As a Singaporean, I am often asked what language we speak, given our four official languages: Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English. While Singapore boasts linguistic diversity, English stands out as the dominant language, serving as the medium of instruction in schools and the working language of the government. To date, 48.3% of Singaporeans use English as their most frequent language at home, a stark contrast from the less than 2% in 1959. The linguistic landscape of modern-day Singapore is vastly different from what it was six decades ago. Within the history of Singapore lies a fascinating, easily overlooked tale of how language and language policy have come to shape the nation. Strategic language planning has yielded significant socioeconomic effects, from fostering economic growth to influencing cultural identities and even shaping colloquial linguistic varieties. The story of language continues today, as language policies attempt to adapt to an increasingly complex and diverse society.
Before Singapore became a British settlement, it was a Johor Empire inhabited predominantly by aboriginal Malays and a handful of Chinese. The arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819, along with the leasing of Singapore to the East India Company, marked a pivotal shift. Singapore was transformed into a commercial trading hub, attracting immigrants in droves. By 1824, there were nearly 11,000 inhabitants, up from about 1,000 merely five years prior. The 11,000 comprised 74 Europeans, 4,580 Malays, 3,317 Chinese, and 756 Indians among others. At the time, the prevailing language of communication was Bazaar Malay, a pidgin form of Malay which literally translates to ‘the language of the market’. Other languages would have been used within communities, including Austronesian, Chinese, and South Asian languages. English remained confined to the British elite, and was rarely introduced to the locals. The education system developed slowly under colonial rule, and English-medium instruction was mostly seen as the responsibility of Christian missionaries.
After the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in World War II, education gradually took on more importance. Enrolment in English-medium schools increased year on year, with 50.4% of the population being enrolled in such schools by 1962. Despite this, English proficiency remained limited, overshadowed by a multitude of other languages.
Therefore, when the People’s Action Party (PAP) won their first election in 1959, marking the start of Singapore’s internal self-governance, the issue of language was high on the political agenda. Walking along the streets of Singapore in the late 1950s, one might have heard a mixture of Hokkien, Teochew, Malay, Javanese, Boyanese, Tamil, Malayalam and Gujarati, to name a few. As a result, many who grew up during this period understood and spoke several languages, having learnt them by necessity. For the newly-elected government, this diversity needed to be carefully managed in order to achieve economic and political aims. Primarily, a common tongue was needed to facilitate effective communication, both domestically and internationally. There was also a desire to homogenise ethnic groups so that stronger ties could be forged within communities, which would aid nation-building efforts. Thus, in 1963, Singapore’s constitution officially recognised Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English as its official languages.
Subsequent years of development saw the implementation of further language policies. Then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew viewed English as Singapore’s gateway to global economic integration. Raising local standards in English was, therefore, an important first step to attracting international trade and boosting economic growth. Consequently, in 1987, English was made the medium of instruction across all schools. Alongside the implementation of English-medium education came the bilingual policy, where every student received ‘mother tongue’ lessons in school. Depending on their ethnicity, which had to fall under one of the four state-defined categories, Chinese, Malay, Indian, or Others, students were assigned a mother tongue from one of the three remaining official languages. If a student was Chinese, they would learn Mandarin. If they were Malay, they would learn Malay. And if they were Indian, they would learn Tamil. This bilingual policy was seen as a way to connect individuals with their cultural heritage, thereby strengthening citizens’ sense of belonging while simultaneously giving them a competitive edge.
The policy was, however, somewhat exclusionary. While the official languages were chosen to be representative of the main ethnic identities, they failed to capture the linguistic heterogeneity within each group. At the constitution’s inception, Mandarin was hardly spoken by the local Chinese population. Instead, languages from southern provinces of China, such as Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka and Cantonese, were the most widely used. Similarly, far from being a common language, Tamil was a non-native language for a high proportion of Indians living in Singapore. Many spoke other languages including Malayalam, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Hindu. The emphasis on the four official languages thus led to the societal marginalisation of certain language varieties.
Then, there was the issue of who got assigned which mother tongue. The practice of assigning second languages based on ethnic identity was a problem for individuals with more complex, mixed identities, who did not fit neatly into one of the four broad categories of race. Particularly affected was the Peranakan community: descendants of Chinese immigrants who married Malay locals. Mixed Peranakan marriages tended to involve Chinese men marrying Malay women. As ethnic classification was done based on the father’s ethnicity, Peranakans were typically classified as Chinese, with Mandarin being designated as their official mother tongue. This neglected the fact that many Peranakans adopted Malay cultural practices, often speaking Baba Malay (a linguistic variety of Malay) at home.
Eurasians were left in an odd position as well, having no ethnic mother tongue assigned to them. Instead, they were to choose either Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their second language to fulfil the bilingual requirements. Despite being an official language, the status of English had always been slightly special, having been adopted as the lingua franca to bolster Singapore’s economy and international status. The purpose of the mother tongues, however, was quite different. In the early years of statehood, there was a need to forge a sense of nationalism and identity among Singaporeans. To do this, the government relied on distinguishing Singapore from the West by highlighting its ‘Asian-ness’. English was therefore denied the status of being a mother tongue. ‘Mother tongues’, as conceived of by the PAP, were Asian languages associated with traditional values which would counter the effects of western indulgence. For Eurasians, who had mostly grown up with English as their home language, this policy seemed to disregard their cultural realities.
Aside from formal policies, several government campaigns were implemented to engineer linguistic habits. As mentioned earlier, most of the Chinese population spoke southern Chinese languages instead of Mandarin. To Lee, this was undesirable: in a speech, he argued that making children learn more than two languages would unduly burden them, calling on parents to reduce the use of other Chinese languages at home. In an effort to encourage Chinese Singaporeans to adopt Mandarin in their everyday lives, the Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched in 1979. Under the campaign, other Chinese languages were disparaged as ‘dialects’, and were considered less important than Mandarin, which was viewed as more economically valuable. During the campaign, dialect programming was banned from Channel 8, the main Chinese-language television channel in Singapore. The campaign ran with slogans like ‘Mandarin In, Dialects Out’ (1983), and ‘Speak Mandarin. Your Children’s Future Depends On Your Effort Today’ (1984). The social engineering project was a resounding success: predominantly dialect-speaking households fell from 76% of the population in 1980 to 48% in 1990. Nevertheless, the costs of such a campaign were high. In an effort to unite the Chinese, the campaign undermined cross-generational ties. As young Singaporeans lost the ability to converse in dialects, a generation of dialect-speaking elderly became increasingly alienated. The cultural losses are palpable: dialects are likely to disappear within the current generation.
Against the backdrop of strategic language planning, Singlish, a creole language, had emerged. The colloquial language developed primarily among the middle classes who, lacking formal English education, began incorporating elements of English into their speech. At first glance, Singlish may seem like nothing more than a local variant of English. However, you will soon notice that it exhibits its own grammatical structure, markedly separate from that of English. Grammatical endings, tenses, definite articles and linking verbs are often dropped. A phrase like ‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen’ might be expressed as ‘Won’t one lah’. Singlish exhibits a rich fusion of linguistic influences; a patchwork resulting from constant multicultural interaction. Its grammar is largely based on Hokkien and Malay, while its distinctive pronunciation and intonation has influences from Malay, Indian, and Chinese languages. Borrowed words are common, such as ‘kancheong’ (nervous or tense) from Cantonese, or ‘atas’ (describing something that is high class) from Malay. There are even phrases combining multiple influences, such as ‘buay tahan’ (to be unable to tolerate something), which combines Hokkien (‘buay’) and Malay (‘tahan’) in one expression. The creolisation of Singlish shows that attempting to engineer language habits is not a straightforward task: while the Speak Mandarin Campaign may have succeeded in discouraging the widespread use of ‘dialects’, words and phrases from these languages continued to seep into everyday vocabulary. Languages are not merely modes of speaking, but modes of thinking as well. For Singaporeans, their unique modes of thinking were tied to their native tongues. Therefore, they relied on their vast linguistic resources to express key cultural concepts from such languages as Hokkien and Malay; cultural concepts which did not have equivalent forms in Anglo-English. As some scholars have noted, Singlish is a ‘hybridised, creative [way] of speaking that [embodies] the local,’ allowing for the ‘expression of sociocultural meanings, identities, and practices’.
In the nineties, Singlish films and serials were all the rage. One of the most iconic, well-loved sitcoms was ‘Phua Chu Kang’, which featured a Singaporean everyman who spoke Singlish. It was clear that Singaporeans found familiarity and comfort in their daily vernacular. Unfortunately, Singlish was not embraced by everyone. Concerned that the rising popularity of Singlish was hampering English proficiency, ministers began discouraging its use. ‘Singlish is a handicap we must not wish on Singaporeans’, then Senior Minister Lee declared in 1999. In the same year, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong characterised Singlish as ‘broken ungrammatical English […] which English speakers outside Singapore have difficulties in understanding’. To the ruling party, the acceptance of Singlish was a threat to Singapore’s economic prosperity and global competitiveness. A year later, the Speak Good English Movement was born, a brainchild of the PAP aimed at promoting grammatically correct English. Public speaking competitions were held and media rules were tightened. Season three of ‘Phua Chu Kang’ featured the titular protagonist attending English lessons. Singlish was thus relegated to an inferior position within society as attitudes shifted.
Twenty years on, the status of Singlish, while still a point of contention, has changed. Increasingly, it is being seen as a cultural asset, with Singlish-related videos racking up more than 60 million views on Tiktok, and 27 Singlish terms having been added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Accordingly, it seems that the PAP has adjusted its stance. During the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, the government produced a music video featuring Phua Chu Kang using Singlish to inform the public about good hygiene and media practices. The previously marginalised Chinese dialects have likewise enjoyed a greater degree of acceptance. In an official video titled ‘Vaccinate Already?’, local artistes performed a song written in Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin, urging viewers to get vaccinated. The value of dialects and colloquial languages lies in their ability to connect with audiences – something the government is now trying to harness.
Greater flexibility in language planning can also be seen in the recent revisions made to the bilingual policy. Since 1990, five other South Asian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindu, Punjabi, Urdu) have been accepted as second language subjects in schools. Additionally, students are free to choose their mother tongue when enrolling, as opposed to being assigned one based on their ethnic identity. These changes are a positive sign of a growing acknowledgement of Singapore’s precious linguistic heritage. Still, the effects of previous policies remain entrenched. Given that linguistic diversity in Singapore has already faced a sharp decline, these changes may be too little, too late.
The beauty of language is that it continually evolves. New Singlish terms are being coined by successive generations, and more regional languages are settling upon the nation’s shores. As Singapore grapples with an increasingly complex and intercultural demographic, policymakers must continually reassess language policies to better reflect the lived realities of its citizens. To conclude, the winding history of language policy in Singapore exemplifies the profound influence of language on cultural and societal development. The language of a nation stands, undeniably, as the ultimate expression of its ethos and collective identity.
This article was originally published in OPR’s Issue 13: Language.
Meira Lee is a first-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student at St John’s College, Oxford.