In a widely cited paper, Schneider (Reference Schneider2003) offers a model of the developmental phases undergone by new Englishes. One important feature of this model is reference to exonormative and endonormative standards, and Schneider suggests (2003: 264) that Singapore currently finds itself at stage four on this developmental journey – a stage at which local norms may be beginning to gain acceptance and literary creativity in English by local writers is abundant. In this paper I would like to provide a few examples of distinctively Singaporean use of English and raise the question of when (if ever) Singapore will move to an endonormative, Singaporean English, as the standard variety taught in schools.
In a previous article (Poole, Reference Poole2009) I noted the use of what I took, from a British point of view, to be the rather old-fashioned and high-register verb ‘alight’ in train announcements on Singapore's Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) network. Here I would like to provide a few more examples of word choices and turns of phrase which seem to be characteristic of English language use in Singapore – at least in the sense of difference from norms observable in Britain or the USA.
In a globalized world, control of the English language has passed out of the hands of ‘native-speaker nations’ such as the USA and the UK. Even three decades ago, Nihalani and colleagues (Reference Nihalani, Tongue and Hosali1979: 8) were able to hint at this shift of ownership by concluding the introduction to their book about English in India with a reference to the language as an Indo-British ‘common possession’. Perhaps, therefore, I scarcely need to point out that in highlighting a few ‘differences’ between English language use among educated speakers/writers in Singapore and those in Britain I am not implying that the former is ‘wrong’ or ‘sub-standard’. Indeed, as Graddol (Reference Graddol2006: 115) indicates, Singaporean English teachers are regarded ‘in several Asian countries' as ‘native speakers’, so there is still less justification for seeing formal English language use in Singapore as in any way deviant. I should also emphasize that this paper deals mainly with examples of spoken and written English encountered in various relatively formal settings in Singapore, so ‘street level’ Singlish is not here my concern. Finally, I certainly recognize – in common with Saraceni (Reference Saraceni2009: 179) – that distinctive language use does not diligently follow national boundaries. Some of the lexical choices I describe here may perhaps also be seen or heard, for example, in neighbouring Malaysia.
Many of the examples I shall present were jotted down in a notebook or on a scrap of paper when I first heard or saw them. They were encountered in university seminars, in Singapore's English language press, or in the TV programmes of Channel News Asia. In some instances I am able to demonstrate why I (as a British person) find them striking via a comparison with relevant data obtained through a British National Corpus (BNC) search. However, in other cases I have not been able to support my intuitions in this way, and I am simply suggesting, tentatively, that a particular word or phrase seems to me to be more frequently used in Singaporean English than is the case in British English.
Although my observations are relatively informal and haphazard, I have grouped them under five headings for the sake of orderliness.
Adjectives
In Singapore the ‘void deck’ (itself a piece of Singaporean terminology) is an area at ground level situated beneath an apartment block, which is sometimes used for communal activities, including wedding parties. At intervals across one such void deck I recently came upon several large wooden and wire rectangular receptacles, fixed to the ground, each marked in bold lettering as a ‘Bulky Disposal Bin’. Presumably they are provided so that in this way residents of the apartment block can throw away any unwanted items that are large and cumbersome. The word ‘bulky' is also frequently encountered on the MRT, where station announcements advise passengers who are unwell or carrying ‘bulky' items to take the lift, and where a public safety video about possible terrorist acts, often played on screens above the platforms, shows a young Singaporean woman reporting to the train driver that a suspicious-looking man has just got off the train, leaving a ‘heavy and bulky' bag behind him. Encountering the word ‘bulky’ several times per day in Britain would, I think, be unusual. BNC data available through the Brigham Young University website (see references) shows 326 instances of ‘bulky’, and this can be compared, for instance, with ‘heavy’ (which occurs 9,325 times), ‘enormous’ (4,051) or ‘massive’ (4,306). Randomly chosen adjectives which occur with about the same frequency as ‘bulky’ in BNC include:
It seems plausible, therefore, to argue that ‘bulky’ may be more frequently seen and heard in Singapore than in Britain. Very tentatively, too, I advance the possibility that in general Singaporean speakers have a greater tendency than British speakers to use adjectives ending in ‘y’, such as ‘yucky’ and ‘yummy’ (both used informally about food). However, it may well be that my impression about this arises because in Singaporean English the final vowel in such adjectives (and in many others such as ‘lucky’ or ‘dirty’), tends to be longer than in British English. In this way such words may be foregrounded for me and I may be overestimating frequency of occurrence.
Another adjective ending in ‘y’ which is worthy of comment is ‘cosy’. In Singaporean English, ‘cosy’ seems to have lost part of its British English meaning – the sense of warmth – and simply become a synonym for ‘pleasant’ or ‘agreeable’. For instance a small ad reads:
Outram Park MRT – cosy small room for rent for single lady $400.
In Britain warmth might well be a selling point, but in Singapore less so! A chain of moderately-priced hotels in Singapore has the brand name ‘Hotel 81’. In Chinatown one finds the ‘Hotel 81 Cosy’, which explicitly denies any claims to warmth by offering ‘air-conditioned rooms’. The meaning of the word ‘cosy’ has clearly shifted to suit the Singaporean context.
The adjective ‘young’ is occasionally used by Singaporean speakers in a construction which does not appear in BNC data:
Ours is a complex environment where children are exposed to different syntax, grammar and structures in multiple languages from young. (Speech by Dr Ng, Minister of Education, 17 September 2009)
Where the phrase ‘from young’ occurs in BNC, it is generally followed by a proper noun / personal name (‘from young Charlie’); a common noun (‘from young men’); or a noun plus a relative clause (‘from young people who have strong views’). It does not occur as a stand-alone adverbial, as in Singaporean English.
Collocation
In all countries – Anglophone or otherwise – one finds clichés, and these are sometimes encountered in journalese. I remember as a teenager in northern England that it was a habit in my family's household, for instance, to howl with derision at the frequency with which presenters on the regional BBC TV news programme Look North had recourse to the phrase ‘down on the farm’ (drawn from an American popular song c.1918, ‘How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm, After They've Seen Paree?’’) when introducing filmed reports about agricultural topics. Hence, when I mention here a few collocational clichés I am not singling out Singaporean broadcast journalists, or other Singaporean English speakers, for any special blame!
News reports on Channel News Asia which refer to warnings of terrorism in countries around the world, or else contain references to unrest or demonstrations, frequently state that ‘security’ has been ‘beefed up’. Similarly, when a show, a movie or a new building is about to open in Singapore, TV presenters often offer viewers a ‘sneak peek’. It certainly begins to seem to the viewer that all ‘peeks’ must be ‘sneak peeks’, and that all bolstering of security must entail ‘beefing up’. In the workplace, meanwhile, virtually all ‘reminders’ (sent by email, especially to forgetful people like the present author) – for instance, to complete a task or to attend a meeting – tend to be ‘gentle’. These are just a few examples of lexical collocations which, in Singapore, appear to be particularly adhesive.
Fluency devices or fillers
In British English, speakers frequently make use of fillers such as ‘sort of’ or ‘you know’ in order to continue speaking (and therefore to continue to hold the floor) when the cognitive load associated with production of speech at a characteristic five syllables or so per second leads to minor dysfluency. In Singapore, two fluency devices – not necessarily the most frequent ones – which stand out as somewhat characteristic are ‘so-called’ and ‘actually’. For instance, when asked a question which she found difficult to answer instantaneously, a Singapore university student began ‘Actually I actually…’ before proceeding to respond more substantively. Some Singapore speakers also from time to time appear to use ‘so-called’ not in the typical derisive way (BNC example: ‘the so-called Thatcher revolution’), but as a mere fluency device – still inserted directly before a noun or noun phrase – to buy additional milliseconds of processing time. In both cases ‘so-called’ and ‘actually' appear to be used quite frequently in cases where they are semantically empty. For example ‘actually’ in spoken Singaporean English often does not at all serve to introduce a ‘putting right’ of an interlocutor's misapprehension (‘Actually, you're mistaken’) or act as a marker of tentativeness or politeness (‘Actually I'd rather not, if you don't mind’). Instead it frequently carries little meaning, and functions only as a fluency device or filler.
Specialist terminology
In Singapore, the ubiquitous device which goes by the name of ‘cell phone’, ‘mobile phone’ or ‘GSM’ in various parts of the world tends to be referred to as a ‘hand phone’ (abbreviated to ‘HP’ or ‘hp’ on, for instance, business cards). Similarly the piece of hardware sometimes called a ‘flash disk’, ‘flash drive’, or ‘memory stick’ in Singapore often goes by the name of ‘thumb drive’ or ‘thumb’.
In the area of language education, the term ‘personal recount’ is used to describe a written account of personal experience, while a ‘rubric’ (which in the UK tends to be a set of instructions on an examination paper) is in Singapore generally used to mean a rating scale employed so as to reduce subjectivity and increase reliability when assessing, for instance, oral or written production. These two lexical choices may perhaps be imported from American English.
Verbs
In professional settings in Singapore, formal peer-to-peer discussion (for example, involving one person in leading a session for a group of colleagues) can be described as ‘sharing’. It is therefore not perhaps surprising that the verb ‘to share’ assumes a significant role when information dissemination is reported.
Mr Yeo shared that Productivity and Innovation will take centre-stage… (Report of a meeting of the Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation.)
During his lecture, he shared that the world can construct a new and more inclusive history by first accepting our religious diversity through dialogue. (Speech by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, 14.7.2010. Here ‘he’ refers to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.)
PM Lee also shared that he intends to bring in a slew of new party candidates and several potential office holders to contest the upcoming elections. (Singapore-based blog.)
By contrast, there are no instances of ‘shared’ + that-clause in BNC data – indeed, there are no obvious instances of ‘shared’ used in reported speech at all. In BNC ‘shared that’ tends to occur where ‘that’ is a demonstrative pronoun and is followed by an object noun:
Most member states shared that anxiety.
Another verb commonly seen in reported speech in Singapore, and frequently heard in speeches and lectures, is ‘touch on’.
Mr Choy Chan Pong, Director of Land Administration, URA, also spoke at the conference. He touched on Singapore's success in drawing global investments into our real estate market… (Report from www.ura.gov.sg of an event in Dubai.)
Earlier, Mr Goh met local, foreign and Singaporean businessmen over lunch. In their discussions, they touched on Vietnam's rapid development in recent years. (Channel News Asia report of a 2007 visit to Vietnam by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.)
In his speech, PM Lee also touched on the issue of foreign workers, saying Singapore can expect lower growth as the country slows its intake of foreigners, as there is a limit to what it can accommodate. (Straits Times report 14 October 2009 accessed via the website of the Prime Minister's Office.)
Of course, ‘touch on’ is also used sometimes in these ways in British English, and this is reflected to some extent in BNC:
Charles even touched on Diana's favourite subject – helping Aids victims.
However, there are only 198 examples of ‘touched on’ in BNC data (compared, for example, with ‘mentioned’ [6865 instances], ‘noted’ [6082], or ‘talked about’ [1409]). Furthermore, substantial numbers of instances of ‘touched on’ in BNC are associated with different meanings/contexts:
Then he was touched on the head by a rebirther and burst into uncontrollable sobs. (Here ‘touched’ denotes physical contact between two people.)
They were gifted a goal six minutes later when a John Clark free-kick was touched on by Ferguson…. (From a report of a football match – ‘touched on’ is similar in meaning to ‘flicked [the ball] on or onwards’.)
Her heart touched on the instant by her friend's distress, she put an arm through hers… (Here ‘on’ forms part of an adverbial of time, and ‘touched’ conveys a sense of emotional effect.)
Consequently, only perhaps three-quarters of the 198 examples of ‘touched on’ in BNC can truly be said to occur in the context of reported speech. I therefore tentatively record my impression that the use of ‘touched on’ in reported speech (and of ‘touch on’ in formal speeches) is more common in Singaporean than in British English.
The multi-word verb ‘tap on’ is also noticeable in Singaporean English. Here is an example:
SINGAPORE: Countries in Asia Pacific can tap on a US$10 billion fund – US$2 billion a year over five years – to improve their management of water resources. (Channel News Asia website, February 2007.)
A search of BNC data shows ‘tap on’ as co-occurring mainly with following nouns such as ‘shoulder’, ‘door’, and ‘back’. This is so, whether or not ‘tap’ is a verb or a noun. In common with British English, Singaporean English does also make frequent use of ‘tap into’, however. This raises the question of whether Singaporean English makes a semantic distinction between ‘tap on’ and ‘tap into’. In British English, ‘tap into’ tends to be followed by nouns which relate to information or knowledge:
Individual users from their humble PC can tap into a wealth of information. (BNC)
Perhaps a slight distinction in meaning has emerged in Singaporean English, where ‘tap on’ tends to be used in relation to financial resources, while ‘tap into’ is used for knowledge and information?
In Singapore one not infrequently comes across the verb ‘request’ followed by the preposition ‘for’. Here are two examples:
Please provide the grounds for believing that the information requested for is held by the Comptroller, the Comptroller of Goods and Services Tax, the Comptroller of Property Tax, the Chief Assessor or the Commissioner of Stamp Duties, or is in the possession or control of a person in Singapore. (From an online form on the website of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore.)
He requested for two cans of glue and showed his identity card. (Extract from a winning secondary school pupil's essay submitted to the Central Narcotics Bureau of Singapore.)
There are only 29 cases of ‘requested for’ in online BNC data. Many occur as part of passive constructions, while the preposition ‘for’ may mean ‘for the purposes of’, or sometimes ‘for the benefit of’. Here are two examples from BNC:
$76 million was requested for research and development…. (for the purposes of)
Updating sessions were requested for training staff. (for the benefit of)
In active constructions in British English, the verb ‘request’ is generally followed immediately by a direct object (‘He requested two cans of glue’).
Final comments
In Singapore one quite frequently hears from an interlocutor the single word ‘correct’. Speakers of Singaporean English sometimes use ‘correct’ to signal agreement with what is being said to them (as British or American speakers might use ‘right’), in effect employing the word as a form of back channelling. I think this use of ‘correct’ is heard much more often in Singapore than in Britain, but it is also quite common among proficient Indian speakers of English (by which I mean citizens of India). Furthermore, Indian speakers of English also use the ‘request for’ construction which, as we have seen, is common in Singapore:
I have often requested for time out from cricket so that I can come back refreshed and fit. (Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, quoted on the BBC Sport website, 20 December 2010.)
Such examples highlight the interesting question of the extent to which English language use in Singapore has been influenced by the English of its Indian ethnic minority.
However, I would like to conclude by returning to the much wider and more fundamental issue I raised near the beginning of this paper. The current (2010) English language syllabus for schools in Singapore uses the term ‘internationally acceptable English’ for the variety it hopes to see schoolchildren acquire – although the bracketed phrase ‘Standard English' does also appear nearby. Of course, this raises the issue of which ‘standard’ is referred to. At present, there is still a tendency to adhere to British norms, but this may change. At what point, I wonder, will Singapore have the national self-confidence to commission full-scale descriptions of the grammar and phonology of Standard Singaporean English, the acrolect used in formal contexts by educated speakers locally, and to use this as the basis for what is taught in schools?
BRIAN POOLE is a lecturer in the Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore. He has been interested in computer-based corpora of English, and their value for learning, teaching and research since the days of huge mainframe computers. An occasional contributor to English Today, he also writes on issues in education and is interested in the standards, content and assessment of professional doctorates such as the EdD. He also has substantial experience as a specialist in quality assurance in the higher education sector in Oman and Fiji. Email: elcbdp@nus.edu.sg
