Originally posted by Mat Toro:
i don't think singlish is something we shld be proud of cos its a copy langauge anyway.
Erm, might we point out that English, with it's over 2 million (and constantly growing) words is actually the ultimate copy language in the world. In fact even the two western powers that use English, namely the Yanks and the Tommies can even have problems understanding each other at times.
Also most lingists would disagree with you about the cultural utility of Singlish on plenty of grounds, the existence and utility of creole languages have long been observed in many different cultures and in fact is an important part of the culture itself.
Singlish is hardly unique in this sense. Go to Korean, Japan or even Indonesia and you will immediately see that they have a brand of creole just like us, but are far less uptight about it.
The only difference it seems for us is that we have somehow been less sucessful in understanding Singlish as a local creole, prehaps because the powers that are insist on being so hostile towards it instead of understanding that it was actually a child of the overly-fast drive towards introducing english that ended up alienating a large proportion of the population and creating Singlish.