Talk:Singlish

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former featured article candidateSinglish is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
June 21, 2006Peer reviewReviewed
June 21, 2006Featured article candidateNot promoted
Current status: Former featured article candidate

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ephemeralives.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

[Untitled][edit]

Not sure, but looking at the following from the article:

The English-educated in Singapore received their English pedagogical instruction through missionary schools and convents such as the Anglo-Chinese School (ACS), Methodist Girls' School (MGS), Marymount Convent School, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ), Canossa's Convent (Located in Ajunied). However, as decolonization occurred, many expatriate English returned to Britain; and the post-65 generation - those that were born with the nationality as "Singaporean" rather than as "British subjects" - were increasingly taught by non-native teachers. In the late 1990s, due to budget constraints and the privatization of public schools, the standard of English language instruction fell, leading to confusion of grammar and vocabulary. Hence, in an unregulated socio-linguistic environment, the spontaneous varieties of a creolized English began to form after the 1960s. English language began to be taught by native Malay teachers as many affluent middle-class Singapore-born Chinese found careers in banking and corporate sectors or abroad, and Singapore-born European, Eurasian and Indian communities (the group most fluent in colonial English due to the long history of colonization in India) built legal careers that were more commercially viable.

In the two sentences that I bolded should 1990s be changed to 1960s? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.189.239.147 (talk) 19:49, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Phonology[edit]

Who wrote this nonsense? "English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences."

Total rubbish. And it goes on: "For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel."

The worst bit is that the author has actually linked RP to the relevant article. If s/he had bothered to check, s/he would have noted that RP is based on Southern British English, typically a Home Counties sort of accent. Nothing to do with Scottish/Welsh/Irish whatsoever! And of course "home" has a diphthong, both for the Queen and for RP speakers, as well as for a majority of Southern British speakers.

I'm also sceptical about geographical variation. If the East Coast speaks more acrolectally, then surely that's due to the socio-economic background of the population there? It may well be that some families who have always lived there for generations continue to do so to this day, but my guess is this is a minority. Social and geographical mobility are huge on this crowded island, and no doubt even this exclusive area has seen a lot of coming and going in the past two or three decades. And if you meet a pre-65er in a Woodlands condo, speaking what's here termed "Queen's English", you'd certainly not assume first thing that he's from Katong. Just imagine: "Nice accent, mate. Where about on the East Coast are you from?" Kinda weird. JREL (talk) 05:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

incorrect[edit]

i deleted the following:

English pronunciation in the pre-1965 class is derived from Standard Queen's English, unlike the later phenomenon of Received Pronunciation which influenced later British society through mass media like the BBC, which contains modification due to Scottish, Welsh and Irish influences. For example, the pre-1965 English-educated class in Singapore pronounce the word "home" with a slight diphthong akin to the vowel located in present-day Queen's English, whereas Received Pronunciation has modified the vowel to a single vowel.

this appears to make no sense. the statement about the RP pronunciation of "home" is simply false, and the supposed distinction between "Queen's English" and "RP" is nonsense -- note that the former is a link to the latter. Benwing 06:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Translations for the Curious?[edit]

For the graph showing the differences between the three different "classes" if you will of Singlish, what about a translation of what the first two were intending. I think this would give a clue as to the common use and speech patterns of those two groups. --DaedalusMachina 15:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well written, but is it true?[edit]

As a long time writer for Wikipedia, I am impressed by the quality of writing presented here. Every contributor should be proud of your collective achievements.

However, I am also disheartened by the complete lack of references in this entry. A Wikipedia article without references is not much more than talk cock, to borrow a Singlish expression. While it seems that at least some of the claims can easily be supported, others seem to be based on nothing more than the writer's mere conjectures or personal experience. Wikipedia is not a place for claims based on one's own "research" [1] or point of view [2] statements .

Even if not much independent research exists, there are still vast linguistic sources that can be utilized, such as IDEA [3] and Ethnologue [4].

I have added some initial references and marked particularly strong statements that require support. I look forward to seeing more factual evidence. Together, we can expand the knowledge on Singlish.

Please feel free to delete this comment when more references are added.

Sslevine (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is "Lah" of Chinese or Malay Origin?[edit]

The section states "[i]t originates from the Chinese character (啦, Pinyin: Lè/Là)", but also that "...in the Malay, 'lah' is appended to the end of the word and is not a separate word by itself."

It seems that the word is represented by the said Chinese character, but does not originated from it. However, I could not find evidence of the word in a Malay dictionary [5] or Min Nan (Hokkian). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sslevine (talkcontribs) 04:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh boy, if only we knew. There's as many suggestions for lah's origin out there as there are authors. Lisa Lim for example found similar particles in Bazaar Malay, Mandarin, and Cantonese, at least at a surface-phonetic level. She does point out though that Cantonese seems to have a counterpart for all eight particles she looks at -- you'd be tempted to say that this is some kind of systemic substratist influence, whereby the complete set of Cantonese particles was transferred into Singlish. The problem with that is the absence of so many Cantonese particles in Singlish. Go figure. Good thing is, there's still scope for a whole lot of research out there. JREL (talk) 13:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I took it to mean that it ultimately derives from Chinese and was borrowed in to Malay. --86.135.176.52 (talk) 18:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • More on "lah"

If it is taken from Bazar Malay, it is possible that Malay took it from Hadhrami Arabic (HA). In HA, "lah" (literally "No") is used as a question tag which means something like "Isn't it". There are other HA words in Hokien Chinese. These include "garam" < HA gharaam (madness) and "akai" < HA "'aql" wisdom, sanity". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.154.153.212 (talk) 23:01, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RP is not the same thing as Standard English[edit]

There is still some confusion in this article between Received Pronuncation and Standard English. They are two entirely different things. RP is, as its name implies, a particular way of speaking the words. (The Queen still speaks it, but not many people in Britain do any more, even on the BBC.) Standard English is about the words themselves rather than how they are pronounced. Most better-educated people in Britain speak Standard English most of the time, but many of them don't speak RP.

The idea that Lee Kuan Yew speaks RP is completely absurd. But he does speak something approximating to Standard English.

I have tinkered with, or simply deleted, some of the more egregious howlers in this article but I suspect that it still needs a lot of work. There remain several unsourced assertions that seem to me rather dubious. Alarics (talk) 22:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Singlish vs Singapore Standard English[edit]

There was a disambig and red links pointing to variants of "Singapore Standard English", as if such a standard existed. It doesn't, and the Singlish article already goes into much detail about the registers of English in Singapore: the "formal official" English is acrolectal Singlish, and the creolized version is basilectal. Jpatokal (talk) 09:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there is a need to differientiate between the two. Singlish is generally known to be "bad" English as opposed to standard English used in official context (e.g. in news reporting). As far as I can understand, the word "Singlish" is NOT synonymous with standard/official English in the Singaporean context, otherwise it would make no sense for the authorities from explicitly discouraging the use of Singlish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.10.243 (talk) 13:50, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We all agree that "Singlish" exists. However, there is no standard for "proper" Singaporean English as far as I can tell, as in Singapore "proper English" is equated with the Queen's English. Jpatokal (talk) 14:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jpat, you are very confused. I will copy the register for you here.

Basilect ("Singlish")
"Dis guy Singrish si beh
powderful sia."
Mesolect
"Dis guy Singlish
damn powerful one leh."
Acrolect ("Standard")
"This person's Singlish
is very good."

The register is a register of Englishes in Singapore, not a register of Singlish. Singlish and Singapore Standard English are two different languages. The register is just a way of simplifying things, it allows you to visualise things.

Singlish is the basilect on the register. See the word "Singlish" on the left of the register? Singapore Standard English is the acrolect, see the word "standard" on the right of the register? They are two different languages at different ends of the register.

The "acrolectal Singlish" you keep harping on is the mesolect on the register, the middle ground - "dis guy Singlish damn powerful one leh". It is not the acrolect, because the acrolect is standard English, see the word "standard" on the right of the register?

Singlish is a creoloid with many languages inside it. Singapore Standard English is a language with only one language - English - inside it. They are not the same. Singlish is only used to to describe the basilectal form of English in Singapore. Below Singlish is pidgin English, which is not shown on this register.

And it is the status of Singlish that is in doubt not Singapore Standard English. There is much debate over whether it is fully formed and whether it is a creole. Singlish is actually not a fully formed stable creole despite what many people claim. It is still in flux. And it is technically a creoloid not creole.

The status of Singapore Standard English has never been in doubt, ask any academic that. SSE is basically similar to the standard varieties of English in the UK. However, there is no standard Singaporean accent because the accent is still standardising. It is currently in stage 3, which means it is almost standardised. You can say it is on the cusp on being standardised.

I won't go into your other posts below because if you can understand this, you will see that all your posts are wrong.

The main article is very poorly written. Half of it should probably be deleted. 5 million Singlish speakers? There are only 3 million Singapore citizens. And not all of them speak Singlish. Singlish is also frowned upon by many in Singapore. Smilingfrog (talk) 17:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Enlighten me, oh master -- what exactly is the difference between my statement of "there is no standard for "proper" Singaporean English as far as I can tell, as in Singapore "proper English" is equated with the Queen's English" (which redirects to Standard English), and your statements of "SSE is basically similar to the standard varieties of English in the UK. However, there is no standard Singaporean accent"? Jpatokal (talk) 20:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't responding to that post. I was responding to your first post in this thread and your other posts in the threads below.

"There was a disambig and red links pointing to variants of "Singapore Standard English", as if such a standard existed. It doesn't, and the Singlish article already goes into much detail about the registers of English in Singapore: the "formal official" English is acrolectal Singlish, and the creolized version is basilectal" - Jpatokal

"Actually, since Singlish is defined as "English as spoken in Singapore", by definition all English-speakers in Singapore are using some form of Singlish" - Jpatokal

You obviously do not understand what Singlish is. I am not the first one to point this out to you, JackLee and ter890 have pointed this out to you as well.

And Singapore Standard English is not equal to British Standard English (BSE). It approximates it. Australia Standard English, Belize Standard English, NZ Standard English all approximate BSE but they are not equal to BSE. There are always slight differences, especially in vocabulary. There are also huge differences in terms of the "standard" accent.

Hope that helps. Smilingfrog (talk) 07:09, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that there is a universally agreed definition of what "Singlish" means: there isn't, and the article should reflect this more clearly. Some randomly picked definitions from Google Scholar:
"the colloquial variety of Singapore English (known as Singlish)" [6]
"Singlish, the homegrown colloquial variety of Singapore English" [7]
"Singlish (English used in Singapore)" [8]
"Singlish, the (mesolectal/basilectal) variety of English spoken in Singapore" [9]
"Singlish, the more colloquial and home-grown variety of English in Singapore" [10]
" Singlish, the variety of local English with the lowest social status (the basilect)"
" Singlish is the home dialect of Singaporean English speakers." [11]
" the local Singapore form of English (Singlish)"[12]
"There are not many these days who are not acquainted with Singapore English (SE) - often fondly referred to as Singlish" [13]
So is Singlish a) the basilectal variety, b) the mesolectal/basilectal variety, c) the "colloquial" variety, d) the "local/home" variety, or e) any form of English spoken in Singapore? Take your pick. Jpatokal (talk) 08:17, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk about scraping the barrel. I should have known better than to feed you. Smilingfrog (talk) 09:37, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is that a tacit acknowledgement that you were wrong? Jpatokal (talk) 11:53, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was a tribute to your intellect. If one can find articles on the internet with contrary views, or deliberately quote things out of context, it definitely has to be true, how could it be false? Only someone as smart as you could have managed to find those 10 articles there. People of average intellect like myself could only manage to find 8 articles stating that Australia was in Africa. Of course that is debatable...I mean while Australians do share many similarities with Africans, it might be classified as another continent. I don't know, this is a tough one.

Enjoy your meal, this is my treat. Yum yum!

Smilingfrog (talk) 17:52, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Statement that "lah" cannot be used at the end of a question[edit]

In the section on the use of "lah", it is claimed that "lah" cannot be used at the end of a question. However, "lah" is indeed used at the end of questions where one tries to solicit an answer in a slightly more aggressive manner, e.g. "So you think he can do it lah?" This can in no way be considered a rhetorical question as an answer is indeed required.


What about 'tio'?[edit]

The not so commonly used and not so well-known tio has the same meaning as 'Kena', but i am still not sure wether u can use it the same way as 'kena'. For example 'I tio ban' (i got banned). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Choo chng (talkcontribs) 12:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not claiming to be an expert in linguistics, but my take on that is "the nuance". From Hokkien, "tio" implies something received which can either be positive or negative, while "kena" is almost always used in in the negative sense.

When both are used in the negative sense, "kena" seems to stress the suffering/regret/disappointment on the part of the recipient slightly more, whereas "tio" almost always has some degree of indignation/indifference/anger or resistance to it on the part of the subject.

Again, I don't claim to be an expert. Just personal opinion 203.171.196.29 (talk) 09:30, 10 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not put things that you are unsure of into the page[edit]

I Erased this line: It is the first language of many Singaporeans, and the second language of nearly all the rest of the country's citizens.

Singlish is NOT the first language for singaporeans and second for others. Singapore's education system teaches ENGLISH as the first language and MOTHER TONGUE as the second. Therefore, Singlish is NOT a language that Singapore's education system teaches.~ter890~ 12:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ter890 (talkcontribs)

A first language is the language you first learn at home from your parents, and has nothing to do with what is taught in school. Jpatokal (talk) 12:36, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Still, we cannot be sure that MANY Singaporeans learns Singlish as first language, and others as second language. We have no proof. So there. ~ter890~ 06:24, 15 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ter890 (talkcontribs)

Please take a look at this, courtesy of the Ministry of Education: [14] "In 2008, of six and seven-year-olds from Chinese and Indian families entering the formal school system, 60 percent came from predominantly English-speaking homes. Of Malay children, about 35 percent." [15] In other words, well over half of Singapore's children are now using Singlish as a first language ("predominantly English-speaking"). Jpatokal (talk) 10:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had a brief look at the speech. The sentence you quoted is not directly from the speech, but seems to be from a Yawning Bread article. What the Minister for Education said at para. 14 was this:

Only 1 in 10 of Primary 1 Chinese students in 1982 (quarter century, age 33 today) came from homes that used English — the figure today is nearly 6 in 10. For Indians it has moved from 3 in 10 to 6 in 10; Malays — 0.5 in 10 to 3.5 in 10. A seismic shift in language environment has occurred within one generation. Those above 40 years of age today would have grown up in homes that spoke their MTL, either predominantly or partly, either with parents, grandparents or siblings. But increasingly, children of all races now come from homes that speak English predominantly or only.

The Minister for Education spoke of "English", not "Singlish". I think what he meant was that Singaporean children of all races now come from homes where English is spoken all or more of the time than other languages. I do not think one can conclude from the speech that well over half of Singapore's children are now using Singlish as a first language. — Cheers, JackLee talk 13:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, since Singlish is defined as "English as spoken in Singapore", by definition all English-speakers in Singapore are using some form of Singlish -- which doesn't necessarily mean sounding like Phu Chu Kang, since acrolectal ("good English") Singlish is Singlish as well. But I've changed the ref to the 2000 census and noted the Garmen's policy of sticking its fingers in its ears and pretending Singlish doesn't exist. Jpatokal (talk) 02:30, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think one can draw from the 2000 census report the conclusion that you made in the first sentence. It just isn't apparent enough from the report and, in my view, is therefore an unsourced opinion. I'd want to see a better source for this if you had mentioned it in the article, but you haven't so the current edit is fine. — Cheers, JackLee talk 18:17, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The census report a) gives the 71% literacy figure, b) uses the words "lingua franca" and c) does not distinguish between English and Singlish. What other conclusions am I making? Jpatokal (talk) 02:01, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

jpatokal is obviously a someone who knows nothing about singapore and thinks he knows everything. he is just out to belittle and bash singapore. calling all the varieties of english spoken in singapore as singlish is just like calling the english spoken in britain as glasglowdian english. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.186.9.249 (talk) 21:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, from a scientific perspective, all languages and language varieties are equally valid forms of human communication, so even if Jpatokal said all Singaporeans spoke like Phua Chu Kang (which they obviously don't), that wouldn't be an insult - if you perceive it as an insult, that may be due to your perception of Singlish as a "low prestige variety", which has no basis in science. I think the misunderstanding comes down to the fact that for most Singaporeans, "Singlish" is used to refer only to basilectal Singlish. From the perspective of a linguist specializing in creole languages, it would certainly be accurate to say that the acrolect - essentially, Standard English as spoken by native Singaporeans - is part of the creole continuum known as Singlish, it's just on the other end of the spectrum from "colloquial Singlish". When you say "Glasgowdian English", I assume you're referring to Glaswegian Scots. --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:15, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Consider removing lines without citications[edit]

I have seen the peer review for Singlish Some sentences in the article contains weasel words. Maybe we should look at them and discuss whether we should keep them or not? User:Ter890 (talk) ~ter890~ 16:22, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Typo or not?[edit]

I believe this entry in the table on the article page to contain a typographical error:

  • Indifference/ Questioning in a clam manner

It appears that 'clam' ought to be 'calm' or not? (See, I have been reading the article) --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:51, 9 Aug

IPA[edit]

Considering all those words like kena and lah are obviously non-standard spellings, it may be helpful to get IPA transcriptions of them. 60.242.48.18 (talk) 04:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Non-standard spellings of standard English words?[edit]

Why is there a need to spell standard English words the way it is pronounced in Singlish? Shouldn't these be in a separate section on pronunciation instead of having words spelt like "dis", "oreddi", and "izzit"? Granted, these are common (and deliberate) misspellings on internet forums; but that's no reason to include it here. Besides, there is little consistency between examples, and the words modified are chosen more or less arbitrarily. Silvermael (talk) 20:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Singlish isn't an official language and has no standard orthography. Some people use etymological spellings, writing words with standard English spellings regardless of pronunciation, while other people choose to use spellings that more closely reflect Singlish pronunciation. Part of the problem here is that none of the examples are sourced, in spite of the (relative) wealth of academic literature about Singlish. Therefore, the Wikipedians who provided the examples in the article essentially have no guidance on how words should be spelled. I'm guessing most of the examples were added by native speakers of Singlish, who chose to spell them as they would in real life. --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:19, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with section on the word "Siol"[edit]

While very funny, it's not in keeping with the rest of the tone of the article, any experts here who could fix that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.224.113 (talk) 17:28, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I cleaned the section up quite a bit after noticing that some of it had been written with poor English, and then saw that the tone (especially of the example) was not encyclopedic. Someone else should rewrite the section. ミーラー強斗武 (talk) 19:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Other Words and Phrases that could be in the article[edit]

Just starting a thread for any other instances. One phrase I came across working with Singaporean co-workers is "double confirm". Can anyone confirm that this is a Singlish phrase? It's completely redundant, but people seemed to use it constantly. One co-worker gave me this example:

  • Person A: Can you double confirm that you got my meeting request?
  • Person B: Double confirm? No, triple confirm!

206.177.43.73 (talk) 22:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Singlish. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:06, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ingvaeonic[edit]

Other related pages like Anglic, Middle English, or English language itself don't include the postulated Ingvaeonic group in the genealogy in the infobox, so I'm curious why it is here. - 131.111.184.8 (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Move government reactions/ public debate to another section?[edit]

As per title. While the government's perception of Singlish may fit as a summary of it's status, I feel like it can be elaborated upon. I believe there are countless references in Singaporean media, even in the mainstream, that can be used to elaborate on the government's thoughts about the language/creole.Mount2010 (talk) 04:20, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Examples[edit]

I love the wealth of examples provided in this page. I do think that they should be reworked, as much of information is unsourced and the tone of those sections is often unencyclopaedic. I also feel that in some cases, an excessive number of examples is given which clutters up the article. Any thoughts? --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Recent article rewrite[edit]

I'm afraid I don't agree with your decisions (at the moment) with what you're doing in this article and unless you could provide more context behind them (such as your claim of unecyclopaedic material) I think you should cease in removing significant amounts of material. 185.153.150.49 (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi User:185.153.150.49, thanks for bringing this to the talk page. I rewrote multiple sections of the page to be more science-based, add more sources, consolidated some information that was repeated in several sections, and remove unsourced, unencyclopaedic, unorganized and sometimes irrelevant content, etc, and to bring it more in line with other well-written articles about language varieties. I put a significant amount of time into these edits, and I believe your characterizing them as if I had only deleted material is inaccurate. But of course, Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and this article doesn't belong to me or any one person. I invite you to share specific objections to specific changes, in accordance with well-established Wikipedia editing norms such as Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus" and Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary (in particular, see "Do not revert a large edit because much of it is bad, and you do not have time to rewrite the whole thing."
Several of the things I removed had been tagged as lacking sources for over two years, and some sections were also previously mentioned on this talk page by other users as needing rewriting or removal. Since you didn't discuss specific objections at all, I'll just give one example here of a justification for one of the changes I made, but I hope you'll bring specific objections to specific changes, going forward.
I removed the following unsourced information from the section on "*den*":
"When used in this context, in formal Singlish, the particle is lengthened to 2 beats to indicate replacement of "ran2hou4" or 1 beat when used in conjunction with "hor" as in "den hor".
It can also be shortened to 1 beat if the other speaker is a fluent Singapore speaker of Singlish (who tends to speak fast and can deduce via contextual clues which form of meaning the use of den is taking on), but the Singlish variant used when spoken to a wider Southeast Asian audience, is lengthening of the word to 2 beats.
The subtle usage of these particles differentiates a non-Singaporean trying to assimilate into society, and a native-born Singaporean (whether it's a Chinese, Indian, Eurasian, Malay or Caucasian speaker of Singlish). In many cases, a mixed child born and bred in Singapore will speak a more subtle form of Singlish (together with the influence of another language such as Dutch, Swedish, or German) than a first-generation Singaporean assimilating into Singapore."
Not only was this section completely unsourced, I actually believe it could be considered original research, and may even be outside the scope of this article.
Other principles that guided my rewrites included: WP:PYRAMID, WP:TONE, WP:TOPIC and the Wikipedia Manual of Style, among others.
Keep in mind that everything in Wikipedia requires a reliable source citation, and uncited material may be subject to removal.
I'll also note that contrary to what you stated in your edit summaries, regarding there "not being consensus" and the onus being on me to seek approval for all changes before making them -- this is essentially the opposite of Wikipedia policy. See WP:BRD, and "don't revert due solely to "no consensus" as I mentioned earlier. I am more than happy to discuss any and all changes that I made, but I hope we can avoid making this personal as I nothing I have done here violates Wikipedia policy and was all done in good faith.
Thank you for sharing your opinions here, and I look forward to working with you on this article. --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 01:58, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Change the disgusting word[edit]

Hello editor! Actually, this page is full of the words that people may not like.

For example, in the ‘Grammar’ section:

-> Damn, I am …

The word ‘damn’ is not a good word to others. Posting a disgusting vocabulary in a wiki page is not very proper. Hope you can change the words into a right one. 迷你果醬 (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really a creole?[edit]

Quoting "There is much debate over whether it is fully formed and whether it is a creole. Singlish is actually not a fully formed stable creole despite what many people claim. It is still in flux. And it is technically a creoloid not creole." from a conversation above from 2010. This kinda reflects the status of Manglish in its own article. Should the Singlish article be changed to indicate that maybe it's not really a full-fledged creole? I'm no linguistics expert but looking at other English-based creole languages like Krio and Tok Pisin, I'm just like wow, Manglish and Singlish is nothing like that. To the best of my knowledge, I think they are dialects of English with features of creoles. But correct me if I am wrong. –Jiaminglimjm (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dead reference links[edit]

I've noticed a few of the links to references go to deleted articles. I've only seen two currently, but I'll reply to this talk with more if I find them after this. I don't know how to edit the reference list myself, unfortunately, and I'm meant to be doing other things so I don't have the time to learn right now unfortunately.

Source number with web archive links that work instead:

[27] https://web.archive.org/web/20071227002843/http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_160322.html

[29] https://web.archive.org/web/20180625021515/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/nyt-op-ed-on-singlish-makes-light-of-efforts-to-promote-standard-8008464 Anafyral (talk) 02:52, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"He tio lottery"?[edit]

This phrase in the section on "Tio" seems awkward in a Singlish context. Perhaps the word "lottery" doesn't seem to fit in the "rhythm" of Singlish. I get the feeling that native speakers would say the specific lottery that was won e.g. "He tio 4D, (so that's why he spend so much)". Does this seem awkward to anyone else? Mount2010 (talk) 03:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicated text[edit]

Two paragraphs from the lead section are duplicated from the "Usage in Society" section. How should this be addressed? Mount2010 (talk) 16:19, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]