Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 06:08:12PM -0500, E-Ching Ng wrote:
[snip]

> I have been gnawing on the question of whether Singlish (Singaporean
> English) is pitch-accent or tonal.  In the basolect (really informal
> Singlish, unintelligible to the uninitiated) some words definitely have
> invariant tone - ironically I think that gets lost as you move into the
> acrolect (educated English that still retains regional features).
> Opinion from H S Teoh?  Manglish (Malaysian English) works differently,
> I'm sure, but the differences might throw light on this question.
[snip]

Well, AFAIK, Manglish is pretty similar to Singlish. After all, they did
share common origins (or at least, similar origins), right? Basically a
mix of local Chinese dialects and Malay with (broken?) English. As to
whether it's tonal or pitch-accented... I don't really know, it's kinda
mixed up. It's almost like English with Chinese tones, if you will :-P

E.g.: [hau4 k<h>am45 ju1 lai1 dat3 wan31] (Kirsch, numbers are approximate
IPA tone/pitch numbers) - "how come you like that one?"
Translation: Why are you like that? (with a tinge of complaint)

E.g. [ai1 don4 wan45 ju1 tOk4 tu1 mi4 lai1 dat31] - "I don't want you
talk to me like that"

E.g. [lu"k45 , hi1 gOt1 niu45 ka:45] - "Look, he got new car!"

These are the more palatable examples. Very often, Chinese/Malay words are
thrown into the brew for added spiciness: ;-)

[wa:h321 yO:1 san45 is1 so35 pan3dai45 a:21] - "Wah [interjection], your
son is so pandai [Malay for clever] ah? [Hokkien question particle]"
Translation: "Wow, your son is so clever!" or, "wow, your son is really
that clever?"

[ju1 don45 lai1 dat34 tu1 mi45 , ha:~13 , O1 ai1 ba3.gi45 ju45 d&n45 ju1
no:41] - "you don't like that to me, huh, or I bagi [Malay slang for "to
beat up"] you then you know."
Translation: "Don't you dare to treat me like that, otherwise I'll beat
you up, and then you'll know not to mess around with me." (Typical
highschool bully's threat :-P)

The following example is typical of the less-divergent forms of
Manglish/Singlish:

[d@1 mO3.r@l45 Of1 d@1 stO3.ri45 is21 , its1 nOt45 d@1 ku3.king45 d&t1
m&3.t@s45 , bat1 its1 d@1 p@3.s@n41] - "the moral of the story is, it's
not the cooking that matters, but it's the person" (shamelessly ripped
from one of the Singaporean Sitcoms -- so this one is actually Singlish,
but is also how Manglish would sound. :-P)

If you notice, there's a certain rhythm to it. Almost every syllable has
the same length, and the tonal contour is approximately a sequence of
ascending pitches, with a dropping pitch at the end of the sentence. Quite
often, several sentences at a time are run end-to-end with no breaks. And
of course, "difficult" consonants like [T] and [D] are just substituted by
[t] and [d]. Also, what I render as the schwa [@] above could potentially
be closer to [V"] than the schwa.

Of course, the exact form of Manglish/Singlish depends on the region and
the type of people speaking it. :-)

Hmm, now that I think of it... where's Jonathan Chang? He's had firsthand
experience with SE Asian English pidgins too, so I'm sure he'll have a lot
to say about this! :-)


T

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