English in Singapore Ever since Sir Stamford Raffles claimed the island of Singapore for the East India Company in 1819, English has had a place in Singapore. As more and more of its people experienced learning English at school, English became widely spoken, alongside Singapore's many other languages. For many Singaporeans, English is the main language. Many families speak English at home and it is one of the the first languages learnt by about half of the current pre-school children. Nearly everyone in Singapore speaks more than one language, with many people speaking three or four.
Most children grow up bilingual from infancy and learn more languages as they grow up.
The influence is especially apparent in a kind of English that is used informally, which is popularly called Singlish. Singlish is a badge of identity for many Singaporeans, and, as you can see from Cafe Vanda , there are some websites that are written in it. As is the case with many contact varieties, however, Singapore English is often seen as wrong. In 1999 an official campaign began to encourage Singaporeans to use Standard English rather than Singlish. Since the 1960s linguists and sociologists have studied the features and the functions of English in Singapore from a number of perspectives.