Tuesday, September 29, 2009

A suggested topic is whether you believe Singlish should be discouraged in Singapore.

Singlish should be discouraged in Singapore. While it is arguably a language in its own right, it should not be encouraged or discouraged just because it is or is not a language. Instead, the role of the language should be considered. When that is considered, Singlish has no real reason to exist and thus should be discouraged.
The role of languages is to facilitate communication between humans. For this role, Singlish can easily be substituted with English, which is an acknowledged common language in Singapore. Singlish, which incorporates words from other languages, is actually inferior – one needs to know more words from multiple different languages in order to completely understand the Singlish speaker. Not everyone has the time or the inclination or ability to become a linguist, so most people can be assumed to have command of two languages at most. With Singlish having more than 4 languages contributing to its vocabulary, as well as new grammatical rules, learning Singlish is impractical. Thus Singlish is actually inferior to English or any other common language.
Of course, it could be argued that Singlish fosters communication by letting people who are not very fluent in English but stronger in their mother tongues to communicate but then again Singapore is not the entire world and cannot survive by itself. Yet most people who are not very fluent in English can understand most English while people who are not fluent in Singlish will get confused, as the more complicated words or phrases in Singlish are usually in a language besides English. To communicate with foreigners English is far more useful so Singlish is again supplanted by English.
Since Singlish is inferior to English in every role it should not be encouraged at all.

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