Take this article with a grain of salt. Their description of Singlish is enough to disqualify the accuracy of the rest of the piece. Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language. Comparing Singlish to English is no different than comparing Cockney to English. I don't think the different dialects of English within the U.K. are all considered separate languages, and therefore Singlish should not be either. An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects.
Most Singaporeans still have a concept of "proper" English, and can code switch across the creole continuum, but interestingly the acrolect ("variation most associated with refinement") is basically standard UK or US English - though not everyone can get there. As a comparison, the closest similarity I can think of in terms of having a similar English creole continuum is Jamaican patois.
I doubt most native English speakers (despite my best wishes, I certainly can't) could decipher the Singlish basilect ("least refined") - the cadence is syllable-timed, the vocabulary is part Hokkien, Mandarin, Tamil and Malay, grammar is nonstandard and a substantial part of emotion is conveyed through particle suffixes (the stereotypical Singlish "lah" is emphasis).
Love the posts - "Indian-net" is a classic, as an aside man that scene in money no enough really blew me away - it's crazy to believe that my laptop (not even a desktop, mind you!) has a thousand times more RAM... to say tech moves quickly is an understatement.
To add to what everyone else has said: There's no dividing line between "accent", "dialect", and "language" any more than there's a dividing line between "pebble", "stone" and "boulder".
I'm American, but I've spent about a year in Singapore in various stretches. The Acrolectic Singlish/Standard English that my coworkers at a multinational spoke definitely converges with General American English, and I understood it without hesitation. But the basilectic variety spoken, say, between army buddies? About as comprehensible to me as Dutch.
Americans will understand Singaporeans because English is the main language in both countries. Singlish is a separate language, and the article describes it somehow accurately. It is not mutually intelligible with English (Brits or Americans can't understand it), but most native Singlish speakers are Singaporeans who also speak English.
> Singlish is not a unique or separate langauage, or even an actual language.
As far as I know, Singlish is widely regarded as a creole language. Yes, a large part of the vocabulary is English words, but it is very different when it comes to grammar and it uses a lot of loan words from east Asian languages that aren't in English dialects around the world.
The idea that Singlish is just uneducated Singaporean English is purely a political one.
> An American English speaker will likely have much better chance of understanding a Singaporean than understanding some of the U.K. dialects.
I've seen a few dozen sentences of Singlish and I would understand it about as well as I'd understand any other English based creole - I'd understand the English words and not much else.
The problems that different English dialects have when trying to understand each other are accents and local slang - but the grammar and written language are largely the same. On the other hand, large parts of the Singlish vocabulary differ from English, and the grammar is substantially different, even when written.
I'm not sure one questionable exampe invalidates the rest - most of the versions are combinations of english vocabulary with another language's grammar and vocab or phonetics, which I think makes them distinct enough for a langauge.
I must admit I too find the idea behind singlish questionable, especially since the cited website doesn't contain the examples, or in any place I could find. But, if the examples they provided are accurate, “Wah lau, the movie damn sian”, from what I can tell based on the transation, the grammar structure is different enough from english that it's probably a good candidate for something new.
