A new bus in Singapore is making headlines (成为新闻热点) for a strange reason. It is what is written on the signs inside the bus that has people talking. The signs are written in Singlish!
Quite different from the English we are familiar with, the signs read, for example, "Here cannot go in" instead of "You cannot go in from here", and "Here can charge (给……充电) phone" instead of "You can charge your phone here".
English is one of the official languages in Singapore. But the English Singaporeans use in their daily lives is far from standard English and earns it the name "Singlish". In Singapore, migrants (移民) from many countries, including China, India and Malaysia, all speak their own versions (版本) of "English". The New York Times calls Singlish a "patchwork".
For example, in Singlish you can easily find influences from Chinese. Singaporeans use Chinese sentence structures like "Toilet where?" instead of "Where is the toilet?". They also add words like "leh" and "meh" at the end of a sentence to show their mood (情绪). This comes from Cantonese.
Though it may seem interesting, Singlish is worrying Sinagapore's government. It thinks that Singlish may hurt people's ability to speak standard English and make it hard for them to communicate with foreigners. The government even started the Speak Good English Movement in 2000.
But the movement didn't seem to work very well, especially among young people. The youth think Singlish is cool and a way to show they are Singaporeans. Besides, many can speak both standard English and Singlish. "We are a nation good at code-switching (语码转换)," wrote Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, a Singaporean author, in Time magazine.
① Here cannot go in. ④ You cannot go in from here.
② Here can charge phone. ⑤You can charge your phone here.
③ Toilet where? ⑥Where is the toilet?
