I was born in Singapore, to Singaporean parents. Yet, throughout my life I have been constantly asked if I’m Singaporean. One of the main reasons is how I speak. English is my first language and, as I am rather embarrassed to admit, the only language I speak fluently. My parents constantly emphasized the importance of speaking clear, good English when I was growing up and that is why I rarely speak “Singlish” at home. This does not mean I speak with an affected American or British accent, but rather that my speech remains unaccented and perhaps as a result, a poor instrument to use in deciphering my background.
I attended a secondary school where even out of lessons, English was the primary language spoken. How badly students fared in their Mother Tongue exams -especially in the Oral Assessment Exams- seemed to be a running joke and an ironic point of pride. One of the main reasons for this seemed to be the view that only educated people could speak English very fluently, and speaking in a mix of Mandarin and English that makes up Singlish was simply not as classy.
Many of my peers speak the way I speak. I felt at home. I heard how odd my conscious attempt to speak full, grammatical sentences sounded, only when I interacted with people outside of this bubble. I found myself code-switching, self-consciously modifying the syntax and vocabulary of my speech when conversing with provision shop owners, department store salesgirls, the elderly and anyone else in my own suburban neighbourhood. To avoid doing so seemed to be pompous, a way of asserting some kind of imagined superiority over people who do not speak English the way I usually do. It was then that I fully understood how language is an unofficial reflection of social class in Singapore. My awkward intonation when speaking Singlish made me feel distant from people outside of my immediate social circle.
I was of course, aware of and exposed to Singlish from the time I could speak. From playground chatter to local television sitcoms, Singapore’s unique brand of colloquial English has been a deeply-entrenched part of living. I was just rusty in my use of it because of my anxiety of being viewed as someone who cannot speak English properly.
In the end, I embraced Singlish—or at least I thought I did. It was a tool I kept at the back of my mind, to whip out at social gatherings when I wanted to appear “down-to-earth” or when I wanted to prove my Singaporean-ness to people I’d just met. I learnt a few Hokkien and Malay words that constituted Singlish, and that helped me communicate with people of the older generation, to show them that I was not a “proud girl” and that I was a filial product of the my generation. But back at school and work, it was very important that I slipped back into the mode of speaking the “Queen’s English” – minus the British accent - to prove my value as a person with social status and class. I wonder if my relationship with Singlish will always be this paradoxical. But more interestingly, what is the role of Singlish in an increasingly cosmopolitan Singapore? In a divided discourse on what it means to be Singaporean, perhaps speaking Singlish is a cushion for Singaporeans to fall back on to remember their roots. Or will Singlish cement an existing socio-economic class divide among locals, deepening the cracks in an already-fractured Singaporean identity? I don’t think there will be an answer in the near future, but Singlish is here to stay and I will continue to have a complicated relationship with it.
