"Wad do u think of tis prob?" This was one of the messages I received quite a few weeks ago. I was browsing through the messages of my handphone and this message happened to catch my eye. Suddenly, a question popped up in my mind:
"Does the use of text message language affect the English standard of Singapore?"
I think that it is quite natural of us to use slang in our speech. I am no different. It is already in our blood to speak "Singlish". I think that the use of "Singlish" or slang will only affect us if we do not have know how to spead Standard English. We may get influenced by our speech that sometimes we do not even know that we are not speaking Standard English. The use of "Singlish" becomes our Standard English and we feel weird using Standard English. Thus, we might somehow get affected if we do not practise speaking Standard English. I can assure you that if it wasn't for my English lessons, I would not even know the difference between "is" or "are". This is evident that using "Singlish" is will most likely affect our way of speech.
Although I would not really go all out to ban the use of "Singlish", I also do not think that we should promote it. I would like all of us to try to use more Standard English and the use of standard of English in Singapore would be greatly improved.
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well i do agree that singlish may cause our english to detioriate. but what do you think about promoting Singlish as a creole, as "Denglisch" from germany and "welsh" from wales are being promoted? you could try reading up on this topics, it will make you rethink about the validity of singlish. its unique to us, perhaps one of the few things which are 'uniquely singapore'!
ReplyDeletelauYJ
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ReplyDeleteI too, agree that singlish may cause our english to detioriate. However, have you seen the older generations type and use handphones to SMS? You realise that they type really slow. A message like this: "Hello, how are you? Are you free? If you are, I'll meet you at the seafood restaurant at Jurong for lunch. Please reply!" could take about 5 minutes! But, if you change the message to "Hi, how r u? U free? Reply pls. if you free, I meet u at seafood restaurant at jurong!"
ReplyDeleteMy point is, don't you think you can save about half the amount of time by messaging in short form? Please reply and tell me your views.
Yours,
HYD
Edit: HAPPY CNY!
hello,just curious,is this blog for school purposes or personal?haha.
ReplyDeleteWell,personally i think that the use of singlish is for convenience sake and it is uniquely Singapore. But if we let it take over standard english it just causes our english standards to deteriorate. If singlish becomes part of us,we will not be able to communicate properly with people from english-speaking countries. One very important point: As you all know, english is a global language(international language or whatever you call it),we must use it correctly in order not to disgrace ourselves
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