|
Colloquial Singaporean English, better known as Singlish, is an English-based creole language〔http://www.nbu.bg/PUBLIC/IMAGES/File/departamenti/4ujdi%20ezitsi%20i%20literaturi/Doklad_Adrien_2.pdf〕〔http://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/events/lingo/papers/jakob.leimgruber.pdf〕 spoken in Singapore. While English is one of Singapore's official languages, Singlish (a particular dialect with its unique intonations and grammar) is commonly regarded as having low prestige. The Singaporean government and many upper class Singaporeans alike heavily discourage the use of Singlish in favour of Standard English and Standard Mandarin. The government has created an annual Speak Good English Movement to emphasise the point. Singlish is also heavily discouraged in the mass media and in schools.〔Tan Hwee Hwee, ("A War of Words Over 'Singlish'" ), ''Time Magazine'', New York, 22 July 2002.〕 However, such official discouragement and routine censorship is actually countered by other presentations in the "official" mainstream media, including routine usage by ordinary people in street interviews broadcast on TV and radio on a daily basis, and occasional usage in newspapers.〔See, for example, an entire opinion column written in Singlish by ''The Straits Times'' regular columnist Koh, Buck Song, "To have or not to have a dictionary, big question leh", published 24 April 1995, available online at: http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jacklee/Files/19950424-ST-BadNewsforAllEngPurists.pdf〕 The vocabulary of Singlish consists of words originating from English, Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Tamil and to a lesser extent various other European, Indic and Sinitic languages. Also, elements of American and Australian slang have come through from imported television series and films. ==Overview and history== Singapore English derives its roots from 146 years (1819–1965) of British colonial rule over Singapore. Prior to 1965, the standard form of English in Singapore had always been British English and Received Pronunciation. After Singapore declared independence in 1965, English in Singapore began to take a life of its own, leading to the development of modern-day Standard Singapore English. Standard Singapore English began to take root and Singlish began to evolve among the working classes who learned English without formal schooling. Singlish originated with the arrival of the British and the establishment of English language schools in Singapore.〔Gupta, Anthea Fraser (1994) ''The Step-tongue: Children's English in Singapore'', Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 35.〕 Soon, English filtered out of schools and onto the streets, to be picked up by non-English-speakers in a pidgin-like form for communication purposes. After some time, this new form of English, now loaded with substantial influences from Indian English, Baba, native Malay, and the southern varieties of Chinese, became the language of the streets and began to be learned as a first language in its own right.〔http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33809914〕 Creolization occurred, and Singlish is now a fully formed, stabilised, and independent English-based creole language. Singlish shares many linguistic similarities with Manglish of Malaysia, although a few distinctions can be made, particularly in vocabulary. Manglish generally now receives more Malay influence and Singlish more Chinese (Mandarin, Hokkien, etc.) influence. Initially, Singlish and Manglish were essentially the same dialect evolving from the British Malaya economy, born in the trading ports of Singapore, Malacca and Penang 〔Tongue, R. K. (1979) ''The English of Singapore and Malaysia'' (second edition), Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, p. 17.〕 when Singapore and peninsular Malaysia were for many purposes a ''de facto'' single entity. In Singapore, English was the language of administration, which the British used, with the assistance of English-educated Straits-born Chinese, to control the administration in Malaya and governance of trading routes such as the British East Indies spice routes with China, Japan, Europe and America in those ports and colonies of Singapore, Malacca and Penang through the colonial governing seat in Singapore. In British Malaya, English was the language of the British administration, whilst Malay was spoken as the lingua franca of the streets, as the British did not wish to antagonise the native Malays. In British Singapore, however, as the seat of the colonial government and international commerce, English was both the language of administration and the lingua franca. In Malaya, the Chinese varieties themselves also contained many loan-words from Malay, and more Chinese loan-words from the Hokkien, rather than the Cantonese. For example, Hokkien-influenced ''pa sat'' instead of the Cantonese-influenced ''baa saak'' in Singapore (from Malay ''pasar'' meaning 'market'), ''loti'' (from Malay ''roti'' meaning 'bread'), Hokkien ''gu li'' and ''jam bban'' (from Malay ''guli'' meaning 'marble', and Malay 'jamban' meaning toilet). After Singapore's independence in 1965, and successive "Speak Mandarin" campaigns,〔Gopinathan, S. (1998) "Language policy changes 1979–1997: Politics and pedagogy", in S. Gopinathan, Anne Pakir, Ho Wah Kam and Vanithamani Saravanan (eds.), ''Language, Society and Education in Singapore'' (2nd edn.), Singapore: Times Academic Press, pp. 19–44.〕 a subtle language shift among the post-1965 generation became more and more evident as Malay idiomatic expressions were, and continued to be, displaced by idioms borrowed from Chinese spoken varieties, such as Hokkien. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Singlish」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|