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De-English The Singlish

Published: 4 November 2021

I mean… Is there even anything to say about this?

First of all I want to say that this is a school project; there isn’t any possible and logical reason that my friends and I would waste a day talking about Singaporean English besides school. From the dialects to the intonation to the pronunciations to the emotions projected, it’s like finding out that Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, but not the tallest… I mean, what?  Thus, to avoid future conflicts and misconceptions from my Singaporean friends, let's just say that Singaporean English, otherwise known as Singlish, is quite… perplexing.

Moving on, from the words of Tom Hanks, “Singlish is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you’re gonna get.” This is especially true when meeting Singaporeans. Who knows, you could find someone who speaks the language as clear as the beaches of Bali, or you could meet someone who can only speak in onomatopoeia. Take a look at this video for example:

American VS Singaporean

This… was probably made by a Singaporean or a Malaysian but I digress. Singaporeans want to make their lives easier, from drinkable fountains to high speed metros and to robotic cleaning services, they have it all. But the most important factor in making their lives easier, is the language itself.  Singaporeans would like to minimize their sentences, they want to speak as little as possible, it’s like their conversational capability is that of an Iphone 12, but has the longevity of an Iphone 1. These are the examples:

I mean wow, the people who made Singlish must have gotten a 7 for their English essays. But on a real note, you could definitely see that there are some Chinese words imposed on those sentences, which brings me to the next point, cultural influence. Firstly, China. The main things that were influenced by Chinese culture was intonation and sentence structure. You could almost compare Singlish users to Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese speakers and they almost sound the same melodically. Secondly, Malay and Indian have also influenced the lexical terms such as “Agak-Agak” which means estimate. Lastly, English itself has influenced the actual concept and usage of Singlish itself.

Although we are the least qualified and the least neutral to cover this language, there are certain things that we wanted to praise and emphasize through this blog. Firstly, we love how Singaporeans made their own version of English, we love how everybody could add their own twist to the language respectively; almost as if we are adding our own personal touch. We also love how there are a variety of cultures and influences that helped make Singlish Singlish. Thus despite being different, it almost feels like the language is connecting us in a way. Thus we are here to state that English isn’t just English. Everyone has their own ‘version’ of English.