Singlish

Singlish is a language used mostly in Singapore. It is the first language of many younger Singaporeans, especially those whose parents do not share a native language or dialect, and is the second language of nearly all the rest of the country's residents.

The vocabulary of Singlish consists of words originating from English, Malay (mainly Bahasa Melayu rather than Indonesian), Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Tamil and to a lesser extent various other European, Indic and Sinitic languages, while Singlish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese. Also, elements of American and Australian slang have come through from imported television series. To date, other Asian languages like Japanese, Korean and other lesser known Chinese dialects such as Shanghainese have also been incorporated into Singlish. Recently, because Mandarin is taught to all Singaporean Chinese in school, Mandarin words have also become a part of Singlish. Singlish is a creole of English.

Singlish is closely related to Manglish of the nearby country Malaysia.

The Singaporean government wants people to use Singapore Standard English instead of Singlish because it believes in that Singaporeans need to be able to effectively communicate with the other English users in the world. The government runs the Speak Good English Movement to emphasise the point.

Singlish Media

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  Exaggerated broken Singlish on an advertising board outside a cafe in Pulau Ubin

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  Many signs in Singapore include all four official languages: English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay.

Other websites

• Singapore Speak Good English Movement Archived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
• The Coxford Singlish Dictionary @ Talkingcock.com
• A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English
• Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish) Archived 2008-08-08 at the Wayback Machine
• An Annotated Bibliography of Works on Singapore English Archived 2021-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
• The NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore English Archived 2021-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
• The Lim Siew Lwee Corpus of Informal Singapore Speech Archived 2021-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Taiwanese Celebrities Criticize Singaporean English