Spoken Singapore Colloquial English
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The two videos selected from the internet illustrate the variation between spoken Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) or Singlish and Singapore Standard English (SSE). As a form of edutainment, the videos entitled ‘Bobby and the Fairy God-Makcik’ and ‘Mr Brown Show - Bus Alert’ demonstrate the structure and pragmatics of Singlish, especially when used inappropriately, as well as the efforts to speak Standard English and its applicability across domains, establishing the fact that “there is no situation in which Standard English is inappropriate” (Gupta, 2009).
Below each video clip is the transcription of selected excerpts to explicate distinct features of Singlish, highlighted in red (Table 1).
Table 1: Table of main lexical and syntactic features identified to characterize SCE
In Singapore’s polyglot community, Singlish developed from the co-existence of different varieties of language within the community, and interplay of socio-cultural influences, and has served as a functional vernacular which amalgamated linguistic elements from two or more languages and often used in informal settings. In his study, Leimgruber states that SCE “functions as the basilect... the L variant in the diglossic framework” [1]. Sociological variables like history, culture, education and language attitudes motivate individuals to use this L ‘low’ variety, at times alternating with the H ‘high’ variety SSE. With words borrowed from Mother Tongue, namely Chinese and Malay, this L variety narrows social gaps, allowing informal conversation among family members and acquaintances. In the diglossia with bilingualism model, Fishman (1967) highlighted the importance of ‘proper’ usage, referring to making language choices according to particular contexts [2]. The customer in Bobby’s hawker centre scene, used the words cai tao kway and teh tarik, and bopian and ah lian from Mr Brown’s show are used specifically within the Singapore context. This use of lexical markers is preferred to avoid inappropriacy in communication and loss of meaning.
Syntactic markers like optional past tense is illustrated in the utterance “Got customer come already!” taken from Bobby’s hawker centre scene. The adverbial of time already is used to indicate past tense. Other features include the use of non-Germanic verb form such as kena and use of the ‘existential-got’ in place of an auxiliary to mark the passive voice at times with a negative connotation and the latter denoting availability instead of using the form ‘have (done)’.
Inclusion of discourse particles such as lah and meh is a salient feature of SCE, used as softening devices to make the utterances casual and interlocutors comfortable, often signify solidarity and intimacy between speakers and when used with different tone assumes different meaning from statement to question. Questions words like where is not positioned at the start of a sentence as in Standard English thus not taking the form of an interrogative as in the utterance “This bus go where a?”
Reduplication of the basic form such as early early and sorry sorry functions to intensify the situation and
is culturally specific despite approximating the linguistic structure of Standard English.
The word one is used to emphasize the predicate of a sentence by implying that it is distinctive, and the subject can be determined from the context. It is used in place of a relative pronoun.
In Singapore’s globalized heterogeneous urban society, education, namely Singapore’s bilingual policy, and an international economic growth have allowed many Singaporeans to be effectively bilingual or multilingual. Factors, including domains, context, interlocutors, conversation topic, setting and “changing attitudes towards the pre-existing languages” [3] have led a speaker’s decision to switch codes while maintaining a unique cultural identity.
Singlish is a product of internal and external forces and is a variety of English. As teachers, we must be sensitive to changes in the language environment. While teaching Standard English and modelling its use, teachers must strive to be adept facilitators of the learning processes making students aware of differences in the varieties, to meet the nation’s need of developing global citizens with roots in Singapore.
(709 words)
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[1] Leimgruber Jakob R. E. Sociolinguistic variation in Singapore: towards a new model
[2] Chew Sock Foon, (1987) Ethnicity and Nationality in Singapore,p.144
[3] Wright Clare (2008) ARECLS, , Vol.5, Diglossia and Multilingualism – Issues in Language Contact and Language Shift in the Case of Hong Kong Pre and Post-1997, p. 265
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Reference List
Chew, Sock Foon (1987) Ethnicity and Nationality in Singapore, Center for International Studies, USA: Ohio University Press
Leimgruber, Jakob R. E., (2008) Sociolinguistic variation in Singapore: towards a new model, University of Oxford, accessed at nwav37.rice.edu/abstracts/Leimgruber.pdf
Wright, Clare (2008), Diglossia and Multilingualism – Issues in Language Contact and Language Shift in the Case of Hong Kong Pre and Post-1997, ARECLS, 2008, Vol.5, accessed at http://research.ncl.ac.uk/ARECLS/vol5_documents/Articles/wright_vol5.pdf
