2. Language in Singapore: From Multilingualism to English Plus

Siblings' play and language shift to English in a Malay‐English bilingual family in Singapore

“…Since its independence in 1965, Singapore's language management has been enveloped by different narratives and ideologies (Wee & Bokhorst‐Heng, ). While the city‐state's English medium plus one mother tongue language policy has been praised for Singapore's successful racial harmonization, economic development and achieving a competitive edge in international markets (Bolton & Ng, ), the state's language management has been critiqued for the increasing use of English in the private spheres, such as within the family, and the concomitant language shift across all ethnic groups (Bokhorst‐Heng & Silver, ; Cavallaro & Ng, ; Low & Pakir, ; Tan, ). Today, English is reported to be the dominant home language for 36 per cent of Singapore's 5.8 million population, a dramatic increase from 1.8 per cent in 1957 (Department of Statistics, , ; Lim, ).…”

Modeling competitive evolution of multiple languages

“…However, after the implementation of a series of policies from the 1950s to present, the proportions of speakers of different languages in Singapore considerably changed. Until 2010, English and Chinese Mandarin became the most spoken languages with speakers proportion of 32.3%, 35.6%, respectively in Singapore's entire country [28].…”

“…Here, we answer the questions raised above by using real-world language evolution data from Singapore [28] and Hong Kong [29][30][31] to find optimal parameters and validate the extended Abrams-Strogatz model [27]. The model parameters found in this process drive the utilities of competing languages, the strength of majority preference for the most popular language and minority aversion to this language and measure this utility's impact on language evolution.…”

Features of aspect marking in Singapore Mandarin

“…Instead, they spoke Chinese vernaculars, such as Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese, depending on their respective hometowns. Even as Mandarin-medium schools were gradually set up following the arrival of more Chinese immigrants in later decades (Wang 1989: 76), Chinese vernaculars remained preferred by Singapore Chinese even till the time around Singapore's independenceonly 0.1% of the Chinese population claim to speak Mandarin as their mother tongue in 1957 (Cavallaro & Ng 2014).…”

“…Campaign, which promoted the use of Mandarin among Singaporean Chinese as a way to bring about social cohesion and communication within the Singaporean Chinese community and with the wider Mandarin-speaking circle (Newman 1988;Bokhorst-Heng & Wee 2007;Dixon 2009;Shang & Zhao 2017). This pushed for the adoption of Mandarin by many non-native speakers of Mandarin; as Cavallaro and Ng (2014) note, the proportion of Mandarin speakers rose from 13.1% in 1980 (according to the census released after the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign) to 47.7% in 2010, while concomitantly, the proportion of Chinese vernaculars speakers declined experienced a sharp decline from 76.2% in 1980 to only 19.2%…”