Perspective from grad school: English to Singlish

“May I have a can of Coke?” “Can cannot; bottle can.” “Huh?” Because I’m a native English speaker, moving halfway around the world to Singapore from Scotland to pursue my Ph.D. should have been a breeze. Singapore’s primary language is English. Science, generally, is communicated in English. No problem, right? However, in Singapore there are three mother tongues—Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. Naturally, family and friends of the same race will converse mostly in their own mother tongue, but how do friends of different races communicate? In English, right? Not quite! In Singapore they have their own dialect, “Singlish,” which is a mash-up of all mother-tongue dialects with English. Not only that, but even Singaporeans will admit that their use of English is rather lazy: Sentences are shortened as much as possible. However, redundant words are often added to the end of sentences. Add to that the fact that a lot