The place of Singlish in Singapore

The place of Singlish in Singapore

The primary purpose of a language in society is for effective communiction. Using colonialism as a base, English has prospered to become one of the world's most common lingua franca, by virtue of the fact that it possesses a large number of speakers, native or otherwise, spread across the globe, which paves the way for effective communication, thus fulfilling a language's primary purpose.

In the case of the creole Singlish, which I personally regard as a disfiguration of the English Language, I feel that it is not an effective enough means of communication. Creoles are amalgamations of languages from immigrants and settlers of varied linguistic backgrounds which have a fixed structure, however, this develops into a unique vernacular rather than a universally understood language, only being understood by their relatively small populations of native speakers. For exampe, taking the Hawaiian 'pidgin' (or creole) as an example, it is understand for speakers of English, be they native or not, to understand this creole easily with the warped pronounciation and slang. Similarly for Singlish, terms such as "lah", "leh", and "lor" are as alien to most English speakers as other foreign languages, and the intrusion of slang such as "wah lao", or malay terms such as "makan" into everyday usage further exacerbates the ability of Singlish to allow Singaporeans to communicate effectively with the rest of the world.

I feel that if Singaporeans were able to transit fluently from Singlish into, at least, grammatically-correct English, there would be no problem with Singlish's existence. However, this is not the case, as Singaporeans generally have a poor command of the English Language. (I shall refrain from using the example of Ms Ris Low.) As such, I feel that Singlish, as long as proper English is not clearly evident in Singaporean society today, has no place in our small but purportedly globally-connected island city.