Since then however a switch back to the Malay medium has been announced. However, English did not die out in these countries — the Official Language Bill in allowed for the continued use of English in India. In Sri Lanka, English was given official status together with Tamil. In Malaysia, English continues to play a significant role in the country.
In Singapore, English never lost its official status. The reasons for the retention of English are related to the following points, all of which are relevant specifically to Singapore too. English is also the sole medium of education in Singapore schools. It is generally accepted that English-medium education played a big role in the spread of the language in Singapore, much of it documented in Gupta The Census gives the following breakdown of the most commonly spoken language at home for resident population aged 15 and above.
Most frequent home language Percentage. English , Mandarin 1,, Other Chinese main variety: Hokkien , Malay , Indian Languages main language: Tamil , 4. Others 32, 1. Total 2,, This is significant because for these, English arguably represents a first language rather than a second language. A breakdown based on age is available General Household Survey , and here residents of age 5 and above are captured in the count.
Age Years Total English as most frequent home language Percentage. The clear pattern emerging is that the younger generations are more likely to have English as their dominant home language, and the pattern looks likely to continue in future generations.
This is corroborated by newspaper reports on the subject:. Kirkpatrick : For some users, they have begun to assume wider roles, entering into their emotional or imaginative lives, everyday interaction, etc.
For example, there now exists literary texts written in English in Singapore , Malaysia , India , etc. The evolution of SgE. One of the main problems when trying to discuss Singaporean English for Singaporean students is that so much of it seems familiar and can be taken for granted. Some of these taken-for-granted positions are, unfortunately, questionable in nature.
Some of the confusion is terminological. This creates a great deal of confusion because the MoE terms do not quite concur with how these terms are used by linguists. For example, it is possible for a child to learn CSE as a first language and not speak other languages.
Finally, there seems to be some unrealistic assumption about how English evolved and developed in Singapore. There are things that are still murky, but some facts are clear. SgE arose out of the education system established during the British colonial period. This was promoted by the colonial government as well as by various Christian missions; and this made sense given that this was the language of the colonial government.
English-medium schools began in the 19th century — Gupta 35 mentions the year as the one in which the first English-medium school began in the Straits Settlement in this case, in Penang.
Who then were the teachers? There were roughly equal numbers of Europeans and Indians. During this period, Bazaar Malay was a language that almost everyone knew. In any case, the Europeans were not always southern English — there were many Scots, for example. When the status of Malay eroded in the independent government and Bazaar Malay was no longer the language for inter-ethnic communication, it was CSE that took its place.
In general, SSE is distinct from other standard varieties of English in lexical terms, whereas CSE is more distinct in grammatical terms. There are, of course, also lexical items associated with CSE. It must be noted that it is sometimes difficult to between whether an item is a loan-word or an item is a result of code-mixing or code-switching — a common feature in multilingual communities. Here are some definitions, first of all:. Clearly, there is a fuzzy division between code-mixing and borrowing.
How do you see the italicised items below? Por por ah , can ask you question or not? You coming hor with low tone.
There is clearly a range of accents that can be heard in Singapore. In many varieties of SgE accent, the fricatives [ T ] and [ D ] used in RP in the beginning of thin and though are represented by [ t ] and [d] respectively but with the tip of the tongue touching the upper teeth as well. In some accents of SgE , the long v. Some diphthongs in RP are often realised as monophthongs in SgE , eg in boat and bait.
SCE has a syllable-timed rhythm , i. As mentioned earlier, SSE is not greatly divergent from other standard varieties, so what follows are some features of CSE. Disturb him again, I call Daddy to come down. Some features of SgE has received more attention than others. Click here for his article in the Journal of Pragmatics.
Here are some examples. I do not want this to happen. If this person does this, this person will feel something good after this.
Something no good will not happen because this person does not do this. X is like this person. Note that this description is actually of lah in Colloquial Malay not Standard Malay , whose use is said to be almost identical to the use in CSE. I say this now. That would not be good. Jock Wong suggest there are three separate lah s depending on tone:. You can get the article online through the library website.
Test these against your own use of kiasu , meh and lah. NEs are therefore said to differ from the Old Varieties, but the label deviation might be used alongside others like interference , aberrancies , transfer , simplification , some with highly negative connotations, which suggests that NEs are the result of imperfect learning and that speakers of NEs are perpetual non-native speakers.
Or in a vasectomy, the vasa deferentia are isolated and cut; their ends are closed by ligation or fulguration , then replaced in the scrotal sac, and the incision is closed. The relevant point for us is that the application of heat transforms the original substance to a new substance. The new substance is ultimately derived from the old substance, but now as a life of its own.
Applied to language, therefore, what Kandiah is trying to say is that Older Varieties and other languages interact with new contexts speakers, cultures, world views resulting in NEs that are relevant to these new contexts and are systematic in their own way. In LkE and SgE , the term is used in those ways as well as to older male adults that one is not familiar with from point of view of children of equal social status, or an adult male in position of higher authority whom the speaker views with affectionate identification even while recognising distance respect.
In other words, uncle and auntie were not adopted directly from BrE but were transformed through interaction with the new cultural contexts, so that the terms now have a different range of meanings. We can also think of words borrowed from substrate languages having undergone fulguration. In Hokkien , the following sentences are possible:. In SgE , the word is spelt chim or cheem.
However, note the following:. It is not possible to use SgE chim to mean literal depth as in Hokkien , so that whilst chim is derived from Hokkien chhim , the semantic range is different. Over the last 60 years, however, this diglossic situation has gradually changed, with the Gibraltarians adopting English as their 'mother tongue'.
The result has been the institutionalisation of the language and the emergence of a new New English. This empirical study conducts an instrumental analysis of this localised form of English, revealing its nativisation process.
The analysis pinpoints the distinctive features of 'Gibraltarian English' and posits that a focussing process is in progress. This book reveals Gibraltar as speech community in search of an identity. It is a people aware of its multicultural heritage, determined in its continued rejection of Spanish claims on sovereignty, and increasingly ambivalent toward its colonial past.
Using a combination of the corpus compiled for this project and relevant sections of ICE-India as its database, this work tests existing descriptions and characterizations of English in India, and provides the first empirical account of register variation in Indian English or indeed, any international variety of English.
Included in this survey are linguistic features that have been examined before and others that have not. From an empirical standpoint, it comments on the process of Indianization of the English used in India. The book will be of interest to readers beyond specialists of Indian English as it is one of very few studies to undertake a large-scale corpus analysis for the purpose of dialect research.
The book provides a model on which future studies of international Englishes can be based. It links linguistic and sociolinguistic variables that have conditioned the evolution and change of English, putting forward a new framework of language spread and change.
Also in functional terms the 'new Englishes' have extended their functional range in a variety of social, educational, administrative, and literary domains.
Moreover, they have acquired great depth in terms of users at different levels of society. India, Nigeria and Singapore would be examples of countries with 'new Englishes.
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