One of the many predictions about the future of English is that the language as we know will be spoken only by a minority of English speakers. Indeed, it is predicted that by 2020 only 15 percent of English speakers will be natives. The Standard English would be diverse as many other Englishes are being formed all the time. Singlish in Singapore is the epitome.
During 146 years (1819–1965) under British colonial rule, the Standard English in Singapore had always been British English. However, no sooner had Singapore declared independence in 1965 than English in Singapore began to take a life of its own, leading to the development of modern day Singapore Standard English. Singapore Standard English began to take root and the so-called “Singlish” began to evolve among the working classes who learned English without formal schooling. As Creolization has occurred, Singlish is nowadays a fully formed, stabilized, and independent English-based Creole language. Some scholars believe that Singlish indicates the way wherein future Englishes will develop.
To illustrate the point, in terms of vocabulary, some words obviously come from English, for example, blur (confuse). But others may come from Malay and Hokkien. Makan, meaning “to eat”, and Nia, meaning “only” are exemplary words from Malay and Hokkien respectively. Some of these words now become an integral part of Singapore Standard English. In terms of grammar, subject – verb agreement and tenses are matters of choice, and what is more, “to be” can be optional. The phrase “I not so old lah, I 18 nia.” exemplifies the point. Some of the so-called “sophisticated” grammars such as word inversion and question tag are also omitted in colloquial language. There is a little wonder that such phrases like “You’re from where?” and “She love him, is it?” become more and more ubiquitous. In this case, “Is it” implies that speakers are simply confirming something they have already inferred. The more English spreads, the more it diversifies, the more it could tend toward fragmentation. Just as Latin, which once ruled over a great linguistic empire, does split into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan, so may the future of English be not as a single language but as a parent of a family of languages. There would be not only Singlish but also Chinglish, Hinglish or Spanglish.
Some researchers believe that the future of English will be shaped by persons who speak English as a second language – those who vastly outnumbers the native speakers. It is striking that whereas the standard English talk about something or discuss something, almost foreign English speakers discuss about something. Perhaps even words considered mispronounced or misspelling would take their place in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In Korea,Taiwan and elsewhere, for instance, a product is a produk. In Singapore and Australia, purchase is pronounced as “pɜːˈtʃeis”. Likewise, the complicated English tag system, do you? don’t you? have you? haven’t you? – will, in all likelihood, be simplified. It is supposed that is it or nesspa ( form the French n’est ce pas or isn’t it) could supplant all of them.
Nowadays, the advent of online and mobile communication will only serve to speed up the process of diverging English. Text English, for instance, has emerged as the more comprehensible English for its users and therefore being influential on the future of the language. ‘I love you ‘ now becomes more prevalently the text, i luv u; ‘going to’, gonna and so forth. Here comes a word recently accepted by the OED, tweet (or twitter) – a message sent using the Twitter social networking service. Another new word is google, meaning to find information about something or somebody using the search engine Google. It may be generalized as “to search for information on the web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the web for information related to a new or potential girlfriend or boyfriend”!? These following words may also be embraced in the OED in the near future.
macbook: a slim and well-designed laptop, particularly one from Apple
cyberskiver: a person who surfs the Internet while supposedly being at work
e-employee: an employee who works at home through a personal computer
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