Variety of English: Singapore English

Varieties of English: Singapore English

Prepared by:

Muhammad Fadhil Bin Mohd Azhar

Bachelor of Human Sciences (English Language and Literature)
Variety of English: Singapore English

Introduction

Singapore is an island city state which located at the southern part of Malaysia. Once, Singapore

was part of sovereign state of Malaysia, however, Singapore was parting from Malaysia few years

after the foundation of Malaysia. According to Schneider (2011) this city was founded by Sir

Stamford Raffles, a British officer, who recognised the potential of Singapore in becoming

strategic port in South-east Asia. This city expanded rapidly to become a maritime trading centre

as time passes by and somehow attracted many people from various Asian origins to settle there.

Therefore, Singapore has grown to become a multiracial country. In Singapore, people usually

used English in their communication as Singapore used to be a colonised country and prior to that,

people there developed a variety called Singapore English.

Singapore English is the English language spoken in Singapore, of which there are two

main forms, Standard Singapore English, and Singapore Colloquial English (better known as

Singlish). Singapore is a cosmopolitan city with 42% of its population born outside the country.

Singaporeans, even those of the same ethnic group, have many different first languages and

cultures. For example, in 2005, among Chinese Singaporeans, nearly a third speak English as their

main language at home while almost half speak Mandarin, and the rest speak various mutually

unintelligible Chinese topolects. In the Indian community, most Singaporeans of Indian descent

speak either English or Tamil at home. The English language is now the most popular medium of

communication among students from primary school to university. Many families use two or three

languages on a regular basis, and English is often one of them. In the past, some children received

fewer years of English education than others. As such, the level of fluency in English among

residents in Singapore varies greatly from person to person.

Variety of English: Singapore English

It is generally accepted that English spread during the time of empire building through

settlement colonies or through exploitation colonies, the prior concerning relatively large scale

population movement such as that of English speakers from the British Isles to North America or

to Australia. Singaporean English or Singapore English (SgE) will obviously be a variety that

developed in the context of an exploitation colony. Among the key points in the contrast with

settlement colonies in North America and Australia and New Zealand, on the one hand, and the

former colonies of Malaya, India, Ceylon (as well as those in Africa and Central America), on the

other would be that the exploitation colonies were not repopulated with British settlers, although

the colonial government might have encouraged migrant labour for the various industries and

economic activities developed then, although English was adopted for administrative purposes in

the exploitation colonies, the population continued (at least initially) to employ the vernacular

languages so that there was multilingualism and multiculturalism. The settlement colonies were

not necessarily, and often not, multilingual, however, the exploitation colonies experienced the

spread of English through its leaking downwards as parts of the local population began to receive

English-medium education and began to be employed as clerks in the colonial governments.

Historical Background

Only a few scant sources—notes from Chinese travellers, Portuguese historians, and early Malay

accounts of events in the region—exist that document the history of pre-colonial Singapore, and

they provide a fragmentary history at best. These sources paint then-uninfluential Singapore as a

resource-poor island with a small population that depended on fishing, trade, and piracy for

survival. (Lim 1991: 3–4) The rise and development of modern Singapore is largely attributed to

the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles in February of 1819. Raffles, recognizing Singapore’s prime

location within the region, quickly secured a British presence in Singapore and established there a
Variety of English: Singapore English

free trading port. According to Gupta (1980), although the residents of Singapore had had previous

contact with English from English-speaking traders passing through the region, this contact was

brief and fleeting com-pared to the strong establishment of a British presence as instated by Raffles

and Major William Farquhar in 1819.With the establishment of a new centre of commerce came

the promise of employment, which attracted masses of immigrants from a number of different

regions; in less than twenty years since the establishment of the trading port, Singapore’s

population had grown to nearly 30,000 inhabitants, most of whom were Chinese. No pidgin forms

of English developed despite the multi-ethnic nature of Singapore because a lingua franca—Bazaar

Malay (Bahasa Pasar), a pidginized form of Malay already existed for inter-ethnic communication.

Platt and Weber outline six main factors that contributed to the spread of English during this time

period: (1) the increase of government administration; (2) the development of infrastructure and

communication; (3) the expansion of commerce; (4) an increasing population of a local English-

educated elite; (5) English-language films; and (6) increased access to education.3

The strong demand for English that arose reinforced the English’s prestige position: During

this early period in Singapore’s history, it became very apparent that one would have to learn

English to negotiate with the higher powers of society—namely, the government and judiciary

system, as well as commercial forces. Further, successful media outlets operated predominantly in

English (Platt & Weber 1980: 6), thus heightening the visibility of English.
Variety of English: Singapore English

Singlish

Ferguson (1959) states that diglossia occurs when two speech varieties are used in a speech

community side by side, each fulfilling different functions. The High variety is often considered a

“standard” code that is used in formal functions and in domains such as government offices, courts,

religious and educational institutions whilst the Low variety on the other hand is often considered

a “sub-standard” code commonly used amongst friends and low level social meetings.

Even in the days of British colonialism in Singapore, it became apparent that knowledge

of English was for many reasons a desirable asset; English was the High variety code, as opposed

to other vernacular languages in Singapore, in administrative, judiciary purposes as well as foreign

and local businesses which also applied at higher levels. Not surprisingly, non-British participants

who were unable to converse in English soon found themselves at a socioeconomic and political

disadvantage. English had also established itself as the dominant

language of the media, as readership of English newspapers was more popular in contrast to other

local vernacular papers.

Over the years, the English in Singapore inevitably evolved due to circumstances like the

presence of other languages, interethnic mingling, socioeconomic differences, and the need for the

local population to accommodate to the British. Singlish is an English-based creole that is

commonly said to be similar to the Malaysian English variety, Manglish, because of the close

proximity between the two countries, shared cultural experiences and geosocial history. Gupta

(1992) defines Singlish as a contact variety and points out that “the main difference [of Singlish]

from Standard English is syntactic,

and the lexis is dominated by English”. Like Manglish, Singlish consists of English, Malay,

Chinese dialects and, to a lesser extent, Indian lexical items. However, what makes Singlish
Variety of English: Singapore English

slightly different from Manglish is that the former demonstrates a certain amount of influence from

Chinese dialects. Slang and colloquialism in Singlish originate from other forms of Englishes

including American slang which have been introduced through television series.

In Malaya, the Chinese varieties themselves also contained many loan-words from Malay, and

more Chinese loan-words from the Hokkien, rather than the Cantonese. For example, Hokkien-

influenced pa sat instead of the Cantonese-influenced baa saak in Singapore (from Malay pasar

meaning 'market'), loti (from Malay roti meaning 'bread'), Hokkien gu li and jam bban (from Malay

guli meaning 'marble', and Malay 'jamban' meaning toilet). Many signs in Singapore include all

four official languages: English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay.

After Singapore's independence in 1965, and successive "Speak Mandarin" campaigns, a

subtle language shift among the post-1965 generation became more evident as Malay idiomatic

expressions were, and continued to be, displaced by idioms borrowed from Chinese spoken

varieties, such as Hokkien.

The English-medium educated sector of the community typically speaks Singlish. Singlish

is usually not spoken by those who are educated in Chinese-medium schools, or who received a

Malay or Tamil-medium education. In addition, the older population with vernacular education

would use their mother tongue and Bazaar Malay, whilst younger Singaporeans who had English

as a second language (and not as the medium of instruction), would speak English more as a

learner’s language.

The term “Standard English” warrants debates and invokes controversy. However, in the

case of Singapore, “Standard English” generally refers to either British English (as documented

and promoted by BBC and the British Council) or American. Platt et al.(1983) wrote that those
Variety of English: Singapore English

who have had a tertiary education and are in higher status occupations speak the H-variety (which

is closest to Standard British English) whereas those who have had only a few years of English-

medium education and lower status occupation speak Singlish, which is distinctive from Standard

British English.

This “rhetoric of failure”, as Gupta (2001) points out, is used by the Singaporean

government to persuade Singaporeans to embrace Standard English and avoid Singlish. The

Singaporean government has been pushing for the removal of Singlish in everyday domains

because it deems the code to be a poor reflection of Singaporean society, which in turn, can damage

Singapore’s image on the world stage. So much so, Singlish has been described by those in the

official circles as English “corrupted by Singaporeans [that] will put the less-educated half of the

population at a disadvantage” (Rubdy 2005:65).

The English language in Singapore is a sociolect continuum. The continuum runs through the

following varieties:

Acrolectal: Acrolectal Singaporean English exhibits an absence of or a much smaller degree of

Singlish pronunciation features than do Mesolectal, Basilectal, and pidgin variants of Singlish.

Mesolectal: This is the most commonly spoken form of Singlish. It is a mix between Standard

English and Singlish. At this level, a number of features not found in other forms of English begin

to emerge.

Basilectal: This is the most colloquial form of speech. Here, one can find all of the unique

phonological, lexical, and grammatical features of Singlish. Many of these features can be
Variety of English: Singapore English

attributed to Asian languages such as Chinese, Malay, or Indian languages such as Tamil, though

some cannot. Both the basilect and mesolect are referred to as "Singlish".

Pidgin: This is the "pidgin" level of Singlish, which is probably a good representative of an earlier

stage of Singlish, before creolisation took place and solidified Singlish as a fully formed creole.

As with all pidgins, speakers at the pidgin level speak another language as a first language, and

Singlish as a second language. However, since a substantial number of people today learn Singlish

natively, the number of speakers at the "pidgin" level of Singlish is dwindling. This is because a

pidgin is not learned natively.

The coexistence of basilectal Singlish and acrolectal Standard Singapore English can also

be analysed as a diglossia, which is a split between a "high" formal language and a "low" informal

language.

Platt and Weber generally agreed that Singlish had its origins in the English medium

schools of the Straits Settlements in the early twentieth century. According to Gupta (1994),

Historiographic data from nineteenth and early twentieth century Singapore (shows how the roots

of Singlish were based in the particular ethnic mix of these schools, which in the nineteenth century

were composed predominantly of English and (pidgin/creole) Malay-speaking pupils (Europeans,

Eurasians, Jews, Armenians and Straits Chinese) and where the teachers consisted roughly equally

of Eurasians, Europeans, and Indians. In the early twentieth century, there was an influx of non-

Chinese pupils who spoke varieties of Chinese. Female education in English is crucial for English

to become a native language. Until well into the twentieth century female English-medium

education was virtually restricted to the Europeans, Eurasians, Jews, and Armenians. The first
Variety of English: Singapore English

other girls to receive education in English were Straits Chinese. Again, the importance of the

pidginised and creolised varieties of Malay emerges.

Features on Singapore English

Vowels

The variety of Singapore English described herein, then, is CSE (Singlish), the one which differs

most from its standard counterpart. With regards to pronunciation, the (monophthongal) vowel

system of Singlish is, according to Deterding (2007), nicely balanced. This presupposes several

mergers.

Firstly, vowel length tends not to be contrastive. In Received Pronunciation, 5 to take a

convenient accent for comparison, there is a distinction between the vowels in bit and beat: the

first is a short /I/, while the second is a long /i:/. In CSE, they are merged into a single phoneme,

which may vary phonetically in length and quality, but not in a way consistent enough to affect a

distinction between minimal pairs (i.e. in the phonology). The same is true for the vowels in loose

and put, respectively /u:/ and /U/ in RP, and for those in caught (/O:/) and cot (/6/). Secondly, there

are mergers in the short vowel system, notably the dress–trap merger. Deterding (2007) is careful

to point out that there is variation here, with formality resulting in a distinction in educated

speakers. Nonetheless, his analysis shows the two vowels [E] and [æ] to be close enough to warrant

collapsing them into a single phoneme /E/ in Singlish.

Perhaps less remarkable is the absence of a diphthong in the face and goat set. These are,

in RP, /eI/ and /@U/ respectively, but monophthongal /e:/ and /o:/ in many parts of the British Isles

(northern England, Scotland, Ireland), the USA, India, and several Southeast Asian varieties. In

Singlish, the absence of the diphthong, coupled with the absence of vowel length, has the potential
Variety of English: Singapore English

of bringing /e/ into the proximity of /E/, resulting, potentially, in a merger, and thus, in a further

reduction of the system, the same being true for /o/ and /O/. This has led to the proposal of vowel

system of Singlish consisting of just six vowels (/i E a @ O u/).

Diphthongs

.Deterding (2007: 26) agrees, and clarifies the /u@/ diphthong, which occurs in words such as

poor, tour, and sure, but not in pure and cure, which have /jO/. The resulting distribution is the

inverse of that found in modern British accents, he notes, where poor now normally has [O:] and

cure [jU@].

Grammar

The grammar of Standard Singapore English is not different from that of other versions of Standard

English around the world; in particular, constructions considered grammatical in British English

are as widely accepted as those used in American English. Thus (1) is grammatical, as is (2).

(1) John is not going to the party, but Mary might do.

(2) John dreamed about Mary every night.

It is of course the grammar of CSE that is of more central concern here, as it differs from its

standard quite markedly. It is also relatively localised, in that this combination of features is

restricted to CSE. Many of these features, of course, are not unusual in other varieties of English.

NP Deletion

Noun phrases that can be deleted may be in the position of the subject, as in (a), or of the object,

as in (b), based on this data, the deletion is not simply diagnostic of Singlish, but is very frequent

even in formal discourse.

a. (That car) very expensive, you know.

b. I don’t know why, but I like (it/swimming).

Variety of English: Singapore English

Examples from Deterding’s data include those in (c) and (d), and focus on subject deletion, or null

subjects. Deterding’s review of the literature comes to the conclusion that this phenomenon in

Singapore English, which cannot be explained in the same way as in other languages such as Italian

or Spanish, where the subject can be recovered by the inflexion on the verb. However, these are

to be analysed in the framework of topic-prominence. Once the subject is established, through the

use of a personal pronoun, it is unnecessary to repeat it later in discourse. Furthermore, as in the

examples below, if the context is unambiguous, no mention of the subject needs to be made at all.

(c) Yeah can cycle, not very well, but ( ) can cycle, ah, ? knocked myself against a pillar . . . but

((laughs)) then ? managed to pick up ((laughs)) cycling. (Deterding 2007: 59)

(d) so ( ) only tried one or two dishes ( ) didn’t really do much cooking (Deterding 2007: 59)

One version of the Singaporean phonemes is the one given in Deterding (2007) under

‘Singaporean’. He overcomes the problem of variation in Singapore English by basing the

description on the speech of one female ethnic-Chinese undergraduate.

Deterding’s data suggest that many vowels that are distinct in RP and GA are merged in

Singapore, largely because of the lack of distinction between short and long vowels. Therefore,

these groups of words might not be distinguished: cut and cart, pull and pool, cot and caught, set

and sat, kin and keen. There are obviously Singaporeans who do make the long and short vowel

distinction.

Vocabulary

As far as the vocabulary of Singapore’s Standard English is concerned, there are two main

areas of interest: semantics and lexical borrowing. At the level of semantics, we can distinguish
Variety of English: Singapore English

between words common to most standard Englishes, but used with a different semantics in

Singapore, and words that have been recombined to form lexical items with special local relevance.

Borrowings from non-English languages occur, too, with some even making it into the Oxford

English Dictionary — at which point it is questionable, of course, whether such words are still

solely Standard Singapore English. Colloquial Singapore English, on the other hand, has a

vocabulary that draws much more heavily on borrowings.

Borrowing

Words of non-English origin include kiasu ‘characterised by a grasping or selfish attitude

arising from a fear of missing out on something’ (usu. adj., definition from OED (Simpson and

Weiner 2000); Hokkien kiansu), ta pau ‘take-away’ (adj. or v.; Cantonese daa2baau1), roti ‘bread’

(Malay), makan ‘food, to eat’ (Malay), paiseh ‘embarrassing’ (?Hokkien ph`asiu), kopitiam ‘caf´e’

(Malay kopi ‘coffee’ + Hokkien ti`am), and many more.

The extent to which these are restricted to SSE or CSE is unclear: kiasu is found so often

in print media as well as at least once in a parliamentary debate that it is hard to argue it is not part

of the standard (if inclusion in the OED wasn’t already good enough). Certainly some, such as

paiseh, have more of a CSE ring to them, but since usage alone dictates which word belongs to

which sub-variety (a problematic distinction, as the next section will reveal), this status may well

change in the future.

Conclusion

Although Standard Singapore English (SSE) is mainly influenced by British English and,

recently, American English, there are other languages that also contribute to its use on a regular

basis. Most Singaporeans speak more than one language, with many speaking three to four. Most

Singaporean kids are brought up bilingual. They are introduced to Malay, Chinese, Tamil, or
Variety of English: Singapore English

Singlish as their native languages, depending on their families' ethnic backgrounds and/or

socioeconomic status. They also acquire those languages from interacting with friends in school

and other places. Naturally, the presence of other languages in Singapore has influenced Singapore

English, something particularly apparent in Singlish.

Both Singapore English and Singlish are used with multiple accents. Words from Malay,

Chinese, and Tamil are also borrowed, if not code-switched, into Singapore English. For example,

the Malay words “makan” (to eat), “habis” (finished), and the Hokkien word "kiasu" are constantly

used and adopted to SE vocabularies, to the point that Singaporeans are not necessarily aware of

which language those words are from. Furthermore, the word “kiasu” has been used in the

Singapore press since 2000 without being italicized; Kiasu means "always wanting the best for

oneself and willing to try hard to get it". In another journal, "Kiasu" is also defined as

'characterized by a grasping or selfish attitude arising from a fear of missing out on something'.
Variety of English: Singapore English

References

David, Y., S., C. (2009). Standard English and Singlish: The Clash of Language Values in

Contemporary Singapore. Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society.

Gupta, A., F. (1998). Singapore Colloquial English? Or deviant Standard English? Proceedings of

the Second International Conference on Oceanic Linguistics. 1 (43-57).

Leimgruber, J., R., E. (2011). Singapore English. Language and Linguistic Compass. (47-62)

Platt, J., Weber, H. (1980). English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status, Features, Functions. Kuala

Lumpur, Oxford University Press.

Schneider, E., W. (2011). English Around the World. United Kingdom: Cambridge University

Press.

Tan, P., K., W. (2012). English in Singapore. International Journal of Language, Translation and

Intercultural Communication. 1 (123-138).