A case of language indigenisation： Some features of colloquial Singapore English

Colloquial Singapore English is an extremely interesting case of language indigenisation or nativisation as here is a situation where an Asian nation is, at the official level, adopting English as the main language of education and administration and as a tool in the process of rapid modernisation and at the same time, at the unofficial, informal level, modifying it to the communicative styles of an Asian community. Colloquial Singapore English has been influenced by all the major speech varieties spoken in Singapore but particularly by Malay and Chinese. Of the two, the Chinese influence is deeper, which is hardly surprising in a population which is 75% Chinese, although to the casual observer, Malay words and expressions such as kacang 'peanuts' = 'easy', rojak 'mixed up' (originally a cold dish of sliced vegetables) or botak 'bald' may be more noticeable. In any case, the Malay influence has been mainly via Bazaar Malay, a pidginised form of Malay,
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: /loi/rmmm20
0143-4632/82/04/0267-10 $2.50/0 ©J.T. PLATT and H.M. LIAN JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 3, No. 4,1982
267
268
MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
heavily influenced by Chinese structure, which was the main inter-ethnic lingua franca before the spread of English-medium education (Platt, 1980b). A closer investigation shows the high degree of structural convergence to the main Chinese dialects spoken in Singapore: Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese and to Mandarin, the standard variety of Chinese taught at schools, heard more and more in radio and television broadcasts and used more and more in some shops. Colloquial Singapore English was, however, developing long before the current 'Speak More Mandarin' campaign and was used by Singaporeans who had attended English-medium schools in the period before Mandarin was taught as a second language (Platt & Weber, 1980). Hokkien has been the main lingua franca among the Chinese, the language of many shops, particularly provision shops, while Cantonese has been the language of many Chinese restaurants, of goldsmiths' shops (important institutions in Singapore) and the popular Hong Kong made films—although nowadays most of these are dubbed in Mandarin. Although education in Singapore has for some time now been officially bilingual, with either English as medium of instruction and Chinese (Mandarin), Malay or the South Indian language, Tamil as second language or one of these three as medium of instruction and English as second language, the move towards English-medium education has been rapid as it has been apparent that employment opportunities are better for the English-medium educated. Furthermore, with the integration of the former Chinese language Nanyang University with the English-medium University of Singapore to form the National University of Singapore, all tertiary education is now in English. Intake into the first year of primary schools is now approximately 90% into English-medium streams although, against this, the emphasis on the second language has increased. In such a situation, however, the increasing use of English does not mean an automatic transfer to English modes of thought or styles of discourse. In fact, it seems that with the increasing use of English for a wider range of functions and with more and more first generation speakers, an even more 'Chinese-ised' colloquial variety is developing. Official policy is strongly in favour of raising the standard of English and to this end more and more native speakers have been imported to teach at schools and tertiary institutions. The standard of formal English as evidenced in the press, in magazines and in government publications is generally very high. However, as in every speech community, there is the need for an informal style for use with friends, family and workmates. As relatively few Singaporeans have more than superficial contact with speakers of native varieties of English, the colloquial variety of Singapore English has, of necessity, developed from the resources available: the blending of the formal English taught at school with the colloquial background speech varieties, particularly Hokkien and Cantonese (Platt, 1975). It is this colloquial variety which is so distinctively Singaporean and which, although it is despised in some circles as a pidgin, creole or patois, is the variety which even the most highly (English-medium)