Singlish
Singlish is the dialect of the English language as spoken colloquially in Singapore. Singlish formally takes after British English (in terms of spelling and abbreviations), although naming conventions are in a mix of American and British ones. For instance, local media have "sports pages" (sport in British English) and "soccer coverage" (the use of the word "soccer" is not common in British media).
Singlish began life with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English language schools in Singapore. Soon, English filtered out of schools and onto the streets, to be learned by non-English-speakers in a pidgin-like form for communication purposes. After some time, this new form of English, now loaded with substantial influences from Indian English, Baba Malay, and the southern varieties of Chinese, began to be learned "natively" in its own right. Creolization occurred, and Singlish then became a fully-formed, stabilized, and independent dialect of English.
Like all other languages and dialects, Singlish is best thought of as a continuum. In Singlish's case, the continuum runs through the following varieties:
Acrolectal: This is the most "high-class" form of speech, used by the well-educated in formal situations. Acrolectal Singaporean English is basically identical to formal British English, except that a "toned-down" version of Singlish pronunciation is used. For example, speakers of acrolectal Singaporean English attempt to restore the phonemes /θ/ and /ÃÂð/ (as in thin and then).
Mesolectal: This is "middle-class" Singlish, and is used in formal and semi-formal situations. At this level, features not found in other forms of English begin to emerge.
Basilectal: This is "street" Singlish, and is used by everyone, educated or not, in informal settings. Here can be found all of the unique phonological, lexical, and grammatical features of Singlish, which will be the subject of the rest of this article.
Pidgin: This is the "pidgin" level of Singlish, which is probably a good representative of an earlier stage of Singlish, before creolization took place and solidified Singlish as a fully-formed dialect. Like all pidgins, speakers at the pidgin level speak another language as a first language, and Singlish as a second language. However, since many people today learn Singlish natively, the number of speakers at the "pidgin" level of Singlish is dwindling. (By definition, a pidgin is not learned natively.)
When Singaporeans speak to each other, mixing of Singlish with other languages, such as Chinese dialects, Malay, or Indian languages like Tamil occurs very frequently. In fact, a sentence can begin in Singlish, switch languages several times along the way, and end up as another language. However, this can only occur if all participants of the conversation can already speak both Singlish and the Asian language(s) they are switching into. This article will therefore talk only about "pure" Singlish -- the kind that may go on in a conversation between a Chinese, a Malay, and an Indian. Such speech will still contain Asian words, but those will be considered loanwords fully incorporated into Singlish, because everyone can understand them, regardless of what other Asian languages they may speak.
Due to its origins, Singlish shares many similarities with pidgin varieties of English, and can easily give off the impression of "broken English" or "bad English" to a speaker of some other, less divergent variety of English. In addition, the profusion of Singlish features, especially loanwords from Asian languages, mood particles, and topic-prominent structure, can easily make Singlish downright incomprehensible to a Brit or American. As a result, the Singaporean government considers Singlish a handicap, and in the interest of promoting equality and better communication with the rest of the world has launched the Speak Good English Movement to eradicate it, at least from formal usage. Use of Singlish on television or radio is banned and schools can fine students caught speaking Singlish. (On the other hand, it is Singlish that is the dominant form of English spoken in schools and on the streets.)
Most Singaporeans, on the other hand, think "bladi Garmen si peh kaypoh one,
why always so bedek kacang hor?". This sentence can be approximately broken down into:
Singlish pronunciation, while built on a base of British English, is also heavily influenced by Chinese and Malay.
The phonology of Singlish:Overview
Politics
Phonology
| bilabial | labiodental | alveolar | postalveolar | palatal | velar | glottal | |
| stops | p b | t d | k g | ||||
| affricates | tʃ dʒ | ||||||
| fricatives | f (v) | s (z) | ʃ (ʒ) | h | |||
| nasals | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| laterals | l | ||||||
| approximants | w | r | j |
In general:
- The unvoiced stopss and affricate -- /p/, /t/, /k/, /tʃ/ chin -- are sometimes unaspirated, especially at the basilectal level. (Aspiration refers to a puff of air.) In other varieties of English, these phonemes are usually aspirated, especially at the beginning of a word. The general effect of this is that, the Singlish pronunciation of pat, tin and come may sometimes seem closer to bat, din, and gum than other varieties of English.
- The voiced fricatives -- /v/, /z/, /ʒ/ vision -- are unstable at the basilectal level, and may be substituted with other phonemes, e.g. bery for very, gero for zero. (This is much rarer outside the basilectal level.) In syllable-final positions they merge with their unvoiced counterparts -- see point 6 below.
- The dental fricatives -- /θ/ thin and /ÃÂð/ then -- merge into /t/ and /d/, but the distinction is restored in acrolectal speech.
- The distinction between /l/ and /r/ is not stable at the basilectal level, as evinced by TV personality Phua Chu Kang's oft-repeated refrain to "Use your blain!".
- [ʔ], the glottal stop, is inserted at the beginning of all words starting with a vowel. (compare with German) As a result, final consonants do not run onto the next word. For example, "run out of energy" would be "run-nout-tof-venergy" in most dialects of English, but "run 'out 'of 'energy" in Singlish.
- [ʔ] also replaces final consonants of syllables in regular-speed speech, especially stops: Goodwood Park becomes Gu'-wu' Pa' . The plural -s in particular is almost always omitted, since Chinese does not distinguish between single and plural nouns.
- In slower speech, final consonants are pronounced fully (though stopss are not released, like American English -t and -d). However, voicing distinction -- i.e. /p/ & /b/, /t/ & /d/, etc. -- are usually not kept in final consonants. This affects fricatives more than stopss. As a result, peace = peas, let = led, and so forth.
- Final consonant clusters simplify, especially fast speech. In general, stopss, especially /t/ and /d/, are lost if they come after another consonant : bent = Ben, act = ack, nest = Ness.
Vowels
The Singlish vowel system:
Monophthongs
| front | central | back | |
| close | i | u | |
| close-mid | e | ə | o |
| open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| open | ɑ | ||
| ai | au | ɔi | iə | uə |
The vowel system of Singlish can be directly derived by merging vowel phonemes in the British Received Pronunciation vowel system. At the acrolectal level, there is some effort to "un-merge" the merged vowel phonemes, and to introduce elements from American English, such as rhotic vowels (pronouncing the "r" in bird, port, etc.)
| Singlish phoneme | matches RP phoneme(s) | as in |
| /i/ | /i/ | meet |
| /ɪ/ | pit | |
| /e/ | /eɪ/ | day |
| /ɛ/ | /ɛ/ | set |
| /ÃÂæ/ | map | |
| /ɛə/ | hair | |
| /ɑ/ | /ɑ/ | car |
| pass | ||
| father | ||
| /ʌ/ | bus | |
| /ɔ/ | /ɒ/ | mock |
| /ɔ/ | thought | |
| court | ||
| /o/ | /əʊ/ | low |
| /u/ | /u/ | room |
| /ʊ/ | put | |
| /ə/ - see below | /ɜ/ | bird |
| /ə/ | idea | |
| better | ||
| /ai/ | /ai/ | my |
| /au/ | /au/ | mouth |
| /ɔi/ | /ɔi/ | boy |
| /iə/ | /iə/ | here |
| /uə/ | /uə/ | tour |
In general, Singlish vowels are tenser and "purer" -- there are no lax vowels (which RP has in pit, put, and so forth), and even the diphthongs are pronounced with less "glide" than the diphthongs in RP. Note that the vowels of day and low are pronounced as monophthongs -- i.e., vowels with no glide.
In addition, where other varieties of English have an unstressed /ə/, reduced from another vowel, such as in accept, example, and so on, Singlish tends to restore the full vowel. This is because Singlish de-emphasizes the role of stress (see section on prosody below).
In loanwords from Hokkien that contain nasalized vowels, the nasalization is often kept - one prominent example being the mood particle hor, pronounced as /hɔ~/ -- somewhat (but not quite) like the vowel in French dent.
One of the most prominent and noticeable features of Singlish is its unique intonation pattern, which is quite unlike British or American English. For example:
Prosody
Tone (or lack thereof)
Singlish is somewhat between the above two situations. In Singlish there are, in general, no words that differ solely on the basis of tone, except for improvised loanwords that sometimes occur in conversations between people who also speak a tonal language. On the other hand, established loanwords from tonal languages, as well as mood particless, must be pronounced with a specific tone pattern. For example:
- Kiasu, or "afraid to lose", must be pronounced with a mid-level tone on the first syllable and a high-level tone on the second.
- Siao, or "crazy", must be pronounced with a falling tone.
- Pai-seh, or "embarrassed", must be pronounced with a rising tone on the first syllable and a low-level tone on the second.
- What, when used as a sentence-final mood particle expressing assertiveness, must be pronounced with a low-level tone.
Singlish is influenced by both British- and increasingly American-English. It uses many words borrowed from Hokkien, the dialect of more than 50% of the Chinese population in Singapore, and from Malay.
Examples:
The grammar of Singlish has been heavily influenced by other languages and dialects in the region, such as Chinese and Malay. As a result, Singlish has acquired some very unique features, especially at the basilectal level. Note that all of the features described below disappear at the acrolectal level, as people in formal situations tend to adjust their speech towards accepted norms found in other varieties of English.
Singlish is topic-prominent, like Chinese. This means that Singlish sentences are usually constructed by first putting down a topic (or a known reference of the conversation), followed by a comment (or new information). The semantic relationship between topic and comment is not important:
Nouns are optionally marked for plurality. In general, a noun that is used to refer to a general category is not marked for the plural, and does not take any articless:
The copula, which is the verb "to be" in most varieties of English, is treated somewhat differently in Singlish:
When occurring with an adjective, "to be" tends to drop out, and is often replaced by an adverb, such as "very". This is strongly reminiscent of Chinese usage:
Vocabulary
English words with different meanings in Singlish
Other idioms include:Grammar
Topic Prominent
The above constructions can be translated analogously into Chinese or Japanese, which are topic-prominent languages.Nouns
It is more common to mark the plural in the presence of a modifier that implies plurality, such as "several", "both".To Be
When occurring with "-ing" to form the continuous aspect, "to be" may similarly drop out, leaving the "-ing" form as the independent continuous form:
Slightly less common is the dropping out of "to be" when used as an equative between two nouns, or as a locative:
In general, "to be" drops out more behind nouns and pronouns (except "I", "he", and "she"), and much less behind a clause (what I think is...) or a demonstrative (this is...).
Past tense marking is optional in Singlish. Marking of the past tense occurs most consistently in strong verbs (or irregular verbs), as well as verbs ending on -t and -d, such as:
The Past Tense
Due to consonant cluster simplification, the past tense is unmarked when it is part of a complex consonant cluster:
- He talk for so long, never stop, not even when I ask him.
- When I was young, ar, I go to school every day.
- When he was in school, he always get good marks one.
- Last night I mug so much, so sian already. (mug = cram for exam. sian = bored/tired.)
Negation
Negation works in general like English, with not added after "to be", "to have", or modals, and don't before all other verbs. Contractions (can't, shouldn't) are used alongside their uncontracted forms.
However, due to final cluster simplification, the -t drops out from negative forms. This effectively makes -n the negative marker on modals:
- I dun want.
- I can /kɛn/ do this lah.
- I can't /kɑn/ do this lah.
- How come today you never (=didn't) hand in homework?
- How come he never (=didn't) pay?
Repetition of verbs
Another feature strongly reminiscent of Chinese, verbs are often repeated (e.g., TV personality Phua Chu Kang's "don't pray-pray!" pray = play.) In general verbs are repeated to imply vividness, repetition, and a sense of "wandering around":
- They talk talk so much, never do work one.
- I look and look, also cannot find. (here, look and look is pronounced very fast, in a continuous string.)
- So what I do was, I sit down and I think think think, until I get answer lor.
Verb or not
In a construction similar (but not identical) to Chinese, verbs can be put into the structure "Verb or not", to form a yes/no question:
- This book you want or not?
- Can or not?
Particles
Particles in Singlish are highly comparable to Chinese. They are generally used to express grammatical mood. For example:
Already
Used to express a change in state, and is analogous to Chinese 了 le:
- He throw it already - He threw it away (already)
- Aiya, I cannot wait any more, must go already.
Used to form yes-no questions, generic like the French n'est-ce pas?, regardless of the actual verb in the sentence.
- They never study, is it?
- You don't like that, is it?
tone: high-flat
Also used to form yes-no questions, but with a decidedly different tone, generally surprise:
- They never study meh? (I thought they do?)
- You don't like that meh? (I thought you do?)
tone: high-flat or falling
The ubiquitous word 'lah' is used at the end of a sentence, for emphasis. In Malay it is used to make a verb into a command. To drink is minuman, but 'drink!' is minumlah. Hence a Singaporean would say
- Drink, lah!
- Dun have, lah! (Brusque response to, "Lend me some money, can?")
tone: high-flat or falling
The word one is used to emphasize the predicate of the sentence, and to set it apart as a contrastive feature (rather than optional additional information). It can be compared to a similar use of 的 de in southern Chinese:
- Walau! So stupid one! - He's so stupid!
- I do everything by habit one. - I always do everything by habit, unlike someone else, or unlike the listener's expectations.
- He never go to school one. - He doesn't go to school (unlike other people).
tone: low-flat
Used to mean that something is obvious, and is used with a premise (not a conclusion):
- But he very good at sports what, that's why can play soccer so well.
tone: high-flat
Used to mean that something is obvious, and is used with a conclusion (not a premise):
- But he very good at sports, that's why can play soccer mah!
tone: high-flat
Just like "mah", except that "lor" is more casual, and can be used with inferences, in addition to direct observations:
- If you don't do the work, then you die-die lor!
tone: high-flat
Used to assert a command, request, assertion or complaint, as well as accentuate a question:
- Give me leh!
- How come you don't give me leh?
tone: rising. Nasalizedized.
Used to draw the listener's attention and/or consent:
- Then hor, another person came out of the house.
- This shopping center also very nice hor.
tone: rising.
Inserted between topic and comment, and is used for emphasis:
- This boy ar, always so naughty one!
Miscellaneous
"Got" is used to mean "there is" or "there are":
- Got question? Do you have a question?
- Yesterday ar, East Coast Park got so many people one!
- This bus got air-con or not? Is there air-conditioning on this bus?
- Where got!? (Generic response to any accusation.)
- Go home lah, can? Just go home, OK?
- (Responding to: Can I have a sweet, too?) Can!
- (Responding to: Can you come tomorrow?) Cannot.
- "Excuse me, you know where is the shopping centre? "Excuse me, do you know where the shopping centre is?"
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