Singapore

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Singapore
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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 English speech 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


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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.

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Language Planning Policy

• 4 official languages Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and
  English to reflect Singapores 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.

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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?

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Acquisition
Anthea Gupta

• 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
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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 cant see very well
  so Im 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 youve 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
  syllable
• tab and tap ? tap
• peg and peck ? peck
• Interdental fricative simplification
• with ? wif
• that ? dat
• think ? tink
• Consonant cluster simplification
• limp ? lim
• list ? lis
• mask ? mas
• band ? 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-ing
• My brother working
• We waiting for the flight to come in.
• I still sleeping
• He reading right now.

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Interesting similarities with AAVE and creoles
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But arent 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 varietyin 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.

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Stigma versus Solidarity

• CSE stigmatized by some. Adams 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 ks 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
  us
• You 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?
• Thats 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, whats
  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)