For those who have never heard it (I never had before), here's a short clip from the Singlish dub of Disney's Beauty and the Beast:
Dan Nosowitz writing for Atlas Obscura wrote:...“Singlish itself, in its full-blown version, can get quite hard to understand [for non-Singaporean English speakers],” says Jakob Leimgruber, a sociolinguist and assistant professor who wrote his thesis on Singlish. Singaporeans are rarely monolingual, and conversations can often include bits and pieces, or full sentences, in multiple languages, which can make trying to isolate Singlish a bit tricky. But, despite the fact that Singapore is made up of multiple ethnic groups who speak different languages, Singlish itself is “remarkably consistent,” says Leimgruber, across the entire populace. ... Singlish also uses a lot of reduplication, which is repeating the same word. English doesn’t do this much; it might have a phrase like “very, very big,” in which the repetition is used to amplify the word “very.” “Very, very big” is even bigger than “very big,” which is bigger than “big.” In Singlish, that’s not at all how reduplication works. Take a sentence like this: “Your son short short.”
For one thing, that’s not a typo; Singlish, like Hebrew and a few other languages, simply doesn’t use the verb “to be.” (Singlish also often omits articles like “the” and “a/an.”) But the reduplication thing: “short short” doesn’t mean “very short.” Instead the reduplication of the word is a dampener, taking the whole phrase to something more like “short-ish.” This kind of reduplication can be used with both adjectives and verbs; you can take a walk walk, which would be a very mild stroll. ...
Haitian Creole and Lesser Antilles French Creole work without using the word "to be", although reduplication works as an intensifier. I also see similarities with Singlish use of particles for some verb tenses. Haitian Creole and LAFC get their grammatical influences from West African languages. The Singlish grammatical influence from Asian languages is quite interesting. It's also a semi-tonal language where Chinese borrowings retain their tones.
According to the writer of the article, the Singaporean government wants people to speak Standard English to help it's worldwide economic success. Still, the author says not to worry about Singlish going away
Dan Nosowitz writing for Atlas Obscura wrote:But, says Leimgruber, Singlish is not really in any danger of dying out, despite the government’s hopes. (He says that in cases where the government really feels the need to connect with the populace, like in elections, government officials will sometimes lapse into Singlish.) It’s as close to a unique national language as Singapore gets lah?
Singlish Bible- Genesis wrote:Start Oreddy
1 Starting arh, God make the sky and the ground. 2 The ground bo shape, bo simi; den the deep on top is orr-orr one. Then the Spirit of God float at the water on top. 3 Den God say, “On light leh”; and den got light lor. 4 Den God see the light is tok kong lah; den God make the light and dark kena separated. 5 God say the light is Day, then dark He say is Night. Got evening, got morning, so first day. 6 Den God say, “All the water in between must have dua lobang, so then the dua lobang can separate some water and other water.” 7 So God made the dua lobang, then divide the downstair water from the upstair water; like that lor. 8 Den God say the dua lobang is Heaven. Got evening, got morning, so second day. 9 Then God say, “All the zhui under the sky must go one place, then the dry land can come out”; then like that lor. 10 Then God say the dry land is Earth, then all the water is call Ocean. Then God see it is hor seh.
Youtube, of course has a bunch of videos about Singlish... too many to list here. Another interesting take on the language is in this article from Atlas Obscura Singaporean English is Almost Impossible to Pick Up Wah lao! Why can’t I speak Singlish?