Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Where's the beach ?





I am looking at singapore, the tiny little red dot that has been so mesmerising all these years.So much memories nostalgically tucked into every little corners that this small island provided.She changed.Not beyond recognition, though.She is still an island.



A land of abundance not in natural resources in which she has none, she prospered with her populace., a race which is distinctive but you will be hardpressed not to come out with some superlatives.An achievement in social engineering.A land of contrasts.A land of Ah Bengs and Ah Lians.Singlish is spoken here and it is so cute as English in drag, literally, hahahaha....


Singapore is changing fast as the Beach Road is now as far from the shore shown in the map above.


Singlish is a creole native to Malaysia and Singapore. It is the first language of many Singaporeans, and is the second language of nearly all the rest of the country's citizens. However, almost all Singaporeans are able to code-switch between Singlish and English.
The vocabulary of Singlish consists of words originating from English, Malay (mainly Bahasa Melayu rather than Indonesian), Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi and to a lesser extent various other European, Indic and Sinitic languages, while Singlish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese. Also, elements of American and Australian slang have come through from imported television series. Recently, due to the fact that Mandarin is taught to most Singaporean Chinese students in school, Mandarin words have also found their way into Singlish.
Singlish is closely related to Manglish of neighboring Malaysia.
The Singaporean government currently discourages the use of Singlish in favour of Singapore Standard English as it believes in the need for Singaporeans to be able to effectively communicate with the other English users in the world. The government runs the Speak Good English Movement to emphasise the point.




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