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Singlish is prominently used in local coffee shops, or kopitiams (the word is obtained by combining the Malay word for coffee and the Hokkien word for 'shop'), and other eateries. Local names of many food and drink items have become Singlish and consist of words from different languages and are indicative of the multi-racial society in Singapore.
Just like any languages in Singapore, Singaporean Mandarin is subjected to influences from other languages spoken in Singapore. Singaporean Hokkien is the largest non-Mandarin Chinese variety spoken in Singapore. The natural tendency of Hokkien-speakers to use the Hokkien way to speak Mandarin has influenced to a large degree the colloquial ...
Today, Singdarin remains often used and is commonly spoken in colloquial speech in Singapore and occasionally even on local television, and most Chinese-speaking Singaporeans are able to code-switch between Singdarin and Standard Mandarin, likewise with most Singaporeans in general with Singlish and standard Singapore English. Furthermore, most ...
Singlish (a portmanteau of Singapore and English), formally known as Colloquial Singaporean English, is an English-based creole language originating in Singapore. [1] [2] [3] Singlish arose out of a situation of prolonged language contact between speakers of many different Asian languages in Singapore, such as Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, Teochew, and Tamil. [4]
Because Singapore is a multilingual country, Singaporean Hokkien has been influenced by many other languages spoken in Singapore. As a result, there are many non-Hokkien words that have been imported into Singaporean Hokkien, such as those from Malay, Teochew, Cantonese, and English.
The languages of Singapore are English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, with the lingua franca between Singaporeans being English, the de facto main language. Among themselves, Singaporeans often speak Singlish, an English creole arising from centuries of contact between Singapore's internationalised society and its legacy of being a British colony.
There are also often cases when Singaporeans (due to their poorer command of Mandarin) find it hard to find or recall a Mandarin term and thus use loan words from other languages instead. The term "rojak" (a Malay food used for describing "mixture") is most appropriate in describing colloquial Singaporean Mandarin.
Singapore English (SgE, SE, en-SG) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Singapore.In Singapore, English is spoken in two main forms: Singaporean Standard English, which is indistinguishable grammatically from British English, and Singaporean Colloquial English, which is better known as Singlish.