forkedtongues | singlish, language, dialect, and code-switching.

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singlish, language, dialect, and code-switching.

sort of cross-posted from my journal on the recommendation of

dhobikikutti

The other day I'd met my friend from JC, and amongst other things (catching up, finding out he's practically a professional photographer OMG), he's a teacher now, in primary school. Woah, what's THAT? People my age are teaching primary school now!

Anyway, we'd ended up talking abotu English and the thing about Singlish in schools, teaching and all.

One of the ways you can tell if someone's a Singaporean/Malaysian is the inflection of their Singlish/Manglish slang, and the ... for lack of a better word, tonality. Just based on tones (expression) phrases can be approving, disapproving, joking, serious, angry, stern, about to pick a fight. And based on tone (again, something to do with Chinese languages. Inflection?), the word can change meaning, and it also can pick out whether someone is a foreigner or not. It's especially obvious when the speaker is an ang-moh, like one of my friends who's from NZ and is now working in Singapore. He's trying to pick up Singaporean slang to fit in, and the... tones, the way words have that chinese tone (you know, mā má mă mà for Mandarin Chinese, and more for Cantonese, Hokkien and etc), he doesn't quite get it.

Anyway, besides THAT, we also can code switch. Kids at lower primary don't know how to. And that could be a problem, if their parents don't know how to speak perfect English in the first place, or only spoke Chinese/dialects, communicating in Singlish is probably the only way they know how to approximate English. But for us , my peer group, we can code switch easily, and know when to use Singlish and when to use English. For us, it's a separate language, with different rules. It's not a corrupted English language (says me, and my friend) but maybe it's a dialect, though he did say that English WAS pretty much a corrupted language that stole from every other language, hardly pure. It is extremely ironic and kinda hilarious to hear English speaking westerners go on about how they need to preserve the perfection of their language.

It's not quite so funny when our own politicians want to eliminate Singlish.

But back to the kids – they don't know how to code-switch; they dont know how to use English versus Singlish. If I remember correctly, Children pick up different languages and the different rules easily in multi-lingual homes, but before a certain age, they use the different languages interchangably and don't realise it until they get old enough to be able to switch slightly more consciously. So yes there has to be a part where Standard (... British?) English is taught, so that the kids grow up with more of the different rules. But my friend the teacher doesn't enforce 'Speak English only!' outside of English class. I guess it teaches students the circumstances they are allowed to speak Singlish and when not to.

I still think that the government is going the wrong way about it, tryign to stop everyone from speaking Singlish at all (the latest 'correct our english' campaign is funny, but trying too hard, and. Well. C'mon, even in America and UK they use different 'short-hand' for 'press for green light' or whatever, and if we can understand it, they can damn well understand our not-entirely-standard English.) Singlish is going to become part of our national identity. If the government wants to create that, then they can jolly well stop trying to stomp it out.

***

Talking about dialects and languages – when does a dialect become a language? Chinese is a particularly poor example, because dialects aren't really dialects, not as we know it. Cantonese is as related to Mandarin as German is to English, probably less so – Mandarin Chinese was actually just one of the languages that had existed and then was picked to become the standard language. Most of the languages in China don't actually derive FROM Mandarin.

Studying languages in China probably is very headache inducing.

With English, it is easier to see. But how come American English and UK English get the nod when American English is barely different – it's not considered a dialect, but Singlish and Manglish are considered corruptions?

Nnn.

****

Met one of my lab-mates yesterday. When I asked her what her name was, and which 'Lan' it was, in Chinese, she told me it was 'lan hua' (orchid) and then was very surprised and happy to find out I could speak Mandarin.

Uuuuh. She thought that I couldn't, because one of our other labmates said I couldn't (I can't ask for help in 'how to make the printer work!', my Mandarin is not that good), and because I'm Singaporean, and the other Singaporean in our lab can't speak Mandarin either (he's either malay or peranakan), she was under the impression that Singaporeans can't speak Mandarin.

Uuuuuuuuuuh .

Well a lot of Singaporeans younger than I am actually have poor grasps on Manadarin, yes. Teaching styles and so on, it's not conducive to proper chinese education. (I can go on all day about how Chinese education is very BAD in Singapore, because whoever came up with how Chinese/mother-tongue was to be taught were clearly not language instructors.) People my age-group and older? More of them are bilingual, mostly because their PARENTS had been.

Just... a random thing, I guess.

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Huh, that's interesting because the multilingual kids I've encountered/heard about do learn how to codeswitch fairly quickly and don't actually use languages interchangeably regardless of context. E.g. one of my Korean-American friends has a cousin who is married to a Latino man; when she spoke Spanish to her cousin's kid (don't know how old but wasn't in school yet), they were very confused and refused to reply in Spanish because they had already internalized codeswitching rules ("father's family speaks Spanish and mother's family speaks Korean") at a really young age. However, that may be because of living in environments where the codeswitching rules are really fixed--i.e. most of the people around them only understand one of the languages/dialects they speak--whereas (I'm guessing that) the switching rules for Singlish and English in Singapore are probably more complex.

Yeah! I know that multi-lingual families/kids should be able to code-switch. but I suspect that if the code-switching rules (x language only in x place, y language in y place) the kids pick it up very quickly. But I have heard of a case where a kid was taught many languages, and she couldn't figure out when to code-switch as a child, and was bullied, and then she refused to talk for years.

Language things are very flexible, I bet! I wish I had been multi-lingual. :(

Nod, I can imagine the codeswitching rules would be really complex and harder to learn if there were more than just two languages to keep track of. Really saddened but not surprised to hear that confusion over switching led to bullying. D:

considering that the girl was supposed to have grown up in a monolingual society, and her parents/family got her learning all sorts of european langauges... I am not quite surprised, but it's very sad and very... pity? A huge pity.

Especially since she had to relearn how to speak afterwards and then only one language or something.

That is entirely possible, about hard rules for the codes. When I was 4 and we were living in Sendai, I would initially try Japanese with children (rule extrapolated from my kindergarten) and English with all adults (rule extrapolated from my parents), and then laboriously switch if/when that didn't work (with many Japanese adults).

My parents report that I had trouble translating between codes -- what was said in one language appeared to be "inaccessible" to me when operating in the other language, even immediately after switching. They thought it a shame that I didn't get the chance to stay bilingual as I got older, to watch what happened to that. (I don't remember this part, but did get to see a similar effect in action, a few years later, when I watched a dubbed giant robot movie I'd first seen in Japanese, with a growing and disturbing sense that it was All Wrong.)

---L.

That's interesting! I do know that even though I had a very poor understanding of Mandarin when I was young, I had watched a cartoon in chinese and could understand it - and I don't know why, I know what they SAID in ENGLISH even though it had never been subbed OR dubbed in English ever.

Brain is so weird.

So you don't live in Sendai anymore?

Sendai de sunde irimasen -- we moved back to the States after a year in Sendai, and I didn't return to learning Japanese until a few years ago.

---L.

In addition to separation of place/people, I think knowing when to code-switch might be easier when there are two or more separate languages than when there are multiple dialects or closely related languages?

Hmmm I don't know! I wouldn't know - though the kids in my friend's experience seem to be unable to tell the difference between Singlish and English at such a young age. This is not necessarily because the languages were very closely related, but because in Singapore, the prevailing idea is that Singlish is a corrupted English, and kids should NOT speak it etc, but yet there would be a lot of the older generations and immigrants who cannot speak Standard Singapore English (very similar to standard RP, but with a Singaporean accent and certain vocab) who can only speak Singlish.

So kids growing up in that sort of environment (with parents/surroundings who can only speak Singlish, not English) would not know it is a different language. You know? Singlish and English are conflated as the same language a lot - if you went down to a neighbourhood place, for example, and met an old shopkeeper who normally spoke Chinese or something, and asked if they could speak English? They'd speak Singlish (if they could).

So I'm not surprised that the kids conflate them.

(also, there's Singaporean Mandarin. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there would be a dialect for that, too, though because of the growing decrease of bilingualism in Singapore, it probably wouldn't be quite as strong a presence as Singlish would be.)

So much the same as my experiences in London but so different too. Thank you for explaining.

Cities are such new* and strange ways for humans to live.

* Where "new" is anything more recent than the last ice age! ;-)

Is that the same for England too? I mean, in the sense that 'Cockney/insert dialect here' is NOT ENGLISH BLAHBLAH and therefore you must learn RP'? Because I know that if you have a working class accent - or even just an accent from the wrong street, and for some reason you ended up in Eton or something of that sort, you can get bullied a lot till you picked up the accent right quick?

Mmm nomads. :P

Decolonisation is complicated in Britain because we're still not one nation: we're Scottish, Welsh, and English (and that's without trying to account for the many Brits not born here). So there's anti-English decolonisation, and class decolonisation (a long-term project for the English beginning in the 1300s but excelerating in the 1900s), and incomers from ex-colonies, and that mix has all been happening simultaneously. But Brits have decolonised before: after the Roman Empire, when England finally assimilated the conquering Normans, when Protestantism replaced the Catholic Church, &c.

But, simply, yes, RP is still an issue (although many posh boys from Eton are wanna-be black hip-hopsters o_O ) although less of an issue than when I was a kid, and less for me than for my parents and grandparents (who could've been beaten by their teachers for speaking home-language in their village school).

Aaah right. That's somethign I don't really wanna step on, because I know that it's a touchy issue, the Scottish, Welsh and English (does Ireland count?). From the outside, English are British are UKians, which flattens everything in the UK, again.

So yeah. >.<

my mother actually took elocution classes when she was in NZ, though why I don't know, but it was... she was this one chinese girl in a whole class of so many white girls and so I guess there was a need to fit in too? And that meant that she ended up having a rather RP accent, which she still has traces of, even though she's been in Singapore for twenty-plus years. And because of that, all of us kids also have some traces of it, though I do code-switch quite pointedly when I'm in a very singaporean/friends situation.

(... wannabe black hip-hopsters. O___o that is... strrange)

I'm English (with one recent Irish ancestor who was a Catholic nationalist) so I'm not allowed to pretend I have a valid opinion about Northern Ireland, so I tend to do the embarrassed-English thing of not mentioning it at all (which is probably merely another way of being wrong about Northern Ireland). I can just about manage not to make an arse of myself discussing Wales and Scotland.

my mother actually took elocution classes when she was in NZ

That's quite funny because so many West/South/East/SouthEast Asians already speak more RP English than the current British English norm. I know I find myself intimidated into my most RP accent when I'm speaking with educated Indians (insert more embarrassed-Englishness here).

ah-hahahah. the 'fun' part about UK politics.

hat's quite funny because so many West/South/East/SouthEast Asians already speak more RP English than the current British English norm. I know I find myself intimidated into my most RP accent when I'm speaking with educated Indians (insert more embarrassed-Englishness here)

I know! when I was in NZ, I realised that I spoke better English than a lot of the kiwis. and my Taiwanese friend could correct a kiwi friend's grammar.

It was vaguely embarrassing for all involved, and my friend was kind of bemused by how that could happen.

Re: your mother's elocution classes, that rather reminds me of the time when I was sitting with a group of immigrants/immigrants' children from completely different places (Eastern Europe, East Asia, etc.), and we realized that we all ended up being put into speech therapy classes in elementary school to "correct" our pronunciations...sigh.

*sigh*

And the funny thing is ... I'm actually fairly good at understanding MANY accents. A lot of Asian accents, actually, when they speak English, while Americans and Kiwis tend to be just baffled.

Nod, that makes a lot of sense!

Hmm, not sure that counts as code-switching, but I think most people can figure out when they should switch between registers (eg formal vs. casual vs. ...), even if they have trouble with some of the specific registers. (Does that count as multiple dialects?)

Hmmmm I guess it depends on what we consider code-switching. :P If you consider code-switching to be formal vs casual, then yeah I'm probably using code-switching entirely in the wrong sense.

Though would it be considered more than one dialect, if there is formal, semi-formal and casual? Which there is, in Singlish, where it goes all the way to very casual, and then very close to approaching standard English. So it could be just two languages/dialects, but with percentage allowed?

Code-switching afaik is usually used for switching between languages or lects. The example I was responding to was about children learning to code-switch.

I think in English-English there's still code-switching between accents in addition to registers (and dialects, which are different to accents). English tends to be a notably idiolectical language though so that's probably not surprising.

Hmm. English is an idiolectical language?

So are there languages which aren't? Or less so? *is curious!*

I suspect, without any evidence to back this up, that some languages are easier to vary in one way or another than others both lingustically and/or culturally (the French are known for strong disapproval of variation). I've often wondered if some cultures who're known for having, for example, expressive hand-gestures and/or facial expressions might be one possible result of a less idiolectical language. English also has a massive possible vocabulary compared to many languages (dunno how the grammatical possibilities compare, but I know English is more flexible than French on both counts) and we can mess around with tone (although that can change meaning from, for example, sincere to ironic or sarcastic). I seem to recall research indicating that average English-English speakers have a considerably larger standard vocab (and tendency towards word-games such as puns) than average USian English speakers (although the internet is probably flattening that out) so culture obviously has a significant influence on language use within similar dialects.

/wild speculation

Hmmmmmm.

THough i DO Know that the French have a 'Parisian French accent = BEST anything else from he villages = COUNTRY BUMPKIN even if you spoke perfect French with it"

hmm. So puns is an indication of thingies?

I do know that Japanese (chinese used to) have a very structured thing - hierarchal structures? Honorifics? what do you call them - where you speak differently based on status of the other person relative to yourself, and sometimes it's divided according to gender. Not sure that say, Chinese or Japanese is VERY flexible the way English is - but maybe it's just different?

*puzzles*

Puns, according to my friends, are an indication of my dodgy sense of humour... but they're WRONG, obviously!! ;-)

maybe it's just different?

Yes, and those differences might not be best discussed in a foreign language such as English. :-)

As I said in my previous comment, I haven't done any reasearch on this (although I'm sure someone has) and my example are limited but I enjoy occasional wild speculation.

Yes, and those differences might not be best discussed in a foreign language such as English. :-)

Someone who does know both these languages at fluent levels would probably be able to tell more. *wistful* My grasp on Chinese is ridiculously poor, and a lot of things that I take for granted in English are ... just different in Chinese because of the way it just is.

Puns, according to my friends, are an indication of my dodgy sense of humour... but they're WRONG, obviously!! ;-)

Lol puns! I wonder why people think that puns are so bad? Or low-humour? Simple one-word-puns still take quie a bit of set-up.

(of which I am very sure there are heaps of in Chinese because of the high homonyms.)

Interesting post. Thank you for sharing!

I'm not trying to hijack your discussion but most of this comment is about historical English-English because that's what I know about and that knowledge has helped me argue with people (usually USians) who want me force to speak their version of standard English (no!).

It is extremely ironic and kinda hilarious to hear English speaking westerners go on about how they need to preserve the perfection of their language.

Most English-English speakers would also find that amusing. Did you know that the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the standard for British-English, is different from many standard language dictionaries because its clearly stated aim is to record British-English(s) as they are spoken now (whenever now is) and not to try to fix British-English in one form.

It's my observation that USians and Brits who want to sell English (or an idea of English) abroad usually make the loudest/silliest claims about "standards", although anyone selling a standard English tends to peddle similarly foolish and unrealistic ideas (USian university English being the most financially valuable commodified English now).

In my culture (I'm English) there are also class issues with the posh/rich people (who spoke "received pronunciation" English who used to control writing/printing/teaching/distance-communication feeling threatened by losing that control and dialects/other-pronunciations of English becoming more acceptable.

English WAS pretty much a corrupted language that stole from every other language, hardly pure.

True! English, and a Singaporean will recognise similarities to Singlish here, is the result of several different languages all existing together in one society on a small island and all mixing together to form one new language (ye olde multiculturalism!). Then, being islanders, English speakers boated their way all around the world learning new words for new things/ideas as they went and then taking them back to Britain. Blatant THEFT, yes, but that openness to other cultures and willingness to learn (STEAL) from them and adapt to local conditions is one of the few positive reasons why English became a successful language (even where it wasn't imposed).

World Englishs, such as Singlish, are BRILLIANT and exactly in the spirit of "proper" historical English-Englishs!

how come American English and UK English get the nod when American English is barely different – it's not considered a dialect

Did you know that, because USian English was unofficially standardised in the 18th century while English-English continued to change, standard USian English has many older words and structures than standard English-English (i.e. they speak more like Shakespeare than we do!). Interesting, y/y? :-)

Corrected for sense with an added end bracket ")": "In my culture (I'm English) there are also class issues with the posh/rich people (who spoke "received pronunciation" English) who used to control writing/printing/teaching/distance-communication"

Oops! :-)

This is AWESOME!

I know that I make a lot of sweeping generalisations and such, because I don't actually know the full history of English language development and growth - it is fascinating to realise how US-English has more ancient and older linguistic bitties than UK-English. Language shifts ftw!

I also went and randomly read up the wikipedia article about Cockney, because you know, dialects and stuff, which meant that Cockney and other similar English dialects were probably MORE likely to be actual English dialects, unlike say, Singlish or Manglish or other creoles would be, since they are derived from English (mainly) and not necessarily in a different country with different language-structures imported from a different language.

Or something. And even THEN, Cockney and other dialects were considered low-class, working class, and undesireable, and supposedly it is only recently that the broadcasting media in England allowed/broadcast more English-dialects instead of only RP.

I think the idea that English because it is SO flexible (and... uh, drives kids and non-native speakers crazy) and has so many damn exceptions to everything... is because it used to be a creole.

It's kind of annoying that our politicians act like that Singlish will 'corrupt' our standard English, when they should just come up with a way of teaching English without having to try and stamp out OUR growing language.

I think we have to generalise in general discussions, but peopole of goodwill try to understand each other (like when we're using similar but different language). :-)

I don't know many Singlish speakers offline but I've always assumed it's a "world English" (language) more than a dialect because (I think?) it has different grammar even for the same vocab? Whereas Cockney had some very divergent-from-RP vocab but basically the same grammar so it was definitely a dialect.

I agree English is (like) a creole (Middle English was mostly of English/French with a seasoning of Latin). When academics talk about the language of the future becoming Mandarin or Spanish then I usually wonder if it's not more likely that we'll mostly speak creoles more like Spanglish and Manglish.

It's kind of annoying that our politicians act like that Singlish will 'corrupt' our standard English, when they should just come up with a way of teaching English without having to try and stamp out OUR growing language.

I understand that many people want their children to learn USian English because it's the most valuable world English NOW but how long will that last? Singlish could be more like the language of our futures.

Middle English was mostly of Old English/French with a seasoning of Latin

::SIGH at self::

I think we have to generalise in general discussions, but peopole of goodwill try to understand each other (like when we're using similar but different language). :-)

True! :D

I don't know many Singlish speakers offline but I've always assumed it's a "world English" (language) more than a dialect because (I think?) it has different grammar even for the same vocab? Whereas Cockney had some very divergent-from-RP vocab but basically the same grammar so it was definitely a dialect.

But what counts as a dialect and what doesn't? I believe that I read soemwhere that even the term 'dialect' is fraught with problems, global colonization issues and other things. :| Still, I can see your point - that Cockney and other... uh, English-English dialects are probably the same grammar, while stuff like Singlish, Spanglish etc have wildly different structures, and sometimes even different vocabulary.

I agree English is (like) a creole (Middle English was mostly of English/French with a seasoning of Latin). When academics talk about the language of the future becoming Mandarin or Spanish then I usually wonder if it's not more likely that we'll mostly speak creoles more like Spanglish and Manglish.

If they're 'just' extrapolating from the numbers of people who are speaking the language, then yeah, Chinese, maybe one of the Indian languages, might be the language of the future, just by sheer numbers. But as to whether it would be THE language? I'm not sure. English is certainly the language NOW, but there are other things, I guess. Other factors.

It would be very interesting if a creole like Singlish became the world language. >D

I understand that many people want their children to learn USian English because it's the most valuable world English NOW but how long will that last? Singlish could be more like the language of our futures.

In Singapore, largely due to our colonial past, our main English-English is British English, especially since our main exams are all from Cambridge (GCE Os and As). All our centres are spelt, well, centres. We use -t forms for certain words in past-tense, and it really drives my brain crazy that American-English is quickly becoming the norm of the internet, and sometimes a mix of it. My brain cannot handle mixed up things!

In any case, I wish we could LEARN Singlish, or at least, not put it down. :| But it might be hundreds of years off.

But what counts as a dialect and what doesn't?

Depends which "expert" you listen to, hee! Extreme cases are always easier to decide than marginal ones.

It would be very interesting if a creole like Singlish became the world language. >D

I honestly think it'll happen (and it's sort of happened already with English). I'm cheering for Spandarin because that's obviously the best name! ;-) Maybe a Spandaringlish creole is more likely.

In Singapore, largely due to our colonial past, our main English-English is British English

You, us, the anglophone Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. Hmm, we should move the British Isles south and round the globe a bit. We promise not to steal all the extra "u"s! ;-)

I wish we could LEARN Singlish, or at least, not put it down.

I understand. Mixed identities are complicated. Good luck!

You, us, the anglophone Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand. Hmm, we should move the British Isles south and round the globe a bit. We promise not to steal all the extra "u"s! ;-)

And now I'm imagining you click-dragging the british isles and crazy waving it around the globe going WHEEE.

I have NO idea what spangdarin is going to be like, but it'd be HILARIOUS. Though Singlish is less Mandarin infused and more so-called Chinese dialect and malay and all the fun stuffs.

hm.

you click-dragging the british isles and crazy waving it around the globe going WHEEE

YES!

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!

WHEEEEE!

Now I wanna do that. But google earth won't let me rearrange the world!

WOE.

SADFACE.

(reply from suspended user)

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singlish, language, dialect, and code-switching.

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Corrected for sense

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And again for sense, d'oh!

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