A History of English Language

The nineteenth century and after 309
one of the four official languages and the main medium for administration, commerce,
industry, and education, the country has prospered in international trade and in its
domestic economy. However, key government leaders, including the founder of the
independent state, Lee Kuan Yew, have expressed concern over the loss of Asian values
and have begun to promote the use of Mandarin. As the director of the Confucian Ethics
Project Team expressed it: “English is for getting on in life, for practical use. But for
moral behavior we must learn Chinese, our own language.” 32 Thus, Malaysia and
Singapore in their separate ways illustrate the tensions between the international language
and the languages of ethnic and cultural identity. Bilingualism and multilingualism will
be essential in both countries for years to come.
Hong Kong, although more than a thousand miles across the South China Sea from
Singapore, has similarities in the use of English because of its British colonial history.
The main difference is in the relatively homogeneous population, which is 97 percent
Chinese. English is much less frequently used for oral communication among Hong
Kong’s Cantonese-speaking Chinese than among the Chinese in Singapore.
Some of the specific features of English in Malaysia and Singapore are shared by
English-based creoles in other parts of the world and by African American Vernacular
English in the United States: the lack of an ending to mark the third person singular
present tense of the verb; the omission of be both as a copula (“This coffee house—very
cheap,” in contrast with standard British and American English “This coffee house is
very cheap”) and also as an auxiliary (“My brother—working” instead of “My brother is
working”). 33 These structures reflect corresponding structures in the background
languages. Among the differences in syntax is the word order of indirect questions (“May
I ask where is the stamp counter?” or “I’d like to know what are the procedures”). In
phonology, the pronunciation of both British and American English is with a “stresstimed
rhythm.” Stressed syllables recur at equal intervals, but unstressed syllables are
unequally spaced in time. In Singaporean English, however, the rhythm is “syllabletimed.”
Syllables tend to recur at equal intervals of time, stressed or unstressed.
6. The Caribbean.
The countries of the Caribbean face multilingual situations that in certain respects of their
history and present status resemble those of the Pacific. Paradoxically, however, the
solutions to social problems involving languages in contact appear to become more
difficult as the varieties of the languages are more similar. The very question of whether
Ja-
32
Ian Buruma, “Singapore,” New York Times Magazine (June 12, 1988), p. 58.
33
John Platt and Heidi Weber, English in Singapore and Malaysia: Status, Features, Functions
(Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1980), pp. 63–64.