Singlish
Through this process of creolisation, Singlish became a fully-formed, stabilised and independent creole language, acquiring a more robust vocabulary and more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding.
[23] After Singapore's independence in 1965, and successive "Speak Mandarin" campaigns,[24] a subtle language shift among the post-1965 generation became more and more evident as Malay idiomatic expressions were, and continued to be, displaced by idioms borrowed from Chinese spoken varieties, such as Hokkien.
[citation needed] Each of the following means the same thing, but the basilectal and mesolectal versions incorporate some colloquial additions for illustrative purposes.
Nevertheless, selected Singlish phrases are sometimes injected into discussions to build rapport or for a humorous effect, especially when the audience consists mainly of locals.
[32] Linguists from universities around the world have referred to local productions to demonstrate to students how Singlish has become a unique language variety.
Words such as lah and sinseh were already included in OED's debut, while kiasu made it into the online list in March 2007.
[35] Singlish pronunciation, while built on a base of British English, is heavily influenced by Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese.
Chinese, Native Malays, Indians, Eurasians, and other ethnic groups in Singapore all have distinct accents,[36][37] and the accentedness depends on factors such as formality of the context[38] and language dominance of the speaker.
[citation needed] Current estimates are that about 20 per cent of university undergraduates sometimes use this American-style pre-consonantal [ɹ] when reading a passage.
It has been claimed that the tones assigned to the bulk of English vocabulary, with noticeable word- and phrase-final prominence, derive from the prosody of Bazaar Malay, rather than from the explicitly tonal substrate languages of Sinitic origin.
[66][65] This has been cited as an example of Peranakan influence functioning as a founder effect within the linguistic ecology of the language's emergence.
[66] One of the most prominent and noticeable features of Singlish is its unique intonation pattern, which is quite unlike non-creole varieties of English.
[78] Generally, these pronunciation patterns are thought to have increased the clarity of Singlish communications between pidgin-level speakers in often noisy environments, and these features were retained in creolisation.
In Singlish, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and even entire subject-verb-object phrases can all serve as the topic: The above constructions can be translated analogously into Malay and Chinese, with little change to the word order.
This results in constructions that appear to be missing a subject to a speaker of Standard English, and so called PRO-drop utterances may be regarded as a diagnostic feature of Singlish.
Instead of the past tense, the completion of an action or a change of state can be expressed by adding already or liao [ljau˩] to the end of the sentence, analogous to the Chinese 了 (le, Pe̍h-ōe-jī: liáu).
Instead, already and liao are markers of perfective and inchoative aspect, and can refer to real or hypothetical events in the past, present or future.
Another feature strongly reminiscent of Chinese and Malay, verbs are often repeated (e.g. TV personality Phua Chu Kang's "don't pray-pray!"
In general verbs are repeated twice to indicate the delimitative aspect (that the action goes on for a short period), and three times to indicate greater length and continuity:[96] The use of verb repetition also serves to provide a more vivid description of an activity: In another usage reminiscent of Chinese, nouns referring to people can be repeated for intimacy.
[97] Most commonly, monosyllabic nouns are repeated: However, occasionally reduplication is also found with disyllabic nouns: Adjectives of one or two syllables can also be repeated for intensification: In Singlish, discourse particles are minimal lexemes (words) that occur at the end of a sentence and that do not carry referential meaning, but may relate to linguistic modality, register or other pragmatic effects.
[101] It is derived from a Malay word that means "to encounter or to come into physical contact",[102] and is only used with objects that have a negative effect or connotation.
It is analogous to the use of particles like 嘅 (ge) or 㗎 (ga) in Cantonese, 啲 (e) in Hokkien, は (-wa) in Japanese, or 的 (de) in some dialects of Mandarin.
This can, with the appropriate tone, result in a less-brusque declaration and facilitate the flow of conversation: "No more work to do, we go home lah!"
Mah (/má/), originating from Chinese (嘛, ma), is used to assert that something is obvious and final,[112] and is usually used only with statements that are already patently true.
[113] that "it happens this way and can't be helped": Leh (/lɛ́/ or /lé/), from Chinese (咧; leh), is used to soften a command, request, claim, or complaint that may be brusque otherwise: Especially when on a low tone, it can be used to show the speaker's disapproval:[111] Hor (/hɔ̨̌/), from Hokkien (乎; hō͘), also spelled horh, is used to ask for the listener's attention and consent/support/agreement:[114] It is usually pronounced with a low tone.
Originally, it is often used by Malay peers in informal speech between them, sometimes while enraged, and other times having different implications depending on the subject matter: Kau ade problem ke ape, sial?
The person in a dominant position may prefer to use boleh instead: The phrase like that is commonly appended to the end of the sentence to emphasise descriptions by adding vividness and continuousness.
This stems from Chinese, where the words 也; yě, 还; hái or 都; dōu (meaning 'also', though usage depends on dialect or context) would be used to express these sentences.
Much of Singlish vocabulary is derived from British English, in addition to many loanwords from Sinitic languages, Malay, and Tamil.
This is most obvious in such cases as borrow/lend, which are functionally equivalent in Singlish and mapped to the same Hokkien word, 借 (chio), which can mean to lend or to borrow.
