Singapore English

Singapore English
English
Native to	Singapore
Region	Southeast Asia
Native speakers	Approx. 4 million[1] (2020)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Ingvaeonic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English British English Singapore English
Early forms	Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Writing system	Latin (English alphabet) Unified English Braille
Official status
Official language in	Singapore
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
IETF	en-SG
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Singapore English (SgE, SE, en-SG) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Singapore. In Singapore, English is spoken in two main forms: Singaporean Standard English, which is indistinguishable grammatically from British English, and Singaporean Colloquial English, which is better known as Singlish.^[2][3]

Singapore is a cosmopolitan society.^[4] For example, in 2015, among Singaporeans of Chinese descent, over a third spoke English as their main language at home while almost half spoke Mandarin and the rest spoke various varieties of Chinese such as Hokkien.^[5] Most Singaporeans of Indian descent speak either English or a South Asian language. Many Malay Singaporeans uses Malay as the lingua franca among the ethnic groups of the Malay world, while Eurasians and mixed-race Singaporeans are usually monolingual in English.

English is the medium of communication among students from primary school to university in Singapore. Many families use two or three languages on a regular basis, and English is often one of them. The level of fluency in English among residents in Singapore also varies greatly from person to person, depending on their educational background, but English in general is nevertheless understood, spoken and written as the main language throughout the country.