bisingual
2008-11-06 1:35 p.m.
singaporeans are bilingual.
they speak both singlish AND singnese!
whoop-dee-doo.
in fact singlish has become so developed (it has its own dictionary! and website!) they should just declare it a dialect and leave it at that, so we can at least be said to speak some sort of a LANGUAGE other than just the broken form of another.
The Singapore Dialect
The Singapore Dialect - commonly known as Singlish - is the prestige dialect of the Singapore branch of Chinese (and Malay and Indian and whatnot) commonly known as Ah Beng (interchangeable with Ah Seng or Ah Lian depending on gender and creativity of name caller).
It is spoken natively around the regions of Jurong, Ang Mo Kio, Punggol, Tampines, Bedok, Boon Lay, etc etc - generally all heartland areas of this sunny tropical island, and is rapidly spreading across the world, though more as a cause for polite bafflement and comic relief rather than as an actual conversational tool.
Singlish is a dialect of traditional standard English (otherwise known as Queen's English - because we all know who really wears the pants in the royal family) though enunciation similarities are few and mutual comprehension is difficult.
This unique dialect draws its influence from English, Chinese, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay, a multitude of other unknown sources and include many creative made-up words as well.
The Singlish dialect is spoken with a typical drawl with minimal variation in tone and no particular emphasis on any word (unless the user were emitting a colorful vulgarity, in which case the profanity would be spoken with much enthusiasm and force) generally ending with words beginning with L such as La, Lor or Leh. The origins of these terms are thus far unknown, hence they are classified under the aforementioned 'creative made-up words' category.
Singlish is one of the most easily spoken dialects in the world, as common rules of grammar and pronounciation do not exist at all and one merely has to come up with a mishmash of all sorts of different languages to be considered to be speaking Singlish. There is a theory that the dialect first emerged in the little tropical island when the early inhabitants, cooped up in such a small place with nothing but coconuts, became bored and decided to mix different words together to form their native tongue, thus becoming the pioneer Ah Bengs. It was also in this era that strange mutant objects which don't really make sense emerged, such as the MerLion, a lion-headed-fish-tailed-water-spitting thingie which now, suitably, stands as the national icon of Singapore.
Doesn't the creativity of this little tropical people just astound you?
