[7] Both Acrolect and Mesolect are regarded as Standard Singapore English, while Basilect is considered as Singlish.

It generally resembles British English and is often used in more formal settings such as the workplace or when communicating with people of higher authority such as teachers, bosses and government officials.

[12] The British established a trading post on the island of Singapore in 1819, and the population grew rapidly thereafter, attracting many immigrants from Chinese provinces and from India.

Its local character seems to have developed early in the English-medium schools of the 19th and early-20th centuries, where the teachers often came from India and Ceylon, as well as from various parts of Europe and from the United States of America.

[14] Apart from a period of Japanese occupation (1942–1945), Singapore remained a British colony until 1963, when it joined the Malaysian federation, but this proved a short-lived alliance, largely due to ethnic rivalries.

A 2003 study by the National Institute of Education in Singapore suggests that a standard Singaporean pronunciation is emerging and is on the cusp of being standardised.

[18] In 2023, opposition leader Pritam Singh advocated for English proficiency testing for immigrants seeking Singaporean citizenship.

In Singapore, English is a "working language" that serves the economy and development and is associated with the broader global community.

Specifically, the government would release a series of videos demystifying the difficulty and dullness of the grammatical rules of the English language.

They are introduced to Malay, Chinese, Tamil, or Singapore Colloquial English (Singlish) as their native languages, depending on their families' ethnic backgrounds and/or socioeconomic status.

[24] The strength of one's ethnic mother tongue-accented English accent depends on factors like formality[25] and their language dominance.

The nativisation process has progressed so far that the word "kiasu" has been used in the Singapore press since 2000 without being italicised,[23] and went onto claim international recognition, being admitted to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007.

[36][37][38] Rhoticity is nevertheless generally uncommon and seldom consistent,[39][40] even in environments where a linking r could occur, e.g., my brother is and my sister is.

[37][39] In a 2018 study examining the speech of 104 Singapore English speakers, linking r was used less than 20% of the time, and cases of intrusive r (e.g., pronouncing drawing as draw-ring) were rare.

[52] The vast majority of other words like mess, beg and dread continue to use the more common low-mid vowel [ɛ].

[43] For the vast majority of speakers, the words grass, last and path use the PALM vowel /ɑː/ [ä]—the a in father—like most dialects from the south of England.

[38][31] There are five diphthongs: [ai̯ au̯ ɔi̯ iə uə], not counting FACE, GOAT and SQUARE, which are normally analysed as monophthongs in the context of Singapore English.

[42][53] Deterding (2007b:26) notes that, while words like tour and sure are always pronounced with the diphthong [-uə] or [-wəː], many speakers will use the NORTH vowel after /j/, like in cure and endure [-jɔː],[17] if not [-juə] or [-jəː].

[67] While words generally follow the lexical incidence patterns of Southern British English accents, so new for example, is pronounced nyoo, never noo like in some North American dialects, there are several exceptions.

[51][64] Singapore English is characterised by a unique intonational system where pitch tends to be slightly raised at the end of a word with lexical stress.

One alternative analysis posits that high pitch is associated with the right edge of an accentual phrase, and low pitch with the left edge; an accentual phrase may consist of a content word with zero or any number of preceding unstressed function words.

[70][72] In this model, phonological words (e.g. cran and berry in cranberry) and prefixes with stress are analysed as belonging to separate accentual phrases.

Moreover, at the end of declarative sentences and open-ended questions, "high-pitched" syllables are weaker and often replaced with a drop or leveling out in pitch.

[76] Unlike Singapore Standard English, Singlish includes many discourse particles and loan words from Malay, Mandarin and Hokkien.

[2][78] However, Singlish has been used in several locally produced films, including Army Daze,[79] Mee Pok Man[80] and Talking Cock the Movie,[81] among others.

Singapore's first two prime ministers, Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, have publicly declared[83] that Singlish is a substandard variety that handicaps Singaporeans, presents an obstacle to learning standard English, and renders the speaker incomprehensible to everyone except another Singlish speaker.

One effect of mass immigration into Singapore since 2000, especially from China, has been an increase in the proportion of the population to whom English is a foreign language.