Singapore English

Singapore is a small island (about 650 sq km) located in South-East Asia just north of the equator. Its population is about 4.8 million, of which 3.6 million are classified as "Singapore Residents" (Singapore Government, 2008). The resident population is 77% ethnically Chinese, 14% Malay, 8% Indian, and 1% "Others".

In view of this multiracial mix, the government promotes four official languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Malay and Tamil. See, for example, the sign on the right, which incorporates all four languages. (This sign is displayed at the front and also the back of all subway (MRT) trains.) English is nearly always used as the lingua franca between the different races.

Not surprisingly, the English used in this multilingual society has been influenced by a range of other languages and has therefore emerged with its own distinct flavour. In his five-stage Dynamic Model of the development of postcolonial Englishes, Schneider (2007: 155) claims that Singapore English is in the fourth stage, which suggests that it is developing its own norms quite independent of external varieties, even if historically British English has constituted the superstrate language.

This article will provide a brief overview of the features of Singapore English, including its phonology, grammar, lexis and discourse. But first we need to consider variation in Singapore English.

Varieties of Singapore English

There is a huge range in the English spoken in Singapore (Pakir, 1991). Crucially, most speakers are able to switch between a formal variety that has been termed Singapore Standard English (SStdE) and a more colloquial variety that has been labelled Singapore Colloquial English (SCE). It is the latter that is often described as "Singlish". Gupta (1994: 7) describes these two distinct varieties in terms of diglossia, with SStdE forming the H(igh) variety while SCE is the L(ow) variety.

Quite apart from this diglossic situation with SStdE and SCE, there is substantial variation between the speech of the different ethnic groups. For example, Deterding and Poedjosoedarmo (2000) show that listeners can identify whether a Singaporean speaker is ethnically Chinese or Malay with a success rate of over 90% on the basis of just 10 seconds of conversational speech, though Lim (2000) reports that this difference mainly arises from intonation, so the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants may be mostly shared by the different groups.

Phonology

Vowels

Most analyses claim that there are fewer vowel phonemes in Singapore English than many other varieties of English (Bao, 1998; Wee, 2004a; Lim, 2004). For example (using the keywords used by Wells, 1982): there is often no differentiation between long and short vowels with the result that FLEECE and KIT my be merged, and so are GOOSE and FOOT; and  the non-close front vowels DRESS and TRAP are also generally not distinguished.

In addition, FACE and GOAT are generally pronounced as monophthongs that might be represented as [e] and [o].

This gives the following inventory of vowels:

Monophthongs		Diphthongs
Vowel    Example Words i    beat, bit e    made, egg ɛ    beg, bag, bare ʌ    mark, muck ɔ    sport, spot o    coat u    pool, pull ə    bird, about		Vowel    Example Words ai    nice au    house ɔi    boy iə    beer uə    poor

One comment is needed regarding the monophthongs listed above: egg is included with made rather than with beg/bad/bare as might be expected, for it has been shown that egg rhymes with vague rather than beg and peg. The plot on the right (from Deterding, 2005) shows that measurements of the vowels of educated speakers (who use SStdE) confirm the close quality of egg: all but one of the tokens of egg belong with vague in the top left-hand corner.

Other words that have this unexpected close vowel are bed and next.

Finally, there are fewer reduced vowels (schwas) in Singapore than many other varieties of English. For example, the function words that, as and of are nearly always said with a full vowel, as indeed are the vowels in the first syllables of concern and advice. This does not mean that Singapore English does not use [ə], as the indefinite article a and the first syllable of about do have this reduced vowel. However, reduced vowels are less common than in some varieties of English, such as British English.

Consonants

Perhaps the best-known feature of the pronunciation of Singapore English is the avoidance of the dental fricatives [θ, ð], with [t] and [d] being used in their place in initial position while [f] occurs in final position, so that with is generally [wif]. As a result, thin and tin are generally homophones, as are then and den. However, there is substantial variation, and Deterding (2007: 15) shows that even a single speaker recorded on one occasion exhibited considerable variation, sometimes using [θ] and sometimes [t] at the start of a word such as three in an apparently unpredictable pattern. In SCE, the dental fricatives are generally avoided entirely; but in SStdE, educated speakers are more likely to vary.

Another common feature is the tendency to simplify final consonant clusters, usually by omitting the final one. So the [t] may be omitted in fist and the [k] in ask. Cruz-Ferreira (2005) found that deletion of [t] and [d] was equally common whether the final sound represented a final -ed suffix or not.

Rhythm

Partly as a result of the limited occurrence of reduced vowels, Singapore English tends to have relatively evenly timed syllables, so we say its rhythm is more syllable-based than many other varieties of English (Low, Grabe & Nolan, 2000; Deterding, 2001). In the past, some people have described this as the 'staccato effect' (Brown, 1988).

Grammar

There are many different features that mark the grammar of Singapore English as different from that of other Englishes. Alsagoff and Ho (1998) and Wee (2004b) offer valuable overviews. Here we will just mention some of the most salient features. All will be illustrated using genuine examples, from the recorded data of a 34-year-old female Chinese trainee teacher whose speech is analysed in Deterding (2007). (The chapter and item numbers are provided, so you can listen to the data from the link provided in the References at the end.)

Number marking

Sometimes, logically countable things such as furniture, luggage and lighting have a plural -s suffix (Brown, 1999: 62). In the data included here, we have fictions, companies and tuitions (Deterding, 2007: 43):

Tenses

There is a tendency to slip into the present tense when narrating a story once the past time of the event has been established. Note the use of didn't at the start of the following example, but then the occurrence of don't later on, even though the speaker is still talking about things that happened in the past (Deterding, 2007: 46):

so didn't really enjoy the three weeks there, I guess it's because I know that I'm only be there for three weeks and um ... mmm ... er ... so don't know whether to um ... to put all my heart in there (ch3, no.30)

will

The modal very will is often used to refer to a regular event (Deterding, 2007: 48):

would

The past tense modal would is often used to indicate something tentative (Deterding, 2007: 50):

Null subjects

There is a tendency to omit the subject of a sentence, perhaps influenced by the null subject natures of Chinese (Leong, 2003; Tan, 2003). In the following extract, the null subject is marked by the symbol 'Ø' (Deterding, 2007: 58):

Lexicon

We will consider word usage under three categories: borrowings, shifted meanings, and initialisms.

Borrowings

Many words from the other languages spoken in Singapore get borrowed into English. Two of the commonest examples are: kiasu ("fear of losing out", from Hokkien) and makan ("to eat", from Malay). Brown (1999) offers a substantial list of such borrowings.

Borrowings are perhaps most common in more colloquial varieties of Singapore English (SCE). In the data from an educated speaker in Deterding (2007), we find almost no borrowings, though in the NIECSSE data from other trainee teachers that is also analysed in that book, we find kampung ("rural village", from Malay) and pasar malam ("night market", from Malay) (Deterding, 2007: 75-76):

    

Shifted meaning

The meaning of some words is shifted compared to how they are used in many other Englishes. For example, send can mean "to accompany someone somewhere" (Brown, 1999: 36). In the following examples from Deterding (2007, 80-81), bring is used where take might be more common in other varieties of English, and stay indicates long-term residence:

Initialisms

There is a tendency to create lexical items out of initial letters, so HDB (Housing Development Board) refers to public housing, MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) is the subway system, and CPF (Central Providence Fund) is the compulsory savings system. All these abbreviations are sanctioned by the government.

Institutes of higher education also have three letter versions, so Nanyang Technological University is NTU, the National Institute of Education is NIE, the National University of Singapore is NUS, and the more recently founded Singapore Management University continues the trend, being known as SMU. Similarly, the expressways all have three-letter abbreviations, so the Pan Island Expressway is PIE, and the Kranji Expressway is KJE. Four of these abbreviations are found on a single road sign near the NTU campus, as shown on the right (from Deterding, 2007: 79).

Discourse

Two discourse features will be discussed here: topic fronting, and pragmatic particles. As before, attempts will be made to use genuine examples, and to allow you to listen to them if you choose.

Topic fronting

It is standard in all varieties of English to place the topic at the start. But this process seems to be particularly strong in Signapore English, perhaps influenced by the topic-comment nature of Chinese. Some examples from Deterding (2007: 63) are:

Discourse particles

Perhaps the best-known of all aspects of Singapore English is the use of the lah particle, which can indicate a variety of meanings, including: intimacy, disapproval, highlighting an item, pointing out the obvious (Low & Brown, 2005:179-180). Some examples from Low and Deterding (2003) are:


No attempt will be made here to determine which exact meaning of lah each of these carries. There is some debate about the origin of the lah particle, for example whether it comes from Hokkien or Malay or maybe a combination of the two.

Another common particle is ah, which can be used to indicate that more is to follow in the conversation (Low & Brown, 2005: 176). In the following examples (from Low and Deterding 2003), ah seems to be marking off the topic of the utterance, or maybe it acts as a king of audible comma:


There are a whole host of other particles, such as meh, wat, hor, lor .... It is not possible in this brief overview to list them all or to determine the exact meaning of each one.

References

Alsagoff, Lubna & Ho Chee Lick (1998). 'The grammar of Singapore English'. In: Joseph Foley et al. (eds.) English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections from Singapore (pp. 127-151). Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Bao, Zhiming (1998). 'The sounds of Singapore English'. In: Joseph Foley et al. (eds.) English in New Cultural Contexts: Reflections from Singapore (pp. 152-174). Singapore: Oxford University Press.

Brown, Adam (1988). 'The staccato effect in the pronunciation of English in Malaysia and Singapore'. In: Joseph Foley (ed.), New Englishes: the Case of Singapore (pp. 115–28). Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Brown, Adam (1999). Singapore English in a Nutshell: An Alphabetical Description of its Features. Singapore: Federal.

Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (2005). 'Past tense suffixes and other final plosives in Singapore English'. In David Deterding, Adam Brown and Low Ee Ling (eds.), English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus (pp. 26-36). Singapore: McGraw-Hill

Deterding, David (2001). The measurement of rhythm: a comparison of Singapore and British English. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 217-230.

Deterding, David (2005). 'Emergent patterns in the vowels of Singapore English'. English World-Wide, 26, 179-197.

Deterding, David (2007) Singapore English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (on-line materials)

Deterding, David & Poedjosoedarmo, Gloria (2000). 'To what extent can the ethnic group of young Singaporeans be identified from their speech?' In Adam Brown, David Deterding & Lo Ee Ling (eds.) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation (pp. 1-9). Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.

Gupta, Anthea Fraser (1994). The Step-Tongue: Children's English in Singapore. Clevedon, UK: Multimedia Matters.

Leong, Ping Alvin (2003). 'Subject omission in Singapore Colloquial English'. In David Deterding, Low Ee Ling & Adam Brown (eds.) English in Singapore: Research on Grammar (pp. 11-21). Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

Lim, Lisa (2000). 'Ethnic group differences aligned? Intonation patterns of Chinese, Indian and Malay Singaporean English'. In Adam Brown, David Deterding & Lo Ee Ling (eds.) The English Language in Singapore: Research on Pronunciation (pp. 10-21). Singapore: Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics.

Lim, Lisa (2004). ‘Sounding Singaporean’. In Lisa Lim (ed.), Singapore English: A Grammatical Description (pp. 19-56). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Low, Ee Ling & Brown, Adam (2005). English in Singapore: an Introduction. SingaporeL McGraw-Hill

Low, Ee Ling & Deterding, David (2003). 'A corpus-based description of particles in spoken Singapore English'. In David Deterding, Low Ee Ling & Adam Brown (eds.) English in Singapore: Research on Grammar (pp. 58-66). Singapore: McGraw-Hill. (on-line materials)

Low, Ee Ling, Grabe, Esther & Nolan, Francis (2000). 'Quantitative characterizations of speech rhythm: syllable-timing in Singapore English'. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 217-230.

Pakir, Anne (1991). 'The range and depth of English-knowing bilinguals in Singapore'. World Englishes, 10, 167-179.

Schneider. Edgar W. (2007). Postcolonial Englishes: Varieties around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Singapore Government (20008). 'Statistics: Population (Mid-Year Estimates)'. Accessed on 1 Aug 2008 at http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/people/hist/popn.html

Tan, Ludwig (2003). 'Topic prominence and null arguments in Singapore Colloquial English'. In David Deterding, Low Ee Ling & Adam Brown (eds.) English in Singapore: Research on Grammar (pp. 43-53). Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

Wee, Lionel (2004a). ‘Singapore English: Phonology’. In Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Bernd Kortmann, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology (pp. 1017–1033). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wee, Lionel (2004b). ‘Singapore English: Morphology and syntax’. In Bernd Kortmann, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider & Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax (pp. 1058-1072). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Wells, J. C. (1982) Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.