Singapore English

Singapore English refers to varieties of English spoken in Singapore.

There are two main forms of English spoken in Singapore - Standard Singapore English (SSE) and Singapore Colloquial English (better known as Singlish).

Singapore is a cosmopolitan city with 42% of its population foreign born. Singaporeans, even those of the same ethnic group, have many different first languages and cultures. For example, within the Singaporean Chinese group, nearly a third speak English as their main home language while almost half speak Mandarin as their main home language and the rest speak various mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects as their main home language. Many households use two or three languages on a regular basis, one of them often being English. In the past, some children received little education in the medium of English. Due to these reasons, the level of fluency in English among residents in Singapore varies vastly from person to person.

Most reasonably educated Singaporeans do speak Singapore Standard English, alternatively known as Educated Singapore English, which, grammatically, is not different from standard British English, with variations being confined to accent and a few borrowed words, posing few challenges to any Anglophone.