By Kenny Goh
According to the Malay Annals, the Kingdom of Singapura used to rule the island way before the British colonised the island. Before that, Singapore was under the influence of Srivijaya Empire. Old Malay and Sanskrit were languages that existed on this island.
Thereafter, the Malacca Sultanate took over and the language used evolved to Middle Malay.
The British colonises Singapore, initially as the Straits Settlement from 1826 to 1867, and as a Crown Colony after 1867. English Language was brought over to be used in commerce and governance. Migrants from India and China also brought over Indian languages such Tamil and Punjabi and Chinese languages (dialects) such as Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hainanese. These immigrants mainly come from Southern India and China.
Japan conquers Singapore, renaming it as Shonan-to, or Light of the South. Japanese was taught in schools as a compulsory language and government agencies required the use of this language.
Even before the Japanese Occuptation, Bazaar Malay had become the lingua franca in the region and Hokkien becomes the lingua franca of the Chinese community. After self-governance, English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil becomes Singapore's 4 official languages.
The 4 offical languages remains. Malay becomes the National Language of Singapore. Among the Malay Community in Singapore, Javanese, Buginese, and Boyanese were also mother tongues is many families. Among the Chinese community, while there were numerous Chinese medium schools teaching in Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin is not used in most family households. English, either as a first language or a second language, was made compulsory in national examinations to encourage bilingualism.
The Government strongly encourages the use of Mandarin Chinese over other Chinese languages (dialects). The use of Chinese dialects thus fall rapidly after the start of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979.
The Speak Good English Movement was launched on 29 April 2000, in a bid to combat Singlish. Singapore has evolved to be a globalised city, with multiple languages and ethnicities on the island. As seen by the warning sign at a construction site on the left, Korean and Bengali is included in addition to the 4 official languages.
The pie charts above show that English has becoming more dominant at homes in just 10 years. The percentage of people speaking languages outside of the four official languages and Chinese dialects have also increased, showing our diversity.
We can see the steep decline of Chinese dialects in 1980, which can be largely attributed to the Speak Mandarin Campaign. As for Malay, it seems that it has remained relatively stable, but it should be noted that languages such as Bugis, Javanese and Boyanese has fallen in favour of Malay. The use of English has even grown more sharply since the introduction of the Speak Good English movement in 2000. Lastly, for Tamil, it has also remained largely stable over the years, similar to Malay.
Different regions of Singapore used to be dominated by different languages in the past.
Click on the interactive map to find out more!