Talk:Singlish

message: Not sure, but looking at the following from the article:
The English-educated in Singapore received their English pedagogical instruction through missionary schools and convents such as the Anglo-Chinese School (ACS), Methodist Girls' School (MGS), Marymount Convent School, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ), Canossa's Convent (Located in Ajunied). However, as decolonization occurred, many expatriate English returned to Britain; and the post-65 generation - those that were born with the nationality as "Singaporean" rather than as "British subjects" - were increasingly taught by non-native teachers. In the late 1990s, due to budget constraints and the privatization of public schools, the standard of English language instruction fell, leading to confusion of grammar and vocabulary. Hence, in an unregulated socio-linguistic environment, the spontaneous varieties of a creolized English began to form after the 1960s. English language began to be taught by native Malay teachers as many affluent middle-class Singapore-born Chinese found careers in banking and corporate sectors or abroad, and Singapore-born European, Eurasian and Indian communities (the group most fluent in colonial English due to the long history of colonization in India) built legal careers that were more commercially viable.
In the two sentences that I bolded should 1990s be changed to 1960s?    —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.189.239.147 (talk) 19:49, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: [Untitled]

message: Who wrote this nonsense? "English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences."
Total rubbish. And it goes on: "For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel."
The worst bit is that the author has actually linked RP to the relevant article. If s/he had bothered to check, s/he would have noted that RP is based on Southern British English, typically a Home Counties sort of accent. Nothing to do with Scottish/Welsh/Irish whatsoever! And of course "home" has a diphthong, both for the Queen and for RP speakers, as well as for a majority of Southern British speakers.
I'm also sceptical about geographical variation. If the East Coast speaks more acrolectally, then surely that's due to the socio-economic background of the population there? It may well be that some families who have always lived there for generations continue to do so to this day, but my guess is this is a minority. Social and geographical mobility are huge on this crowded island, and no doubt even this exclusive area has seen a lot of coming and going in the past two or three decades. And if you meet a pre-65er in a Woodlands condo, speaking what's here termed "Queen's English", you'd certainly not assume first thing that he's from Katong. Just imagine: "Nice accent, mate. Where about on the East Coast are you from?" Kinda weird. JREL (talk) 05:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology 

message: i deleted the following:
: English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences. For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel.
this appears to make no sense.  the statement about the RP pronunciation of "home" is simply false, and the supposed distinction between "Queen's English" and "RP" is nonsense -- note that the former is a link to the latter. Benwing 06:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  incorrect 

message: For the graph showing the differences between the three different "classes" if you will of Singlish, what about a translation of what the first two were intending. I think this would give a clue as to the common use and speech patterns of those two groups.
--DaedalusMachina 15:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translations for the Curious? 

message: As a long time writer for Wikipedia, I am impressed by the quality of writing presented here. Every contributor should be proud of your collective achievements.
However, I am also disheartened by the complete lack of references in this entry. A Wikipedia article without references is not much more than talk cock, to borrow a Singlish expression. While it seems that at least some of the claims can easily be supported, others seem to be based on nothing more than the writer's mere conjectures or personal experience. Wikipedia is not a place for claims based on one's own "research"  or point of view  statements .
Even if not much independent research exists, there are still vast linguistic sources that can be utilized, such as IDEA  and Ethnologue .
I have added some initial references and marked particularly strong statements that require support. I look forward to seeing more factual evidence. Together, we can expand the knowledge on Singlish.
Please feel free to delete this comment when more references are added.
Sslevine (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Well written, but is it true?

message: The section states "[i]t originates from the Chinese character (啦, Pinyin: Lè/Là)", but also that "...in the Malay, 'lah' is appended to the end of the word and is not a separate word by itself."
It seems that the word is represented by the said Chinese character, but does not originated from it. However, I could not find evidence of the word in a Malay dictionary  or Min Nan (Hokkian).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sslevine (talk • contribs) 04:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh boy, if only we knew. There's as many suggestions for lah's origin out there as there are authors. Lisa Lim for example found similar particles in Bazaar Malay, Mandarin, and Cantonese, at least at a surface-phonetic level. She does point out though that Cantonese seems to have a counterpart for all eight particles she looks at -- you'd be tempted to say that this is some kind of systemic substratist influence, whereby the complete set of Cantonese particles was transferred into Singlish. The problem with that is the absence of so many Cantonese particles in Singlish. Go figure. Good thing is, there's still scope for a whole lot of research out there. JREL (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I took it to mean that it ultimately derives from Chinese and was borrowed in to Malay. --86.135.176.52 (talk) 18:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Is "Lah" of Chinese or Malay Origin?

message: There is still some confusion in this article between Received Pronuncation and Standard English. They are two entirely different things. RP is, as its name implies, a particular way of speaking the words. (The Queen still speaks it, but not many people in Britain do any more, even on the BBC.) Standard English is about the words themselves rather than how they are pronounced. Most better-educated people in Britain speak Standard English most of the time, but many of them don't speak RP.
The idea that Lee Kuan Yew speaks RP is completely absurd. But he does speak something approximating to Standard English.
I have tinkered with, or simply deleted, some of the more egregious howlers in this article but I suspect that it still needs a lot of work. There remain several unsourced assertions that seem to me rather dubious.  Alarics (talk) 22:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  RP is not the same thing as Standard English 

message: The not so commonly used and not so well-known tio has the same meaning as 'Kena', but i am still not sure wether u can use it the same way as 'kena'. For example 'I tio ban' (i got banned).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Choo chng (talk • contribs) 12:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about 'tio'? 

message: I Erased this line: It is the first language of many Singaporeans, and the second language of nearly all the rest of the country's citizens.
Singlish is NOT the first language for singaporeans and second for others. Singapore's education system teaches ENGLISH as the first language and MOTHER TONGUE as the second. Therefore, Singlish is NOT a language that Singapore's education system teaches.~ter890~ 12:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: A first language is the language you first learn at home from your parents, and has nothing to do with what is taught in school. Jpatokal (talk) 12:36, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Please take a look at this, courtesy of the Ministry of Education:   "In 2008, of six and seven-year-olds from Chinese and Indian families entering the formal school system, 60 percent came from predominantly English-speaking homes. Of Malay children, about 35 percent."  In other words, well over half of Singapore's children are now using Singlish as a first language ("predominantly English-speaking"). Jpatokal (talk) 10:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Actually, since Singlish is defined as "English as spoken in Singapore", by definition all English-speakers in Singapore are using some form of Singlish -- which doesn't necessarily mean sounding like Phu Chu Kang, since acrolectal ("good English") Singlish is Singlish as well.  But I've changed the ref to the 2000 census and noted the Garmen's policy of sticking its fingers in its ears and pretending Singlish doesn't exist. Jpatokal (talk) 02:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think one can draw from the 2000 census report the conclusion that you made in the first sentence. It just isn't apparent enough from the report and, in my view, is therefore an unsourced opinion. I'd want to see a better source for this if you had mentioned it in the article, but you haven't so the current edit is fine. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 18:17, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The census report a) gives the 71% literacy figure, b) uses the words "lingua franca" and c) does not distinguish between English and Singlish.  What other conclusions am I making? Jpatokal (talk) 02:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

text: Well, from a scientific perspective, all languages and language varieties are equally valid forms of human communication, so even if Jpatokal said all Singaporeans spoke like Phua Chu Kang (which they obviously don't), that wouldn't be an insult - if you perceive it as an insult, that may be due to your perception of Singlish as a "low prestige variety", which has no basis in science. I think the misunderstanding comes down to the fact that for most Singaporeans, "Singlish" is used to refer only to basilectal Singlish. From the perspective of a linguist specializing in creole languages, it would certainly be accurate to say that the acrolect - essentially, Standard English as spoken by native Singaporeans - is part of the creole continuum known as Singlish, it's just on the other end of the spectrum from "colloquial Singlish". When you say "Glasgowdian English", I assume you're referring to Glaswegian Scots. --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:15, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please do not put things that you are unsure of into the page 

message: I have seen the peer review for Singlish Some sentences in the article contains weasel words. Maybe we should look at them and discuss whether we should keep them or not? User:Ter890 (talk) ~ter890~ 16:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Consider removing lines without citications

message: Considering all those words like kena and lah are obviously non-standard spellings, it may be helpful to get IPA transcriptions of them. 60.242.48.18 (talk) 04:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA 

message: Why is there a need to spell standard English words the way it is pronounced in Singlish? Shouldn't these be in a separate section on pronunciation instead of having words spelt like "dis", "oreddi", and "izzit"? Granted, these are common (and deliberate) misspellings on internet forums; but that's no reason to include it here. Besides, there is little consistency between examples, and the words modified are chosen more or less arbitrarily. Silvermael (talk) 20:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-standard spellings of standard English words? 

message: While very funny, it's not in keeping with the rest of the tone of the article, any experts here who could fix that?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.224.113 (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I cleaned the section up quite a bit after noticing that some of it had been written with poor English, and then saw that the tone (especially of the example) was not encyclopedic. Someone else should rewrite the section. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues with section on the word "Siol" 

message: Just starting a thread for any other instances.  One phrase I came across working with Singaporean co-workers is "double confirm".  Can anyone confirm that this is a Singlish phrase?  It's completely redundant, but people seemed to use it constantly.  One co-worker gave me this example:
* Person A: Can you double confirm that you got my meeting request?
* Person B: Double confirm? No, triple confirm!
206.177.43.73 (talk) 22:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other Words and Phrases that could be in the article 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Singlish. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090815002811/http://www.soundcomparisons.com/Eng/Direct/Englishes/SglLgSingaporeStandard.htm to http://www.soundcomparisons.com/Eng/Direct/Englishes/SglLgSingaporeStandard.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Other related pages like Anglic, Middle English, or English language itself don't include the postulated Ingvaeonic group in the genealogy in the infobox, so I'm curious why it is here. - 131.111.184.8 (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ingvaeonic 

message: As per title. While the government's perception of Singlish may fit as a summary of it's status, I feel like it can be elaborated upon. I believe there are countless references in Singaporean media, even in the mainstream, that can be used to elaborate on the government's thoughts about the language/creole.Mount2010 (talk) 04:20, 28 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move government reactions/ public debate to another section? 

message: I love the wealth of examples provided in this page. I do think that they should be reworked, as much of information is unsourced and the tone of those sections is often unencyclopaedic. I also feel that in some cases, an excessive number of examples is given which clutters up the article. Any thoughts? --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: Hello editor! Actually, this page is full of the words that people may not like.
For example, in the ‘Grammar’ section:
-> Damn, I am …
The word ‘damn’ is not a good word to others. Posting a disgusting vocabulary in a wiki page is not very proper. Hope you can change the words into a right one. 迷你果醬 (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change the disgusting word 

message: Quoting "There is much debate over whether it is fully formed and whether it is a creole. Singlish is actually not a fully formed stable creole despite what many people claim. It is still in flux. And it is technically a creoloid not creole." from a conversation above from 2010. This kinda reflects the status of Manglish in its own article. Should the Singlish article be changed to indicate that maybe it's not really a full-fledged creole? I'm no linguistics expert but looking at other English-based creole languages like Krio and Tok Pisin, I'm just like wow, Manglish and Singlish is nothing like that. To the best of my knowledge, I think they are dialects of English with features of creoles. But correct me if I am wrong. –Jiaminglimjm (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is it really a creole? 

message: I've noticed a few of the links to references go to deleted articles. I've only seen two currently, but I'll reply to this talk with more if I find them after this. I don't know how to edit the reference list myself, unfortunately, and I'm meant to be doing other things so I don't have the time to learn right now unfortunately.
Source number with web archive links that work instead:
[27] https://web.archive.org/web/20071227002843/http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_160322.html
[29] https://web.archive.org/web/20180625021515/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/nyt-op-ed-on-singlish-makes-light-of-efforts-to-promote-standard-8008464 Anafyral (talk) 02:52, 23 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead reference links 

message: This phrase in the section on "Tio" seems awkward in a Singlish context. Perhaps the word "lottery" doesn't seem to fit in the "rhythm" of Singlish. I get the feeling that native speakers would say the specific lottery that was won e.g. "He tio 4D, (so that's why he spend so much)". Does this seem awkward to anyone else? Mount2010 (talk) 03:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "He tio lottery"? 

message: Two paragraphs from the lead section are duplicated from the "Usage in Society" section. How should this be addressed? Mount2010 (talk) 16:19, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplicated text