MalE – global change

Although previous studies of MalE closely linked it to Singapore English (SgE), it is now appropriate to divorce them from each other at least on two historical considerations. Firstly, since 1965 Singapore is no longer in any way politically connected to Malaya or Malaysia; the case for sociolinguistic differentiation over 40 years is therefore reasonably strong. Secondly, the language policies in both nations have been different for the past 40 years. This will have varied implications on the role and long-term effects of English on the local populace of each nation. Tongue (1974), who describes the English of Singapore and Malaysia (ESM), predicted that within a hundred years the idea of one ‘ESM’ would become inapplicable. In linguistic terms, there are significant differences in substrate too. Chinese varieties predominate in Singapore, but are a minority in Malaysia. The implications of this difference have yet to be researched.

Many researchers have described ‘ESM’ in terms of a standard and colloquial form with various terms like ‘standard’, ‘informal’, ‘uneducated’, ‘low’ and ‘communicative forms’. Platt and Weber (1980), along with Mary Tay (1993). I, too, prefer to take a three-tiered approach to describing MalE although I prefer to use the terms official MalE (standard MalE), Unofficial MalE (dialectal MalE) and Broken MalE (patois MalE). Thus the basic subdivision in my description of MalE would be as tabulated below: