This issue is rather controversial in the sense that the people in the higher levels of Singaporean society is condemning it, whereas Singlish is, and has been, a way of life.
Some view Singlish as a deliberate "attack" which destroys the beauty of English. Honestly speaking, I do believe in preservation of the language, but at the same time, I do think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Singlish. The deliberate attempt to mutate a language may be frowned upon in society, but consider the following.
Why is there so much discussion over using proper English over Singlish, when so little is done against American English in favour of Standard English?
American English, in my opinion, is a similar deliberate attempt to mutate a language. They
- deliberately change the spelling so as to challenge the orthographic standards of the British, who originally spoke English (such as installments, British spelling: instalments or American: traveler, British: traveller)
- deliberately change the pronunciation of words (such as route, British pron.:ROOT, American pron.: RAUT)
- changing of grammatical law (BrE: New York are the champions, AmE: New York is the champion)
- borrow foreign loanwords not inherent to Standard English (such as chutzpah from Semitic origin)
- adopting new words to distance away from Standard English (such as checkers BrE: draughts, or counterclockwise BrE: anti-clockwise)
I think that it is agreeable to a large extent that Singlish does more or less the same to Standard British English now as what American English has done to English spoken about 300 years ago.
To end off, don't you think that as long as things like American language exist, Singlish has every right to exist as well?
2 comments:
'Standard English' is a term that must include both 'Received Pronunciation' (British) AND 'General American'.
English may have originated in Britain, but its now worldwide, with its major native national expression being in the USA.
There will always be different national and district use and pronunciation of words, but there needs to be one international standard for spelling words.
when we upgrade our spellings, as we surely must, we need to make sure that it is the same worldwide – just as Portuguese has recently done, the mother country Portugal accepting that the major player in that language is now Brazil.
That is what my entry wishes to point out, actually. I am merely referring to American English as an example.
You see, in Singapore we are heavily discouraged to use Singlish, and the government has spent a lot of money on that by having "Speak Proper English" campaigns and what not.
In fact I use Singlish as my every day speech if i am speaking to Singaporeans, but I will use Standard English if addressing to non-Singaporeans.
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