Guess the accent

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Rotten English  #507136  Tue, 29 Apr 08 03:51 PM

Here's a link to a youtube video which I uploaded. Do you understand our accent? Can you guess where we're from? (I'm the cameraman so you don't see me) 

English is the first language of all people(regardless of race) brought up here. It is also the official language in our country, but some native English speakers despise our accent. Is it that bad? You be the judge...Smile 

  
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hitchhiker  #507168  Tue, 29 Apr 08 04:29 PM
Singapore! Love the place, been there a lot last year - your country is great, the people are friendly, the service ANYWHERE is amazing and the economy is strong.. Yes, the accent is a little hard to understand sometimes ;) - but I for one, am happy to hear it anywhere! 
  
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Kooyeen  #507309  Tue, 29 Apr 08 09:54 PM
I didn't know it was the first language there. I thought it was a second language... And I thought it was called Singlish, which is English and some other language (Chinese?) together.
  
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Rotten English  #507763  Wed, 30 Apr 08 05:46 PM
Wow! you're amazing! never thought that anyone would get it right, much less even know that my country existed! 
  
Rotten English  #507768  Wed, 30 Apr 08 05:56 PM
Haha, at least you know a bit about singapore. But yea, English is our first language. Singlish is Singapore's unofficial first language and it is heavily peppered with local slang. In fact, some of the sentence structures of certain singlish phrases are taken from mandarin or malay, so they may not make much sense from an English perspective. For the older generations especially, some people ONLY know singlish and not proper english because english was not the language of instruction in all schools in the past. They either attended an English medium school, or a mandarin/malay school, or not go to school at all. But for the last few decades, English has been the only language of instruction in all schools (Im not too sure about those people in islamic schools though) but Singlish is as alive as ever due to it being so rampantly used amongst parents and grandparents.

 

Today, if you visit singapore. You might get quite confused as there has been a recent flood of Chinese immigrants from China. A lot of them hardly speak any English, and they are mostly hired as service staff at shops and eateries, so knowing mandarin would come in real handy. Glad I learnt mandarin as a second language! (tho i struggle when i try to converse with people from china) 

  
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