Singlish - Overview and History

Overview and History

Singapore English derives its roots from 146 years (1819–1965) of British colonial rule over Singapore. Prior to 1965, the standard form of English in Singapore had always been British English and Received Pronunciation. After Singapore declared independence in 1965, English in Singapore began to take a life of its own, leading to the development of modern day Standard Singapore English. Standard Singapore English began to take root and Singlish began to evolve among the working classes who learned English without formal schooling.

Singlish originated with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English language schools in Singapore. Soon, English filtered out of schools and onto the streets, to be picked up by non-English-speakers in a pidgin-like form for communication purposes. After some time, this new form of English, now loaded with substantial influences from Indian English, Baba, Malay, and the southern varieties of Chinese, became the language of the streets and began to be learned as a first language in its own right. Creolization occurred, and Singlish is now a fully formed, stabilized, and independent English-based creole language.

Singlish shares substantial linguistic similarities with Malaysian English (Manglish) in Malaysia, although distinctions can be made, particularly in vocabulary. Manglish generally now receives more Malay influence and Singlish more Chinese (Mandarin, Hokkien, etc.) influence. In addition, Singlish has a set grammar and particular phonological and grammatical rules, whereas Manglish does not follow any grammatical rules, and is not mutually intelligible within different variants of Manglish, even disparate regions in Malaysia itself.

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 when Singapore and peninsular Malaysia were for many purposes a de facto single entity.

In Singapore, English was the language of administration, which the British used, with the assistance of English-educated Straits-born Chinese, to control the administration in Malaya and governance of trading routes such as the British East Indies spice routes with China, Japan, Europe and America in those ports and colonies of Singapore, Malacca and Penang through the colonial governing seat in Singapore.

In British Malaya, English was the language of the British administration whilst Malay was spoken as the lingua franca of the street, as the British did not wish to antagonize the native Malays.

In British Singapore, however, as the seat of the colonial government and international commerce, English was both the language of administration and the lingua franca.

Thus, in Malaysia, even the Chinese would revert to Malay when speaking to Chinese who did not speak the same Chinese varieties.

In Malaya, the Chinese varieties themselves also contained many loan-words from Malay, and more Chinese loan-words from the Cantonese, rather than the Hokkien languages e.g. Cantonese: Cantonese-influenced "baa sat" instead of the Hokkien-influenced "baa saak" in Singapore (from Malay 'pasar' meaning 'market'), "loti" (from Malay 'roti' meaning 'bread'), Hokkien "gu li" and "jam bban" (from Malay 'guli' meaning 'marble', 'jamban' meaning 'latrine'/WC).

In Singlish, "eating bread" would be translated as "jiak roti", jiak being the Hokkien verb for "to eat", whereas in Malaysia, "eating bread" would be translated as "makan roti" (Malay verb for "eat" + Hokkien transliteration of the Malay word for "bread").

After Singapore's independence in 1965, and successive "Speak Mandarin" campaigns, a subtle language shift among the post-1965 generation became more and more evident as Malay idiomatic expressions were, and continued to be, displaced by idioms borrowed from Chinese spoken varieties, such as Hokkien.