Notwithstanding these considerations, it remains
that speakers are very happy to identify individual
varieties by means of a convenient label, even in
highly multilingual societies. In a small
questionnaire-based survey, administered online
to Chinese Singaporean university students, many
respondents, for instance, were happy to say that
they were fluent in Singlish, English, and any
number of official and non-official varieties.
Non-official varieties of Chinese were often
labelled as‘dialects’ in keeping with the terminology of the nation’s language planners. The ease
with which these are used presupposes a degree
of shared knowledge and of agreement on what
these terms refer to (for example, Mandarin in
Singapore is not the same as Mandarin in