Talk:Singlish
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[edit] Phonology
Who wrote this nonsense? "English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences."
Total rubbish. And it goes on: "For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel."
The worst bit is that the author has actually linked RP to the relevant article. If s/he had bothered to check, s/he would have noted that RP is based on Southern British English, typically a Home Counties sort of accent. Nothing to do with Scottish/Welsh/Irish whatsoever! And of course "home" has a diphthong, both for the Queen and for RP speakers, as well as for a majority of Southern British speakers.
I'm also sceptical about geographical variation. If the East Coast speaks more acrolectally, then surely that's due to the socio-economic background of the population there? It may well be that some families who have always lived there for generations continue to do so to this day, but my guess is this is a minority. Social and geographical mobility are huge on this crowded island, and no doubt even this exclusive area has seen a lot of coming and going in the past two or three decades. And if you meet a pre-65er in a Woodlands condo, speaking what's here termed "Queen's English", you'd certainly not assume first thing that he's from Katong. Just imagine: "Nice accent, mate. Where about on the East Coast are you from?" Kinda weird. JREL (talk) 05:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] incorrect
i deleted the following:
- English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences. For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel.
this appears to make no sense. the statement about the RP pronunciation of "home" is simply false, and the supposed distinction between "Queen's English" and "RP" is nonsense -- note that the former is a link to the latter. Benwing 06:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Translations for the Curious?
For the graph showing the differences between the three different "classes" if you will of Singlish, what about a translation of what the first two were intending. I think this would give a clue as to the common use and speech patterns of those two groups. --DaedalusMachina 15:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Well written, but is it true?
As a long time writer for Wikipedia, I am impressed by the quality of writing presented here. Every contributor should be proud of your collective achievements.
However, I am also disheartened by the complete lack of references in this entry. A Wikipedia article without references is not much more than talk cock, to borrow a Singlish expression. While it seems that at least some of the claims can easily be supported, others seem to be based on nothing more than the writer's mere conjectures or personal experience. Wikipedia is not a place for claims based on one's own "research" [1] or point of view [2] statements .
Even if not much independent research exists, there are still vast linguistic sources that can be utilized, such as IDEA [3] and Ethnologue [4].
I have added some initial references and marked particularly strong statements that require support. I look forward to seeing more factual evidence. Together, we can expand the knowledge on Singlish.
Please feel free to delete this comment when more references are added.
Sslevine (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Is "Lah" of Chinese or Malay Origin?
The section states "[i]t originates from the Chinese character (啦, Pinyin: Lè/Là)", but also that "...in the Malay, 'lah' is appended to the end of the word and is not a separate word by itself."
It seems that the word is represented by the said Chinese character, but does not originated from it. However, I could not find evidence of the word in a Malay dictionary [5] or Min Nan (Hokkian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sslevine (talk • contribs) 04:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
- Oh boy, if only we knew. There's as many suggestions for lah's origin out there as there are authors. Lisa Lim for example found similar particles in Bazaar Malay, Mandarin, and Cantonese, at least at a surface-phonetic level. She does point out though that Cantonese seems to have a counterpart for all eight particles she looks at -- you'd be tempted to say that this is some kind of systemic substratist influence, whereby the complete set of Cantonese particles was transferred into Singlish. The problem with that is the absence of so many Cantonese particles in Singlish. Go figure. Good thing is, there's still scope for a whole lot of research out there. JREL (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
