Talk:Singlish phrasebook

Delete

@Ikan Kekek @SHB2000 Please delete, this was made by an IP and I doubt this is helpful as (most) English speakers should understand Singlish Tai123.123 (talk) 04:05, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think most would, and I'm willing to wait a little and see where this goes. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:55, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I removed the speedy tag. @Jpatokal, you see to have contributed to our singapore article the most, what do you think. Tai123.123 (talk) 04:58, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

My issue with it so far is that I see non-Singlish in it. This doesn't look like Singlish to me: "My Singlish is not [very] good." Presuming it would be the same as Manglish (Malaysian English), I'd expect "My Singlish no good," but the problem is, a Singlish phrasebook, if we decide to have one, should be geared toward helping people understand it, not helping them speak it. For a short-term visitor to try to speak Singlish would be considered disrespectful, I do believe. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:59, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree with Ikan here, this is not a sensible travel topic and it should be deleted. Singlish is worth an infobox or something, but we don't have or need full phrasebooks for dialects. Jpatokal (talk) 05:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Or it could be worth an article like Australian slang. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I feel as it's disrespectful to speak it as a short-term visitor it should be deleted. I don't see how this helps anyone. Tai123.123 (talk) 05:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I think we all agree that anything about Singlish shouldn't be in this form, so I won't argue about this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:47, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I feel Singapore#Talk presents this info much better. (I also tried to move this page to Singlish but it wouldn't let me as the page already existed and I can't delete pages) Tai123.123 (talk) 06:12, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘The problem is that there is nothing even resembling a standardised form of Singlish. What we learn in school is pretty much standard British English, and the government actually has a policy officially discouraging the use of Singlish in favour of standard English (though no, you won't be arrested for speaking Singlish). The dog2 (talk) 09:05, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

The lack of an agreed-upon standard form is not necessarily a bar to some kind of article, though I think we all agree that it shouldn't be a standard phrasebook. But consider the Jamaican Patois phrasebook. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I think it should be more along the lines of the Australian slang article than a normal phrase book. You could learn some expressions for fun, but realistically, nobody will be expecting you to speak Singlish as a foreigner. The dog2 (talk) 00:25, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. And should it embrace Manglish as well, or is that significantly different? Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:23, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I think they are quite similar, but Manglish may differ between different parts of Malaysia, depending on what the dominant Chinese dialect group is there. For instance, if I go to Kuala Lumpur and swear in Hokkien, the local Chinese there would probably have no idea about what I'm saying unless they came from a Hokkien family, while in Penang, I would think that most people would understand me (including a good number of Malays and Indians). On the other hand, many Singaporeans don't understand Cantonese swear words, which are widely understood among the Malaysian Chinese. The dog2 (talk) 01:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

We don't have to cover curse words, though. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, of course I'm not suggesting we cover the swear words. I was just highlighting a difference between Singlish and Manglish. For instance, the Cantonese term 傻仔 (sor tzai; lit. foolish dude) is widely used and understood by Malaysian Chinese even if they are not fluent in Cantonese due to widespread exposure to Hong Kong films and dramas (which in Singapore are required by law to be dubbed into Mandarin as part of the government's Speak Mandarin Campaign), while Singaporean Chinese would typically not understand it unless they came from a Cantonese family; I remember having to translate the term for Singaporean friends when a Malaysian speaker inserted it into her speech that was otherwise mainly in English, while the Malaysians had no problem understanding it. And it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect regional variation in Manglish given that the dominant dialect among the Chinese community differs between Malaysian cities, so I would expect Manglish to have more influence from Teochew in Johor Bahru, Hakka in Kota Kinabalu, Hokchiu in Sibu and Sitiawan, and so on. The dog2 (talk) 02:34, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Understood. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:28, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree. I think this should be a travel topic. Similarly, you don't need the Australian slang article, because nearly every Australian is just as good in US English as they are in Australian English, and as a traveler, you could get away with just using US English. I suppose this is in a similar situation as well, where you could get away with British English. And I'd also like to cover a little bit of Manglish as Ikan said, or Tinglish. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:57, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

In Singapore, you can probably get away with American and Australian English too, since people have exposure to American and Australian TV shows. The dog2 (talk) 06:49, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Singapore seems one of two countries where I've seen three varieties of English regularly used along with Canada. (I wouldn't say British English is regularly used in Australia though, and the UK has a stronger influence on Canada than it does with Australia) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 06:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)