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As Malays are the indigenous people of Singapore, the Malay language, specifically in Rumi (Roman script) rather than Jawi script, is ceremonially recognised as the national language of Singapore. [4] Once the lingua franca of Southeast Asia, Malay is the home language of 82.7% of Malay Singaporeans, as of 2010. [22]
The Malay language courses have both a Malay (Special Programme) and a Higher Malay track for different degrees of advancement in the language. Students of Higher Malay language are able to cede two points off their O-level score (a lower number is considered better in total O-level scoring) as long as some other minimal requirements are fulfilled.
Prior to independence, Singapore was a centre for Malay literature and Malay culture. However, after independence, this cultural role declined. Singapore is an observer to the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia Language Council which plays a role in synchronizing pluricentric Malay standards, however it has not applied to be a member. It nonetheless ...
The main language of instruction in Singapore is English, which was officially designated the first language within the local education system in 1987. [11] English is the first language learned by half the children by the time they reach preschool age and becomes the primary medium of instruction by the time they reach primary school.
Singapore's language planning is known as exogenous planning, whereby a foreign language takes on the role as the main language of communication against the indigenous languages in the country. The education system aims to create a workforce that is bi-literate in English and Chinese/Malay/Tamil.
Non-Chinese language communities, principally the Malays and Tamils, have argued that the effort placed into promoting Mandarin weakens the role of English as Singapore's lingua franca and threatens to marginalize Singapore's minorities. Dialects such as Hokkien, along with Malay have served as a language for the Straits Chinese, or Peranakan ...
The languages of Singapore are English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, with the lingua franca between Singaporeans being English, the de facto main language. Singaporeans often speak Singlish among themselves, an English creole arising from centuries of contact between Singapore's internationalised society and its legacy of being a British colony.
The language is pluricentric and a macrolanguage, i.e., several varieties of it are standardized as the national language (bahasa kebangsaan or bahasa nasional) of several nation states with various official names: in Malaysia, it is designated as either Bahasa Malaysia ("Malaysian") or also Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language"); in Singapore and ...