ENGLISH IN SINGAPORE: SINGLISH, BROKEN ENGLISH,
GOOD/PROPER ENGLISH
In recent years, the state has become concerned over the increasingpopularity of a colloquial variety of English, Singlish. Singlish shows a highdegree of influence from other local languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese,Malay and Tamil (Platt and Weber 1980: 18). The varieties of Malay mostimportant to the development of Singlish are Bazaar Malay (a simplifiedform of Malay used predominantly as an inter-ethnic lingua franca) andBaba Malay (spoken primarily by the Straits Chinese7) (Gupta 1998: 109).Below are sample Singlish utterances, showing how it is characterized by alack of inflectional morphology (2a), the productive use of reduplication (2b)and discourse particles (2c: the particle lor indicates a sense of resignation,see Wee 2002b).
(2) (a) He eat here yesterday.[He ate here yesterday.]
(b) I like hot-hot curries.[I like very hot curries.]
(c) I won’t get married, lor.[I have no choice but to not get married.]
But before looking at how the state has responded to the ‘Singlish problem’,it is important to realize that among ordinary Singaporeans themselves,there is actually no real consensus as to the merits of Singlish. ThosefavouringSinglish claim that it is a crucial part of their national identity.Those rejecting Singlish claim that it is not ‘proper/good’ English. Two points are worth