"All that I've gathered since coming home about a month and a half ago is that I'm supposed to speak standard English like a native speaker. But nobody specified—native to where?"
— Ruby Pan, TalkingCock in Parliament: We, the Citizens
Brilliant cycling through varieties of English (General American English, BBC English, Standard Singapore English, Colloquial Singapore English/Singlish, and Philippine English) to drive home her point: "We all speak English, but some English is more English than others."
That point is in itself problematic and touches upon a number of issues, including (1) who has the power to set linguistic norms?, and (2) who has the power to determine the validity of a variety of English as being "more" English than another? I may address these questions in a post later; if you have any questions (whether related to that point or to a different topic), feel free to ask.
Update: theheartlands has kindly provided a transcript of the Singlish portion (4:44–5:56); hover over italicized phrases for notes:
But actually ah, I think that's not true lor.
You know ah, a lot of those Singaporeans who speak very good English right, a lot of them cannot speech leh.
Like, they open mouth only ah, like, everybody know that they jiak kantang one. They talk amongst themselves right, they talk English very good very good. Then they expect everybody to talk like them leh. But they never ask themself right, how good is their Singlish? Obviously tā bú huì jiǎng dialect de lor! Right or not? And their Chinese, either very good, or cannot make it one.
Aiyah, Singlish is a lot of language combineded! You think put a 'lah' here or a 'lor' there is Singlish meh? No what! It's not easy to speak Singlish one okay. Like all those ang mohs stay here very long right, they also cannot speak right?
That's why we are the ones, who has to jiak kantang, and talk good English for them to understand. But now Singapore got a lot of foreigner. Not just ang moh.
