
English? Singlish on chat.
The first main
distinction of pronunciations
of Singlish is consonant.
Generally, the Singaporean
changes the voiceless
consonant to the voice
consonant. For instance, the
pronunciation of „curry‟ in
Standard English is /ˈkʌri/,
but in the Singlish the
pronunciation changes to
/ˈgʌri/. Furthermore, in
Singlish, „three‟ and „tree‟
have same pronunciation and
“„then‟ has the same sound as
„den‟” (DAVID
DETERDING and ROBERT
HVITFELDT, 1994).
After that, the second
difference is stress situation
in Singlish. In this part, some
examples will make it clearer
and easier to understand.
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Singlish, a unique cultural identity
When Singaporeans speak English
Although English-speakers, Moreover, Singlish is like a However, now he is very worried
like British and Americans, could bridge, connecting different races about he cannot do anything in the
not understand Singlish when they people, because it has so many U.S. when he visit and look after me,
first visit Singapore or speak to elements of diverse languages. If because little American understand
Singaporeans and at the same time, your English is not good as a native Mandarin.
the Singapore government speaker, you do not need to worry Furthermore, every Singaporean
encourages his citizens to speak about that you cannot communicate can understand more than one
Standard English, Singlish is still with Singaporeans. It is because language, so it is very helpful when
the most popular language in that you can add Mandarin or they do global business. Nowadays,
Singapore. This fact shows that Cantonese in your English globalization is a main trend all over
Singlish is not only a branch of conversation. It makes a great the world and owning a bilingual skill
English, but also a unique cultural number of tourists feel comfortable is very significant. Therefore, it causes
identity of Singapore. Even though, and convenient when they visit that Singaporean has a very strong
Singapore has cleanest streets, Singapore. For instance, when the superiority when they compete with
luxury shopping malls, and author’s father went to Singapore, others in the international market.
wonderful tourist attraction, he could talk with local people in
Sentosa, it has Singlish, which is an simple English and Mandarin.
unforgettable point of Singapore.
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Conclusion
When Singaporean speak English
When Singaporeans speak English, it is hard to understand, but
this phenomenon is the one of their cultural characters. Singapore
English has its own specialties like grammar and pronunciation rules.
When people listen to the Singlish, they would think this language is
really funny and unique. Someone may believe that Singlish is not a
language strictly because it just mixes several different languages.
Nevertheless, precisely because of mixes from different languages, it
brings Singapore a unique attractive point to everyone from every
country and almost everyone could communicate with others in
Singlish. On the street, in Singapore, people could find diverse races
people live and work together very well and happy. It shows that
Singlish has its unique influences to the Singapore.
Reference
Creole language, Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
DAVID DETERDING and ROBERT HVITFELDT, The Features of
Singapore English Pronunciation: Implications for Teachers,
Teaching and Learning, 1994, Vol 15, No 1, pp. 98-107.
LUBNA ALSAGOFF, English in Singapore: culture, capital and identity
in linguistic variation, World Englishes, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 336–
348, 2010.
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When
Singaporeans
speak English
+
Liwen Huang
ENG101-01N
Instructor: Brian Ray
University of North Carolina at Greensboro