Abstract
One of the titles I thought about giving this chapter is this: ‘Can the Sinophone Speak Singlish?’ Singlish is a popular way of referring to the variety of English that is commonly spoken in Singapore. It is a creolized form of English with a grammar closer to Hokkien than to English — it also has the reputation for being ‘ungrammatical’ — and with a vocabulary derived from Hokkien, Malay, Cantonese, other Sinitic or Chinese languages, Tamil and English. Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh, the creative husband-and-wife team behind TalkingCock: The Movie (2002) describe Singlish in this way:
Singlish is Singaporean vernacular English, a polyglot of English, Malay, Tamil, and various Chinese dialects. Closer to Cockney and Creole than to pidgin, Singlish is often characterized by humorous wordplay that cuts across multiple languages. Extremely popular, it may be the only uniquely Singaporean cultural identifier. (2007, p. 104)
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© 2014 Alison M. Groppe
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Groppe, A.M. (2014). ’singlish’ and the Sinophone: Nonstandard (Chinese/English) Languages in Recent Singaporean Cinema. In: Yue, A., Khoo, O. (eds) Sinophone Cinemas. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311207_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311207_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45687-1
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