Talk:Singlish

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ephemeralives.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Statement that "lah" cannot be used at the end of a question

Resolved

In the section on the use of "lah", it is claimed that "lah" cannot be used at the end of a question. However, "lah" is indeed used at the end of questions where one tries to solicit an answer in a slightly more aggressive manner, e.g. "So you think he can do it lah?" This can in no way be considered a rhetorical question as an answer is indeed required. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.189.169.182 (talk) 14:37, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The section on lah now (once again) talks about acceptability with questions.

Anyway, there is a misunderstanding here that a rhetorical question necessitates no answer. Furthermore, I believe your counterexample does not demonstrate your claim; it doesn't use a question. i.e. "So you think he can do it" is not a question. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 03:44, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Examples

Resolved

 – All unsourced information have been removed. Excessive vocabulary examples have been removed. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I love the wealth of examples provided in this page. I do think that they should be reworked, as much of information is unsourced and the tone of those sections is often unencyclopaedic. I also feel that in some cases, an excessive number of examples is given which clutters up the article. Any thoughts? --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 11:29, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

While the your comment comes from 5 years ago, it seems that it is still applicable today, especially to the vocabulary section. I think that decluttering these since Wikipedia isn't a dictionary, and including only notable examples like _kiasu_ might be worth our time. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 19:30, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Recent article rewrite

Stale

 – stale; resolved Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't agree with your decisions (at the moment) with what you're doing in this article and unless you could provide more context behind them (such as your claim of unecyclopaedic material) I think you should cease in removing significant amounts of material. 185.153.150.49 (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi User:185.153.150.49, thanks for bringing this to the talk page. I rewrote multiple sections of the page to be more science-based, add more sources, consolidated some information that was repeated in several sections, and remove unsourced, unencyclopaedic, unorganized and sometimes irrelevant content, etc, and to bring it more in line with other well-written articles about language varieties. I put a significant amount of time into these edits, and I believe your characterizing them as if I had only deleted material is inaccurate. But of course, Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and this article doesn't belong to me or any one person. I invite you to share specific objections to specific changes, in accordance with well-established Wikipedia editing norms such as Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus" and Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary (in particular, see "Do not revert a large edit because much of it is bad, and you do not have time to rewrite the whole thing."

Several of the things I removed had been tagged as lacking sources for over two years, and some sections were also previously mentioned on this talk page by other users as needing rewriting or removal. Since you didn't discuss specific objections at all, I'll just give one example here of a justification for one of the changes I made, but I hope you'll bring specific objections to specific changes, going forward.

I removed the following unsourced information from the section on "*den*":

"When used in this context, in formal Singlish, the particle is lengthened to 2 beats to indicate replacement of "ran2hou4" or 1 beat when used in conjunction with "hor" as in "den hor".

It can also be shortened to 1 beat if the other speaker is a fluent Singapore speaker of Singlish (who tends to speak fast and can deduce via contextual clues which form of meaning the use of den is taking on), but the Singlish variant used when spoken to a wider Southeast Asian audience, is lengthening of the word to 2 beats.

The subtle usage of these particles differentiates a non-Singaporean trying to assimilate into society, and a native-born Singaporean (whether it's a Chinese, Indian, Eurasian, Malay or Caucasian speaker of Singlish). In many cases, a mixed child born and bred in Singapore will speak a more subtle form of Singlish (together with the influence of another language such as Dutch, Swedish, or German) than a first-generation Singaporean assimilating into Singapore."

Not only was this section completely unsourced, I actually believe it could be considered original research, and may even be outside the scope of this article.

Other principles that guided my rewrites included: WP:PYRAMID, WP:TONE, WP:TOPIC and the Wikipedia Manual of Style, among others.

Keep in mind that everything in Wikipedia requires a reliable source citation, and uncited material may be subject to removal.

I'll also note that contrary to what you stated in your edit summaries, regarding there "not being consensus" and the onus being on me to seek approval for all changes before making them -- this is essentially the opposite of Wikipedia policy. See WP:BRD, and "don't revert due solely to "no consensus" as I mentioned earlier. I am more than happy to discuss any and all changes that I made, but I hope we can avoid making this personal as I nothing I have done here violates Wikipedia policy and was all done in good faith.

Thank you for sharing your opinions here, and I look forward to working with you on this article. --ಠ_ಠ node.ue ಠ_ಠ (talk) 01:58, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Change the disgusting word

Disregard

 – WP:NOTCENSORED Wikipedia is not censored. Damn in Singlish also has a reduced vulgarity compared to British English because of how flagrantly it is used in place of the copula. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Hello editor! Actually, this page is full of the words that people may not like.

For example, in the ‘Grammar’ section:

-> Damn, I am …

The word ‘damn’ is not a good word to others. Posting a disgusting vocabulary in a wiki page is not very proper. Hope you can change the words into a right one. 迷你果醬 (talk) 07:05, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Is it really a creole?

Quoting "There is much debate over whether it is fully formed and whether it is a creole. Singlish is actually not a fully formed stable creole despite what many people claim. It is still in flux. And it is technically a creoloid not creole." from a conversation [] from 2010. This kinda reflects the status of Manglish in its own article. Should the Singlish article be changed to indicate that maybe it's not really a full-fledged creole? I'm no linguistics expert but looking at other English-based creole languages like Krio and Tok Pisin, I'm just like wow, Manglish and Singlish is nothing like that. To the best of my knowledge, I think they are dialects of English with features of creoles. But correct me if I am wrong. –Jiaminglimjm (talk) 16:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Whether Singlish is a creole is a contentious question of nomenclatures which you may read more about here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/english-today/article/curious-case-of-nomenclatures/3C58F65C1E94D930B3A4D6EDE1138FE1 I think there are enough research papers that refer to Singlish as a creole that it may be fine, but feel free to be bold and make the change with cited data. More elaboration can go in a sub-section of the article.

As for comparisons with other creoles, Singlish absolutely does share a similar level of complexity and similarity; you are just more familiar with Singlish so it looks really natural and easy to you. For example, in Krio, Wetin na yu nem? corresponds to What is your name, with na being a copula. In Singlish that would be Your name what ah? which would be equally as cryptic or guessable to speakers of standard varieties of English, if we discount the re-spelling of Krio and provided orthography closer to etymological roots. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 17:15, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I've updated the article to reflect its academically disputed status of a creole. It's a shame that most of the editors in the archived talk pages are no longer active, but most of the discussion they had are unsourced opinions. I can find sources of academics saying that its a creole and its not a creole, but the more "famous" linguists all say that its a contact language, with no comment on whether it is a creole or indigenised variety. FYI: It certainly looks like a creole, but whether it is a creole depends on its formation history, something nobody has managed to do despite the wealth of research (see David Bloom in Singapore Studies II: Critical Surveys Of The Humanities and Social Sciences) Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:42, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

i've opened a discussion at WP:Languages at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages#Singlish's creole status Hypnoticreflection (talk) 12:58, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Dead reference links

Resolved

 – Done Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I've noticed a few of the links to references go to deleted articles. I've only seen two currently, but I'll reply to this talk with more if I find them after this. I don't know how to edit the reference list myself, unfortunately, and I'm meant to be doing other things so I don't have the time to learn right now unfortunately.

Source number with web archive links that work instead:

[27] https://web.archive.org/web/20071227002843/http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_160322.html

[29] https://web.archive.org/web/20180625021515/https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/nyt-op-ed-on-singlish-makes-light-of-efforts-to-promote-standard-8008464 Anafyral (talk) 02:52, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

"He tio lottery"?

Stale

 – Agree, but tio has been removed in the mass rewrite due to lack of sources, so this is vacuously resolved. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

This phrase in the section on "Tio" seems awkward in a Singlish context. Perhaps the word "lottery" doesn't seem to fit in the "rhythm" of Singlish. I get the feeling that native speakers would say the specific lottery that was won e.g. "He tio 4D, (so that's why he spend so much)". Does this seem awkward to anyone else? Mount2010 (talk) 03:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Duplicated text

Stale

 – stale; resolved. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Two paragraphs from the lead section are duplicated from the "Usage in Society" section. How should this be addressed? Mount2010 (talk) 16:19, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ANTH474 Language Emergence - From Contact to Constructed Languages

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 September 2025 and 10 December 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Honeybeebear (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Honeybeebear (talk) 23:19, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Proposal to split "Singlish Grammar" to a new article

As per Wikipedia:Article size and its size guidelines, the full article is about 8000 words and about 4500 of these words are for Singlish grammar. I'm not sure about trimming it, although some discourse particles can be cut and sections such as tense-aspect-mood can be chopped down. I wonder if we should be splitting this off? There's a bunch of other articles like English grammar that seem to set a precedent for this too. Hypnoticreflection (talk) 18:53, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Not sure it is fully needed yet, but if it is split off most of the examples should be at the subpage, with just the summary here. CMD (talk) 01:42, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

as of your reply, the article was about 116k bytes but it's now like 184k bytes and still growing (to the point of lagging my browser), and the grammar section grew in size, so i think it's perhaps time to boldly split it Hypnoticreflection (talk) 21:54, 20 July 2026 (UTC)