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Singapore

Singapore• Located 85 miles north of the equator

off the southernmost tip of Malaysia.

• Tiny island of 26 by 15 miles.

• Resident population of 3.3 million.

• Ethnic distribution:Chinese 77%Malays 14%Indians 8%Others 1%

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Little bit of history• English first arrived as a result of commerce and trade via

the British East India Company

• 1819 Thomas Stamford Raffles arrives in Singapore

• Joined Penang and Malacca as Straits settlements under British rule

• By 1830s surpassed Penang and Malacca to become capital of straits settlement.

• 1867 Singapore a crown colony directly ruled from London.

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The language situation back then

• In 19th century, few Singapore residents spoke English

• English spoken by European residents

• Beginning to be taught in English medium schools

• Very few residents went to school

• No evidence of a pidgin English

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English in the Urban Areas of the Straits Settlements; 1921 Census (Nathan 1922)

Ethnic Group

No. of English

speakers

% of community % of English

   able to speak

Englishspeech community

European 5771 91 13.5

Eurasian 6090 78 14.3

Chinese 23361 6 54.7

Malay 1924 3 4.5

Indian 3939 8 9.2

Other 1588 23 3.7

TOTAL 42673 8 100

Colloquial Singapore English?

• How did Colloquial Singapore English(CSE) or Singlish come about?

• Generally uncontroversial that CSE arose as a contact variety out of the English medium schools in the 1st decade of the twentieth century.

• Chinese children thronged into the English-medium schools during that time

• CSE came into being as the English-medium schools coped for the first time with a majority population of non-English speakers (Gupta 1998)

• This transition point is important because it marked the change of the status of English from a second language variety to a NATIVE variety.

• Bazaar Malay, Malay, Hokkien and other dialects left their linguistic marks on CSE.

Language Planning & Policy• 4 official languages: Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and

English to reflect Singapore’s multicultural ethnic identity.

• Malay as the national language (merely ceremonial today)

• In practice, English is the de facto language of government and administration.

• Since 1987 English is the medium of education in schools.

• English is crucial to the survival and success of Singapore in the global market place.

• English is promoted as a “neutral” language, not favoring any of the major ethnic groups.

The Situation in Singapore today

Children may acquire several languages.

20-40 somethings • Dialects of Chinese and CSE spoken at

home• Mandarin and Standard Singapore English

(SSE) acquired in school.

Younger generation today• Remnant of dialects, Mandarin and CSE• Mandarin overtaken “dialects”

Language shift in progress?

Acquisition

Language spoken most frequently by Chinese Primary One pupils at home according to the Education Ministry

(From Gupta 2001 citing the Straits Times weekly, October 21 2000)

Dialect Mandarin English Others

1980 64.4 25.9 9.3 0.3

1990 5.6 67.9 26.3 0.2

2000 2.2 53.8 43.2 0.8

Anthea Gupta

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Sample Singapore English L: What do you talk about? B: Nothing much. I guess ... I don't know, like some people think that my grandmother is really

naggy and like really critical and everything, right. But I guess 'cause I only see her once a year, so she's very nice to me. [LAUGHS] You know, so ... I mean like, sometimes she just tell me lor, you know, when you're finding a husband or whatever, you know, things like that. But yeah, it's quite fun.

L: Do you miss them? B: Yeah. I miss my grandmother a lot la in that sense. I mean, I write to her in Chinese, like once

or twice, you know, every few months.  L: That's pretty good. B: Yeah, it is quite funny then I write very big, write Po Po wo zhidao ni kan bu

Dao, suoyi wo xie hen da gei ni kan. (Grandmother, I know that you can’t see very well so I’m writing this in very big words). And then she'll send me back this letter with all the “chuo zi”(wrongly written words marked out).[LAUGHS] She very funny. So she just does it just to laugh at me because she knows my Chinese very lousy.

 L: Oh really? B: “Ni kan ni xie de ze me duo chuozi” (Look at how many mistakes you’ve made!). Then I'll be

like okay.

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Some Phonological Features of CSE

• Voiced stops become voiceless at the end of a syllabletab and tap tappeg and peck peck

• Interdental fricative simplificationwith wifthat datthink tink

• Consonant cluster simplificationlimp limlist lismask masband ban

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Some Grammatical Features of CSE

• Variable noun plural marking– He loves apple– We get customer like that

• Variable 3rd person singular marking– She drink milk– She want to take it, she take it.

• Tendency to use an aspect rather than tense marking– She still eat– She eat already

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Noun plural marking

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More grammatical features

• Variable past tense marking

missed miss

send/sent sen

planned plan

Question: Is this a non-marking of tense or consonant cluster simplification?

How can we find out?

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Try the best durian?

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Copula deletion

Four following grammatical categories were identified as factors influencing the degree of copula deletion.

• be + NP

My brother a teacher.

John my teacher.

De one de wife lah. (That lady is his wife.)

• be + Locative

I seldom at home.

Both of them in school.

Many people dere.

All of my friends overseas.

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More copula deletion• (3) be + Adjective

Our father also sick.I very scared.De teacher so fierce.Dat place very nice also.Dis one very hard lah. (This is very hard.)De road damn wide.

• (4) be + V-ingMy brother workingWe waiting for the flight to come in.I still sleepingHe reading right now.

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Interesting similarities with AAVE and creoles

Cross comparison of copula deletion

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

__NP __Loc __Adj. __V-ing

% D

ele

tio

n

CSE (Platt & Weber 1980)

CSE (Ho & Platt 1993)

NYC Cobras 'is' (Baugh1979)

Jamaican creole (Rickford1996)

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But aren’t these creole-like features?

• CSE is not generally recognized as a pidgin or creole since it did not develop from a pidgin or creole.

• It developed from the beginning via education. • Platt (1975) has used the term ‘creoloid’ to describe CSE which he

defines as:

A speech variety which has developed through the educational system such that a non-native or introduced prestige speech variety is taught to speakers of another speech variety…in a situation where the introduced variety comes to be used in everyday situations, to be acquired by some children before they commence school and to become (a) virtual ‘native’ speech variety for some or all speakers.’

Stigma versus SolidarityCSE stigmatized by some. Adam’s view.

A: I think that Singaporeans do not speak English in general.

L: You don't think they speak English?

A: No, they do not speak good English.

L: Really? Why?

A: Yep. Because ... uh ... I mean, the English that's spoken in Singapore has a mix of Chinese and everything to it …that goes into the grammar. When I speak to my friends in totally Singlish way and everything, the people here cannot understand. They have no idea what I'm saying. We speak a lot faster. We do not articulate a lot of the words and stuff like this. We miss out, you know, like Singaporean would say dis instead of this. It's all due to sloppy stuff. The ‘k’s at end are not pronounce. You know, stuff like this.

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Solidarity - Melody

Yeah I do think that yeah our English is not uh I mean um I around my friends there are lot of goods…very good speakers I mean really... Umm

But I, I don't really agree with the idea that you have to speak proper English

If this is about communication, and the person you talk to understand, HELLO!

That is speaking well. You know what I mean, like how dare those people look at us and judge usYou know what I mean? Like, I think yeah yeah yeah yeah I know yeah you know yeah do business

and lalalala, and did you see emails lately?

Who is writing proper emails nowadays? Business emails are all chill out man. Yo wassup babe?

That’s the kind of emails I write and I do big business, I mean like my one project can be $200 000 and the emails like "yo wassup babe, what’s happening" you know?

You know like “wah tonight we go chiong ah” you know what I mean like

You know like whether is it …ssoo much put on this thing that it's I mean like yeah yeah good everybody should be ya more educated and you know learn proper English yeah happy for you good good good you know but is it such a big thing I don't know.

Maybe the whole fucking world should speak Mandarin cause China is getting so big and there is a lot of Chinese around.

So I think that one is...completely debatable. Where are you coming from? Yeah.

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Language Ideology

 Started in 2000.

ObjectiveThe mission of the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) is to promote the usage of good English among Singaporeans.

What is Good English?Speaking good English means using grammatically correct English during conversations, where rules for constructing sentences are strictly adhered to. As such, accent is not an issue though the pronunciation should be accurate. 

 

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SGEM Bus

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What is ‘Good English’?

Good English' can be identified when:

• verbs are marked as singular/plural, past tense, etc. (e.g. 'Jenny loves oranges', 'We talked to him yesterday');

• nouns are marked as singular/plural (e.g. 'Khai Meng has two dogs');

• sentences are usually joined up clearly (e.g. 'If you are tired, don't do any more' instead of 'Tired, don't do any more');

• endings like 'lah', 'lor', 'leh', 'what' are not used; and

• very informal Singlish words are avoided (e.g. 'koyak, 'bochap').

(from website: www.goodenglish.org.sg)

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Language ideology

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The end (sort of)