Singlish is commonly regarded with low prestige in Singapore. The Singaporean government and many Singaporeans alike heavily discourage the use of Singlish in favour of Standard English. [. . .] In the last two decades, an increasing amount of Mandarin words have found their way into Singlish[.]On a related note: Chinese apparently doesn't have plural nouns, but I've found that when Chinese people speak English and don't use plurals properly they are still 100% comprehensible. In some cases, what they say makes more sense. For example, "who are going?" as opposed to "who is going?"
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Singlish
From the Wikipedia article on Singlish:
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I still think who are going makes more sense if it is implied that multiple people are going.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for Singlish. I don't think that wikipedia article reflects the general sentiment in Singapore. Although it is true that Singaporeans have been debating about this quite seriously on their national Newspaper (Straits Times).
If you ever go there within the next ten years or so, it is more than likely that you are not going to encounter many people speaking proper English on the street (except the white people who are working there).
One personal observation is that if you speak proper English on a daily basis in school, you tend to become that weirdo kid that nobody likes.