S’pore English Being Taught in Taiwanese Variety Show

There are technically two dialects of Singapore English: the first is Standard Singapore English, whereby English teachers swear by and is often seen to be the high-SES English, and the second is Singapore Colloquial English…which we call “Singlish” (I’ll call it the highest-SES English).

You see, language (or in this case, dialects of a language) is created by societies and not by the authorities, a man with superpowers or by Mr Lim, your trusty English teacher.

As long as we use it, it’s here to stay.

Which explains why, no matter how Singlish is being discouraged, it’ll stay, as you and I will continue to use it mah (except when we pretend to be high-SES).

This video, posted in Facebook Page 一袋女王 (a variety show in Taiwan) just five days ago on 26 April 2018, has got viral as Taiwanese tried to make sense of our unique dialect, Singlish.

Hosted by Taiwan host Sam Tseng (曾國城) and a few other celebrities that I’m not familiar with, it’s actually comforting to see that the hosts, at no point in time, look down on the dialect. Instead, they’re amused by how one sentence can comprise so many different languages (which we as Singaporeans are, too).

Unlike this video that went viral a few years back, whereby Singlish was said to be “weird”.

It’s always good to see mutual respect for different cultures!

Remember to check back tomorrow on the next video of the day!