Singlish - A Dialect?

What is a language? Popular usage often reserves the term 'language' for major, prestigious and "standard" speech forms, and uses 'dialect' for everything else. Many people, including some linguists, use the terms 'language' and 'dialect' without always clarifying the sense in which they are being used.

One of the main factors that must be considered in distinguishing 'language' from 'dialect' is how well two linguistically close speech communities understand each other. Marginal intelligibility between two language communities does not allow their speakers to engage in meaningful communication beyond bare essentials. (Grimes, Barbara F, Editor, "Introduction" Ethnologue, 13^th Edition 1996. http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/introduction.html ) This is a point which should be borne in mind later.

In the case of Singapore, "dialects" is commonly used to refer to the various other varieties of Chinese (, e.g. Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka and others.

Surprisingly, the term "dialects" tends not to be used in relation to Javanese, Baweanese, Batak and other varieties which may be spoken by the Malays; neither is it used for the various other languages spoken by the Indians in Singapore other than Tamil (e.g. Hindi, Urdu, Malayalee, Telegu, etc).

The use of "dialects" is not endorsed nor actively encouraged by the government of Singapore (contrast this with the "Speak Mandarin Campaign"), and this can be seen among others in the absence of provision for "dialects" within the national education system, or all official public media and events (with the possible exception of elections).

In Singapore, the contact between the First Language and Second Languages and "mother tongues", however, has given birth to a new offspring, known as Singlish which could also theoretically (although quite unlikely, though) become an alternative language that is part of the linguistic arsenal Singaporeans possess. It could also be a marker not of ethnicity or race, but nationality.

The problem arises because Singlish, while being perfectly intelligible for all Singaporeans (because of the shared knowledge of local languages such as Hokkien and Malay which contributed to Singlish) may not be so easily understood by non-Singaporean English speakers (i.e. the rest of the world).

We thus see Singlish receiving even worse treatment than the other "dialects" in Singapore, with politicians, government ministers and civil servants, as well as the media often deridingthe use of Singlish, preferring instead to propogate the use of proper English.

Whether Singlish IS a dialect of Singapore English remains arguable (depending of course on definitions of the term). The fact remains it is treated with much less prestige than the "Standard" variety, yet shall continue to survive because of the depth of its roots in the Singaporean linguistic framework.

Prepared by Mohamed Asri

NOTES
 

(other than Mandarin, the "official" form of Chinese, which is of course one of the four official languages of Singapore, and is taught in schools)
It could be said that while the initial objective of the Speak Mandarin campain was to encourage Chinese Singaporeans to use Mandarin instead of "dialects", the focus has now shifted to encouraging Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin instead of English when conversing with each other.
English is taught in schools as the First Language. We thus have an interesting scenario, where the "First Language" is not necessarily the first language acquired by a child, and the language which is a marker of the race of a child (and indeed is called the "mother tongue") is relegated to "Second" place. The situation gets more interesting when we consider that Chinese families where the "natural" dialect is, for example, Hokkien or Cantonese, not Mandarin. Thus the actual first language which the child is exposed to or acquires (e.g. Hokkien) is not the one assigned as a "mother tongue" and is not taught in school, and becomes a "third" language! Thus in Singapore, the term "mother tongue" is a unique construct which may often have nothing to do with a child's actual language acquisition process. However, over time, as generations of Singaporeans go through the education system, it is not unforeseeable that "dialects" will diminish in importance and the official "mother tongue" will be the actual first language passed down by parents and acquired by their offspring. For pragmatic reasons, however, English remains the First Language, and for some Singaporeans, is in reality the primary language used, reflected both in language, culture and cognition
This ranges from criticism of the use of Singlish in the media e.g. the popular Singaporean comedy "Phua Chu Kang", in which the lead character speaks ONLY Singlish, to editorials such as "Please Speak English" in the Straits Times.  An indication of how seriously the government views this is that the criticism has actually appeared in a speech at a National Day Rally by the Prime Minister of Singapore himself!  As is always the case in Singapore, the criticism has borne results.