Language and Culture

Topic prominent

Topic prominent
Singlish is topic-prominent, like Chinese. This means that Singlish sentences often begin with a topic (or a known reference of the conversation), followed by a comment (or new information). Compared to other varieties of English, the semantic relationship between topic and comment is not important; moreover, nouns, verbs, adverbs, and even entire subject-verb-object phrases can all serve as the topic:

Dis country weather very hot, one. �X In this country, the weather is very warm.
Dat person there cannot trust. �X That person over there is not trustworthy.
Tomorrow doh need bring camera. �X You don't need to bring a camera tomorrow.
He play soccer also very good one leh. �X He's very good at playing soccer too.

 

posted by Aiden @ 9:10 AM