Speak Good English Movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Speak Good English Movement is a program launched by the government of Singapore. Singaporeans usually speak a variant or dialect of English known as Singlish, which has heavy influences from Chinese and Malay in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and can be incomprehensible to non-Singaporeans. According to the government, this causes problems when Singaporeans need to deal with people from other countries in business and trade, so the campaign aims to discourage the use of Singlish and encourage the increased use of a more standardized form of English (i.e. generally modelled on the British standard). The launch of the program has been reportedly unable to effectively change the diglossia (two parallel languages for formal and informal situations) among Singaporeans. Singlish still remains as a "common language" among Singaporeans, and is mostly used in informal communication, while a more standardized form is used for formal communication. However, this is no different to anywhere else in the English-speaking world. For instance, many Scots, in informal situations, would say "ah dinnae ken", whereas in formal written English, they would write "I don't know".

[edit] See also

• Speak Mandarin Campaign

[edit] External links

• Official site