Singaporeans And Singlish
A twenty-something young mother was having an interactive conversation with her kindergarten son. She had a CSI moment with him, interrogating the child on the activities he did in school. Her son replied diligently, albeit at times distracted by the pilgarlic old man standing in front of him.
The parent attempted to converse with him in proper standard English language like how Cheryl Fox (or any of those usual faces you see on Channel 5, 9.30pm everyday) would do but her efforts were clearly in vain. It was pretty amusing to listen to her masking on an American accent while speaking. Nonetheless, the lahs, lors, and mehs that accompanied each and every sentence discarded from her mouth extinguished her attempt.
To me, it was an interesting dialogue to watch. Somehow, I believe Singlish and its infamous sub-groups are already sown in our society, at least in how we communicate with each other. In fact, I think it is so prevalent in Singapore that it moulds the unique identity of the people here. Hear someone uttering the word lor repeatedly and you can straight away identify him as a native Singaporean.
Sometimes, it is the sentence structure (aka Ms GRAMMAR) of how the creole language is used. Instead of asking “Do you have a pen?”, we tend to open our mouths and say “You got pen or not?”. Another popular one is instead of saying “He did not bathe just now”, we are most likely to utter “He never bathe just now”.
While some local peengers here detest Singlish underlining its low prestige, no one can deny the fact that it played (and will continue to) a fundamental role in establishing a strong Singaporean identity regardless of race, language or religion. It is something that Singaporean Malays, Chinese and Indians have in common. It allows us to communicate with each other while at the same making us feel at home.
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> It is something that Singaporean Malays, Chinese and Indians have in common.
Yes and no. Sadly, it seems that the Singlish spoken by young Singaporeans (particularly Chinese) is more a mixture of Hokkien, Mandarin and English, than with Malay. Those in my parents’ generation tended to use more Malay words. Perhaps it’s because those in my parents’ generation who spoke English tended to be Peranakan.
Yup, that is true. However, I am referring to the ‘small little things’ that we all use equally often (besides the usual discourse particles mentioned in the post) such as hmmm…’kena sabo/punish’, ‘like that one’ or even ‘what/not me sia?’. Believe it or not, this is especially true among the youths here.
It is this simplified words that allows us to identify with one another. It is the language that only native Singaporeans can truly understand and engage in a conversation with. Singlish, although substandard, is in fact uniquely Singapore.