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Could you learn "Singlish"? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Nature Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 5241 days ago 63 posts - 80 votes  Speaks: English*, French | Message 1 of 16 09 November 2011 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Is it possible to be learnt?
I know it's an English creole, but I've heard two people from Singapore talk to each other and it sounds like an entire different language. I was pretty convinced they weren't even speaking English but sure enough, they told me they were speaking English! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6383 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 16 09 November 2011 at 6:51am | IP Logged | ||
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It would be hard. It's not written often and there aren't any tv or radio programs in Singlish. Interacting with Singaporeans won't help either because they naturally will speak a more neutral English with foreigners. Besides, while most people would find it humorous if you tried speaking a bit of Singlish, I don't think it's something you could really use for conversations.
By the way, I had the same experience as you. At first, I couldn't even tell if it was Singlish or not. That stage went away pretty quickly but although I know a decent number of Singlish expressions I don't think I would ever get enough exposure to it in order to speak it in any sense. Edited by newyorkeric on 09 November 2011 at 6:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 16 09 November 2011 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||
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What kind of question is that? "Is it possible to be learnt?" Of course it is, just like any language. Nothing magical about Singlish. The scarcity of resources is a problem, naturally, and learning it without being in Singapore would be very challenging. My advice is to:
* Look for instructional Singlish videos on YouTube (I'm sure there are lots of them) * Befriend a Singaporean who is willing to help you * Try to find a Singaporean forum where people use mostly standard English, colored by occational Singlish phrases. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6383 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 16 09 November 2011 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I forgot to mention this online dictionary: Singlish dictionary. Edited by newyorkeric on 09 November 2011 at 7:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6586 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 16 09 November 2011 at 8:14am | IP Logged | ||
Holy awesome, Batman! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5177 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 16 09 November 2011 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Just wanna bring up some points that I made about Singlish a few days ago.
1) Singlish is essentially English that has been filtered through a Chinese funnel and mixed with words from languages/dialects like Malay and Min Nan (Hokkien). 2) Singlish sentence structures parallel Chinese structures to a large extent. Example sentence: You yesterday got watch this show or not? （English: Did you watch this movie yesterday?) This sentence drops tenses (did) and uses "yesterday" to refer to the past. Similarly, there are no tenses in Chinese. In Mandarin, the equivalent sentence would be 你昨天有看这部戏码？Translated word for word, 你=You，昨天=yesterday，有=got，看=watch, 这部戏=this (noun counter) movie， 吗=expresses the nature of the sentence as a question, hence the use of "or not". As can be seen, word order in Singlish is largely similar to word order in Chinese. 3) Singlish has also borrowed particles from Chinese to express certain emotions. And the mood will vary depending on the particle itself as well as the tone in which it is said. 4) Singlish at its most flowery is actually rather crude and vulgar. To truly appreciate Singlish, you'll need a healthy understanding of Hokkien and Mandarin swear words. E.g. Wah lau, KNN CJB xi mi lan jiao. Today kena whack until damn du lan leh. Now here's a nice video of an angmoh speaking Singlish. (The other guy speaks terrible Singlish by the way. He's from the UK.) Singlish And another video with more angmohs speaking Singlish. More Singlish Edited by strikingstar on 09 November 2011 at 10:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5770 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 16 09 November 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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No lah ~
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6383 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 16 09 November 2011 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||
I really hate this kind of thing. Both of these people spent a large part of their childhood in Singapore so it shouldn't be surprising that they speak Singlish. So the only purpose of interviewing them is because they are white. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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