the grammar error series

Now, I am generally a champion of Singlish. I see it as a legitimate dialect and a creole, with its own grammar system that is to be appreciated. I do not like the government's attempts at dismissing it nor the Speak Good English Movement's attitude towards it. It has often at times said that Singlish has "limited vocabulary" and makes up for it by borrowing from other languages. "Hence also the habit of code-mixing," Koh Tai Ann writes, "using words and phrases from Chinese or Malay because they do not know the English equivalent."

Which is just a plain stupid statement really, and quite a poor method for putting down the dialect. I should say, using Koh Tai Ann's amazing logic, that English has a limited vocabulary and makes up for it by heavily borrowing from Latin, French and Greek. English writers from the 11th to the 18th centuries used words and phrases from those languages because they didn't know the Old English equivalent. So we should throw out words like air, colour, idiom, assimilate. These words weren't originally part of English. I don't know, since I can't seem to find Anglo-Saxon equivalents easily, I guess my English must really be poor, huh, since I must borrow from the Romance languages and all.

The logic is rather curious since borrowing from other languages - a multicultural phenomenon that should be cheered on - tends to make a language richer rather than being evidence of its poverty. Not to mention the example of Malay, which has replaced many of its original Austronesian words with Sanskrit equivalents. Because of this Sanskrit connection, the Singlish word "lugi", borrowed from Malay, is in fact, distantly related (separated by about 7000 years) to the English word "lose" (as well as Latin lugubrious).

Another gem is "People who can speak only Singlish will not write blogs. Bloggers must be fairly literate and must have ready access to computers, have a liking for language and have a strong desire to express themselves." She assumes it's as though Singaporeans who do not speak standard English that well but are more fluent in Singlish or their mother tongue will not have a strong liking for language or a desire to express themselves, or cannot be literate. Lao Xin Zhou struggles with his English and is more fluent in Chinese but I admire the tenacity of his views. I should tell you - I too, could once only speak Singlish. But now I keep several blogs and yearn to be a linguist. I can perfectly envision many bloggers who write in Singlish not for creative effect, but as genuine automatic expression, and not intentional creativity on our part. I too, sometimes do this.

There are tons of linguistic fallacies that the SGEM purports. I will eventully try rebut them in other posts.

However, there are features of some Singaporean speech that are decidedly not Singlish, and are grammatically incorrect. How do I make this distinction?

When speakers speak Singlish, they employ grammatical concepts. They do it unconsciously - but they do it nevertheless. "Lah" is the classic example cited most of the time: you can't simply place it anywhere and it serves the role of intensifier. For "how come never do homework one?" (why haven't you done your homework?) - a phrase that can find itself within ACSI - the words "you", "did", and "your"/"the" are all used in Singlish, but they are dropped because those words are implied. When you drop tense conjugation in Singlish, it's not a grammatical error, but it's dropped because it's seen as irrelevant to the context. It's a given based on context what the time, person and homework is. Grammatical inflection (modifying verbs, adjectives and nouns to agree with person, number, gender, tense, case, etc.) places an unnecessary emphasis at times and sometimes becomes more of a burden than an aid (the irrelevance of inflection). I will write about this later.

Anyhow, Singlish practices like these are all grammatical, though not necessarily acceptable in formal situations. A custom is grammatical when it is made intentionally, rather than out of ignorance, even if it's unconscious. For example in standard English, we stress-time our sentences, generally unintentionally (unless you're trying to wayang off your language) but grammatically nonetheless. We have subconcious processes associated with it.

However, whereas I champion Singlish because of its multicultural diversity and because I just love linguistics, I really cringe at grammar errors. What is a grammar error? It's an error that speakers make because they are unaware and ignorant of the cultural and grammatical rules of the language. Or, it could be an error in writing made by a fluent speaker, and happens because he edited part of his post and forgot to correct the other parts to be grammatically consistent with the change. *cough, cough* (This happens to me, all the time.)

You can really tell when something is a grammar error (as opposed to a Singlish construction) because the speaker is speaking within (or is trying to speak within) the register of standard English. Also, Singlish will often use a totally different construction or rephrase it differently anyway. As such, the error can really throw the audience off and mar comprehension , because whenever we are listening to a certain language, we assume a "mindset of concepts and rules" about that language.

Take conjugation, e.g. "he has", "they have". When I speak Singlish for example, I assume a different mindset that allows me not to be disturbed by people dropping conjugation, such as in "No need (to) give him lah. He already have liao." I consider this grammatical. The tonal nature of Singlish immediately alerts my mind about which mindset to use and what to concentrate on. Singlish borrows many tonal aspects from Chinese, with some words, the particles especially, having fixed tones. I use this to keep track of the conversation rather than being attentive to inflection. But if I hear "I don't think he have it" in a standard English context, with no Singlish toning (but perhaps in a Singaporean accent), I will be thrown off. It is not because it is unexpected -- sometimes I switch from standard English to Singlish mid-sentence -- but because it is simply erroneous and not Singlish at all, since Singlish would specify a strong tone for the unconjugated "have" and alert me to switch to a Singlish mindset.

I love Singlish, but I cannot stand errors. Often I have seen errors in advertisements, notices and even in the speech of government ministers. I would love an ad in Singlish (take the TalkingCock in Parliament ad) - because that would use Singlish grammar, and hence, would be grammatical. But all of a sudden, I can be reading things that are obviously written in the standard English register when a gross error occurs. New oxymetabolic-regeneration whatever: we guarantee that it will helps you lose weight, gains energy and feels great.

And so with this long explanation I have created the grammar error series, to discuss such errors because I find them increasingly hard to take in Singaporean speech. Basically I want to introduce the series and define a scope of this blog, and also have something to head my categories with. Yet at the same time I want to say that my harping on Singaporeans' errors is not the same as harping on Singlish. I want to make a distinction between errors in English and customs in Singlish.

P.S. No one should even dare suggest to me that the use of "grammar error" is grammatically incorrect. Bet you grammar nazis (only trying to be show-offs) are saying that it should be "grammatical error", right? This blog is for real linguistics and not pointless grammar nazism, man. They are both interchangeable.

"-al" is an adjectival suffix from Latin; an equivalent native (Anglo-Saxon) English suffix would be "-en", e.g. as in "wooden" and "golden" (and also seen in its role in strong verb participles like taken, forsaken and beholden, as well as the sense of "endow with the properties of", e.g. as in "harden", kind of like -ify and -ise). However, modern English is an analytic language, and has something called the null morpheme which allows nouns to be used as adjectives without the need for derivation markers (such as "-al").

Just so happens that English, due to the Norman invasion, has multiple ways to accomplish the same grammatical function. For example, there are two main ways to show the possessive in English. One can either use the apostrophe-s clitic ('s) or use the word "of"; the first one was inherited from Old English, the second technique was done in imitation of French de.