What is Singlish?


Singlish (a portmanteau of Singapore and English) (officially similar and related to Singaporean English) is an English-based creole language[1][2] spoken in Singapore. Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact between speakers of many different languages in Singapore, including Hokkien, Malay, Teochew, Cantonese and Tamil.[3]

Singlish originated with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English-medium education in Singapore.[4] Elements of English quickly filtered out of schools and onto the streets, resulting in the development of a pidgin language[5] spoken by non-native speakers as a lingua franca used for communication between speakers of the many different languages used in Singapore. Singlish evolved mainly among the working classes who learned elements of English without formal schooling, mixing in elements of their native languages.[6] After some time, this new pidgin language, now combined with substantial influences from Indian English, Peranakan, southern varieties of Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, became the primary language of the streets. As Singlish grew in popularity, children began to acquire Singlish as their native language, a process known as creolization. Through this process of creolization, Singlish became a fully-formed, stabilized and independent creole language, acquiring a more robust vocabulary and more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding.[7][8]

Singlish shares many linguistic similarities with Manglish or Bazaar Malay of Malaysia, although a few distinctions can be made, particularly in vocabulary. Manglish generally receives more Malay influence and Singlish more Chinese (Mandarin, Hokkien, etc.) influence. Initially, Singlish and Manglish were essentially the same dialect evolving from the British Malaya economy, born in the trading ports of Singapore, Malacca and Penang[9] when Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia were for many purposes a de facto (from 1963 to 1965, de jure) single entity. Ever since the two countries separated, a divergence has been observed.

Like all languages, Singlish and other creole languages show consistent internal logic and grammatical complexity.[10] Due to its origins, Singlish shares many similarities with other English-based creole languages. As with many other creole languages, it is sometimes incorrectly perceived to be a "broken" form of the lexifier language - in this case, English.[11] The uniqueness of Singlish has been studied by linguistics experts beyond Singapore.[12]