Hi everyone, for those of you who didn't recognize that language - that's Hokkien, my mother tongue. Yes I thought I'd start with a bit of Hokkien rap to set the tone for this podcast because I recently saw a video on Youtube done by a British Youtuber about Singlish, in which he waxes lyrical about this culturally rich and colorful creole called Singlish from Singapore which started as a lingua franca amongst the different ethnic groups in Singapore and draws upon so many diverse cultural and linguistic influences from all over Asia. I rolled my eyes at it because he is clearly a British person who knows very little about Singlish and Singapore but nonetheless was trying to do an interesting video for Youtube to get more views, thus he made Singlish out to be a lot more interesting that it actually was. But as someone who has grown up in Singapore and who does speak Singlish, I have a completely different take on the matter because it is evident that Singlish is dying a slow death and within a generation, it will be unrecognizable. Firstly, let's talk about what Singlish is and before I explain why it is dying or at least evolving to a point where it will be totally unrecognizable from the Singlish I used to speak as a child back in the 1980s.
Time for a brief history lesson: Singapore was a former British colony founded in 1819 and it was a melting pot of immigrants from all over Asia, but mostly from China, Malaysia, Indonesia and India. A multitude of languages were spoken and Singlish emerged as a lingua franca in this environment when people who spoke different languages tried to use English as a common language to communicate, but often they spoke English as a second or third language, so it would be a form of pidgin English or Creole that was heavily influenced by their first and second languages. For example, a key feature of Singlish would be to use English words in a sentence but Chinese grammar. So instead of saying, "I have drank my coffee." That sentence expressed with Chinese grammar would be "I drink my coffee already." So note that I didn't use any loanwords from another language in that example, I merely used a different grammar system to express that same message. So to give you some context, my parents are in their 80s now and they certainly don't speak English as a first language, so when they attempt to speak English, they would come up with sentences like "I drink my coffee already" because English is not their first language and many of their peers would have spoken like that, thus it became normal. They didn't feel self-conscious at all when expressing themselves in Singlish. Allow me to state the obvious, if English is not your first language, if it is your second or third language, then you're likely to make mistakes when speaking it. But if everyone in your community is making the same kind of mistakes in a place like Singapore, then those mistakes become a feature of the local pidgin or Creole.
But there's also another major factor at play as well: I'd like to talk about my late grandmother. She was born in 1918 and died in 2008 at the ripe old age of 90 years old, so if she was alive today, she'd be 107 and there are very, very few people who live that long. My grandmother didn't speak a word of English at all, she spoke mostly Hokkien though she had a reasonably good grasp of Malay as well and a smattering of Cantonese. People of her generation tended to speak very little or no English and most of them couldn't even speak any Mandarin. I learnt Hokkien from my grandmother because she took care of me when I was little whilst my parents were working. So for several hours a day, I would be speaking only in Hokkien with my grandmother at home, that's why I still speak Hokkien fluently today. Hence it wasn't hard to pick up Hokkien in that context because it was often the lingua franca amongst older Singaporeans in those days but I have to be blunt here, in 2025, that generation has passed away. Thus younger Singaporeans today don't have that same opportunity to learn Hokkien the way I did because it has been wiped off the linguistic map of Singapore once people like my grandmother passed away - taking that language with them to the grave quite literally.
Since the generation who didn't speak any English has passed away, there's no easy way to put it and excuse me for being morbid, this has drastically changed the linguistic landscape of a country. People like my grandmother are no longer alive in 2025. When I was a kid in the 1980s, so many older Singaporeans didn't speak English and we had to find a way to talk to them. I remember how even the canteen at my primary school was so linguistically diverse. If I wanted ice cream, the old lady selling ice cream would only speak Cantonese. If I wanted Malay food, I had to order in Malay. And then most of the other older aunties spoke mostly in Hokkien. That's three languages I needed just to navigate the canteen and none of those three languages were part of my curriculum at the school, where I only studied English and Mandarin. Learning all these languages were a necessity for everyday life, it wasn't just something we did for fun or because we were forced to as part of our education. This was just completely normal for those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Singapore but what has changed? Well, all non-English schools like Chinese schools which taught all their subjects in Mandarin were phased out by the mid 1970s, so if you were ten years old in 1975, that would make you 60 today and you would have been educated in English. And note that this was not a sudden change and a shock to the system, quite the opposite! By the early 1970s, enrolment in non-English schools experienced a sharp decline as most parents preferred to send their children to English schools, to be educated in English. Thus in light of that trend, the government simply decided that they may as well force all students to be educated in English instead of Mandarin, Malay or Tamil since that was going to happen in due course anyway whether the government mandated it or not. Thus anyone under 60 in Singapore today would be totally fluent in English and it even those in their 70s would probably speak English reasonably well. It would really only be those over 80 or recent migrants who can't speak much English. When I was a kid back in the 1980s, many older Singaporeans didn't speak any English - that is no longer the case today. English has dominated every aspect of life in Singapore and the linguistic landscape has changed radically.
You can wax lyrical about how people should learn language because it broadens their minds or it allows them to get in touch with their heritage and roots, but if Singaporeans really wanted to do that, they would focus on learning languages like Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, Tamil, Malay and other languages that their grandparents spoke rather than focus on Singlish which seems like a cheat option to me. After all, if you are a true blue 100% Singaporean born and bred in Singapore, speaking Singlish would be pretty easy - you simply pump up the accent and slip in the right loanwords in the right places and it's far from learning a new language like Cantonese, which is difficult even for those who already speak Mandarin and Hokkien fluently. Thus it is not like having a secret language that you can use amongst yourselves to stop others from understanding what you're saying, Singlish is way too close to English for that purpose. So to give you an example, within my family, my nephew doesn't speak Hokkien - that language hasn't been passed down to his generation at all. So when we want to say something amongst ourselves without him understanding, we would switch to Hokkien in order to prevent him from following the conversation. Hokkien is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin - thus it does serve that purpose as our secret language. Singlish however, simply does not serve that purpose at all. Not in Singapore, not even for Singaporeans abroad. So if I really wanted to connect with my culture, my roots, my ancestors, then I'd just speak Hokkien instead because that's the language I spoke with my late grandmother. I did not speak Singlish with her, I spoke Hokkien. Speaking Hokkien would be a far more effective and meaningful method for me to connect with my roots than Singlish.
Besides, I don't like this assumption that somehow, all Singaporeans absolutely love Singlish and embrace it because they are so desperate to project their nationality as part of their identity. Singaporeans are complex people with different aspects to our personalities.They have different interests, hobbies, religions, jobs, friends and have different aspirations, dreams and goals - by that token, let's not make any assumptions about how they feel about Singlish. There are over 6 million people living in Singapore and we should never treat all 6 million as if they are a monolithic entity. Allow me to use a simple example to illustrate my point: one of the most iconic national dishes of Singapore is chilli crab. But can we assume that all Singaporeans actually like this dish? Firstly, that dish is off limits to those who are vegetarian or vegan and if you're allergic to seafood or if you just don't like crab, then you wouldn't touch it. The sauce is actually quite spicy, so if you don't like spicy food then this dish isn't for you either. I don't mind it but I have not had it for so many years simply because I find the whole experience just too messy and troublesome because of all the shells you have to work your way through. Therefore I would urge non-Singaporeans to refrain from making any assumptions about Singaporeans wholeheartedly loving anything local - be it the local cuisine, the Singaporean education system, Singaporean government or even Singlish. Yes some Singaporeans have embraced Singlish and adore it, Singlish is close to their hearts and defines them but that's a choice that one has to make - it is most certainly not an automatic process. Some may see Singlish as low-class and associated with less educated folks, whilst others don't really have a strong opinion either way on the matter. Regardless, one does have a choice in the matter so please, it would be foolish make assumptions about Singaporeans and Singlish given the complexity of this subject.
After all, a whole generation of Singaporeans have grown up with English as their first language and mother tongue. So take myself for example, my entire formal education in Singapore was done in English, every subject from geography to physics to history to chemistry to mathematics was taught in English so despite the fact that I grew up multilingual, English was and always has been my first language and mother tongue. So for young people in Singapore these days, they might learn loanwords from another language through Singlish - so for example, a popular loanword from Malay used in Singlish is 'malu' and it means embarrassing. For example, "I couldn't remember the name of the client during that sales pitch - oh dear, so malu." Interestingly a derivative of the word malu in Singlish is maluation, which would mean humiliation. It is taking a Malay word and using it as an English word, so it would be like, "please don't make me face those clients again, that last sales pitch went so badly, I don't want to go through another round of maluation with them." So in the past, the older Singaporeans like me who spoke Malay would use the word malu because it was more familiar and easier to use than the longer English word 'embarrassing' but these days, unless you were of Malay ethnicity, the chances of a non-Malay Singaporean speaking Malay fluently enough to prefer to use the Malay is negligible. The younger Singaporean might have picked up the word 'malu' through speaking Singlish with older folks in Singapore, but note that they are now learning loanwords from Malay through Singlish rather than using Malay loanwords in their spoken English because they are more comfortable and familiar with the Malay language. So when I'm speaking with a much younger Singaporean, I would avoid using a word like 'malu' just in case they wouldn't understand me and that would impede the communication. If I am simply trying to get my message across most efficiently, then the sensible and obvious option would be to stick to standard English and strip back the Singlish.
Thus young people in Singapore may still choose to use a word like malu to make their speech more colourful or for comedic effect; but this brings me to my next point: modern Singlish is a lot less linguistically diverse and all those loanwords which made Singlish so distinctive are becoming a lot more rare these days - why? Let me give you an example: if I wanted to say a sentence like, "goodness me, why is your grandmother so anxious? This is a not a complicated matter. Please tell her not to worry." Now back in the 1980s, I might say something like, "alamak why your Ama so kancheong one? This taiji not susah one lah. Tell her mian kia lah." So already, there are loanwords from Cantonese, Hokkien and Malay but I am reliant on the other party knowing those words from Cantonese, Hokkien and Malay to understand me. What if the other party didn't have the requisite vocabulary from those languages then? The sentence that becomes unintelligible and communication breaks down. I would then have to express myself using standard English devoid of any Asian loanwords in order to make sure that the message was clearly communicated with no ambiguity - that's exactly what has happened in Singapore today with the younger generation.
Today, those original conditions of a very multilingual society that created Singlish no longer exists, so can Singlish as a language survive for much longer? I see it as a flower that you buy at the florist - it may look pretty when you buy it, it may look alive and the first thing you do when you get home is to put that flower in a vase filled with water to prolong its life but the moment it has been cut off the plant, it has already started dying though this death isn't immediate - that flower still has a reasonable shelf life, long enough for you to want to spend money on it when you see it in the florist. Nonetheless, we all know that flower will eventually wither in the near future and die even if it is still in a vase filled with water. It is not like a potted plant which you can try to keep alive. No, this flower has been cut off the plant that was sustaining it. By the same token, Singlish is dying. We can already observe signs of this death in the last few decades as the linguistic landscape in Singapore has changed so quickly and radically. So when does it change from being a pidgin language to a creole to merely a dialect or a version of standard English spoken with a regional accent?
So let's look at an example from Singapore, there is a Youtube video channel called Goody Feed Blue Cats where a Singaporean blue cat discusses current affairs in Singlish. He is very popular and yes, I like his content very much because it goes beyond the novelty of hearing someone use Singlish instead of standard English on Youtube, his content is usually pretty good as well. Allow me to present you with the transcript from a recent Youtube short he posted: "Some travel agencies in JB claimed that they're facing bankruptcy after their vehicles were impounded by LTA for ferrying passengers between Malaysia and Singapore illegally. Some of them claim it's unfair lah, and LTA said over one hundred foreign registered vehicles were investigated. I think ah, if Scamschield is working too well, we might be seeing scammers openly claiming that they're facing bankruptcy. Hahahahaha." The vast majority of that is in standard English with no grammatical errors atypical of classic Singlish where speakers would use Chinese grammar instead. He uses the word 'lah' once at the end of the phrase, "some of them claim it's unfair lah" to place emphasis on just how strongly these travel agencies feel about the unfairness and injustice of the situation. He also slips in an 'ah' at the end "I think ah", that's a feature commonly found in Cantonese and Hokkien, so I would say in Hokkien, gwa xiong ah - it doesn't really mean anything, it is just a feature that has made its way into Singlish and it is inserted to break up the rhythm of a rather long sentence expressing a lot of information. Like that's it, clearly his accent is very Singaporean but there wasn't a single loanword in there, we had one lah and one ah and the rest was just his accent. Now to be fair, Blue Cat does use some loanwords from Mandarin and Hokkien in some of his other videos but that's not always the case. As a Youtuber, he needs to decide how far to push the Singlish at the risk of losing viewers who simply won't understand what he is saying if they speak neither Mandarin nor Hokkien. Thus I believe he is showing restraint in using a form of Singlish-lite or diet Singlish, where his accent is distinctly Singaporean but he will still be easily understood by someone from London, Sydney or New York. So let me ask you this: was that short video in Singlish or merely English with a Singaporean accent? My vote is for the latter and that's pretty much what modern Singlish has become. It's not a question of whether or not this Youtuber can speak a more classic form of Singlish and I have no doubt that he can, but it is more the fact that he has chosen not to do so that speaks volumes.
Let's look more closely at Singapore in 2025: it is far more international than the country I grew up in back in the 1980s. So even if you were working in a local company in Tampines or Bukit Batok, you could have foreign colleagues or you might serve foreign clients. Thus for young Singaporeans today, there really isn't any incentive to use Singlish in this context. Furthermore, there is a social stigma associated with speakers of Singlish because well educated younger Singaporeans tend to favor standard English with either a British or American accent, that's seen as posh and sophisticated whilst Singlish tends to be associated with those of lower social class. I believe the accent will still be there for a long time to come but Singlish as we know it is hardly this beloved local gem cherished by all Singaporeans. The fact is Singaporeans tend to be very pragmatic - if you tell them, learn coding and it'll be a useful tool for you to find a job, then they'll gladly take a course on coding. But it is hard to find any practical use for Singlish in Singapore today since the language of formal education and business is standard English and not Singlish, so unless you wish to become a comedian doing stand up comedy in Singlish, it is not deemed as something all that important to their everyday lives. So, what do you think? If you are Singaporean, what is your relationship with Singlish? Have you encountered dumb foreigners making ridiculous assumptions about Singlish? If you're an older Singaporean, how do you think Singlish has evolved over the last few decades? Let me know what you think, thank you.
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