Singapore at dusk (Source: Wikipedia)

Singapore became an independent nation in 1965 after more than 200 years of British colonial rule. A new hybrid language emerged since then which is known as ‘Singlish’ that is very distinct from standardised English taught in schools. Singlish is an English-based creole language spoken in Singapore. A creole language is a natural language which arose from contact of various languages. Some examples include French creoles e.g., Hatian Creole spoken in Haiti and Portuguese-based creoles e.g., Cape Verdean Creole spoken in the islands of Cabo Verde. Singlish has words borrowed from  Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay and Tamil. This is truly a reflection of multiculturalism.

Singlish has become the language of the street. It is used in many contexts, for example, when chatting with friends and families; when speaking to local taxi drivers; and ordering food at the hawker centre.Singaporeans are very comfortable with the use of Singlish although a different variety of English – standard Singapore English – is taught in schools. 

In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) announced that it has added 19 new “Singapore English” terms such as “ang moh”, “shiok”, “sabo” and subsequently “lah”, “sinseh”, and, “kiasu”!

.At the BLIP lab, we are interested in Singlish terms or local slang words that parents or caregivers use with their children e.g., makan or shee shee.We want to make sure that our checklist contains terms that Singaporeans use with their children. You can help us build our checklist by taking part in our Red-Dot Baby Talk study which will be launching shortly. The study is an online survey open to all Singaporeans.

Dr Alejandrina Cristia visited the LIFESPAN Research Centre on 6 August 2019 and shared with the BLIP team about her current research. Her talk was on “Big data on Small Children”. Dr Cristia is the Research Director of CNRS, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (LSCP) and Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), in Paris, France. 

Dr Cristia emphasised the fact that most of the research regarding language acquisition is conducted in the US and Europe and the subjects of these studies are largely English monolinguals. However, more than 60% of the world’s population is either bilingual or multilingual so she pointed out that more research needs to be carried out with children population in Asia and Africa in order for us to come to a better understanding of language acquisition. Part of Dr Cristia’s research includes recording speech heard by children and analysing the data  for the amount of child-directed speech vs adult-directed speech heard by the children. Past literature has informed us that child-directed speech, with its salient features like higher pitch, facilities language learning in children. She also examined the features of a language and the children’s language environments to find out what influences the learnability of the given language. 

Her methodology of conducting home recording of speech heard by children is similar to our current Baby Talk-a-thon project, and our BLIP team learned from her the challenges of conducting such recordings. We now feel better equipped for our upcoming home recordings with Singaporean families. 

At BLIP Lab, we are interested in finding out  more about language environments of Singaporean children. By participating in our home recordings, you and your child are partnering us as Citizen Scientists to build a corpus of Singaporean child-directed speech and to helping us to figure out what factors influence bilingual and biliteracy outcomes. 

We are looking for families with 0-36 months old to participate in our Baby Talk-a-thon!

Register your interest at http://bit.ly/LIFESPANbabylab

On 2 November 2018, Prof Suzy Styles was invited to present her research at the Science of Learning (SoL) symposium held at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. The event was organised by the Office of Education Research (OER), with support from the National Research Foundation (NRF). By looking into the Science of Learning (SoL), education practices can be shaped by the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience. The NRF supports research examining Singapore’s education methods in order to develop new methods which has better learning outcomes.

The theme of the symposium was “From Laboratories to Learning”. Neuroscientists and psychologists presented their latest work on brain development and function and how learning can be enhanced using what they’ve discovered. Prof Suzy Styles shared about the impact of early language exposure on bilingual and biliteracy outcomes of Singaporeans.The findings arose from a study the BLIP Lab and Dr Sagarika Bhattacharjee conducted last year. We recruited 228 undergraduates from Nanyang Technological University to complete the Language Fingerprint – a survey containing questions about one’s language proficiency, frequency of language use, and the percentage of talk their caregivers provided in each of their languages when they were young. The team then computed the Composite Language input Proportions (CLIPs) for each participant. Our preliminary findings suggest important links between the early years CLIPs, and adult proficiency in Mother Tongue language. To read more about this study and Prof Suzy Style’s talk, check out page 10 in the latest volume of the NIE OER Knowledge Bites

Currently, the BLIP lab team is working on our Baby Talk-a-thon project to understand Singaporean children’s language environments because we understand that retrospective data from adults (like the ones collected in our study) is insufficient in understanding what influences language outcomes. We plan to recruit 500 families in Singapore to take part.home recording sessions.

Find out more about our Baby Talk-a-thon project and register your interest here!

HASS Research Sharing Day was held at the ADM Auditorium (School of Art, Design and Media, Level 2) at the Nanyang Technological University on 4th April 2019. This one-day event brought together professors from across NTU’s College of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences. The event was launched by  Dean, Prof Joseph Liow, followed by faculty presentations.

Prof Suzy Styles from BLIP lab was invited to present a talk at the Research Sharing Day.  Her talk was titled “Understanding patterns of multilingualism in Singapore: Language Mixes in the Home and the Emergence of Bilingualism and Biliteracy”. Her presentation outlined the structure of the large scale ‘Language Mixes’ project funded by Singapore’s NRF. Prof Suzy Styles is Director of the BLIP Lab, which has its main research facilities at the Lifespan Research Centre in the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Novena.

When I was little, I would pick out my favourite bedtime story to read every night, tucking the book under one arm and dragging my dad or my mum’s hand with my other arm to the reading corner. At first, I always wanted to read only English books. I don’t remember why – Maybe I thought the books were better? Or maybe I was more confident reading in English? But my mum started to get worried that I was not enjoying my Tamil language as much. My mum is a Tamil teacher, so to ensure that I would enjoy reading  in Tamil just as much as I did for English, she would compile newspaper clippings, buy storybooks, bring us to movies and stick up reading charts. This all helped to make sure my growing process in reading was balanced between my languages.

By making reading fun, my parents helped me to practice my language skills. Even now I enjoy reading in all my languages!

What is the most fun thing you do in each of your languages?

Eshwaaree is a Research Assistant in the BLIP Lab, working on the Singapore Talk-a-thon as part of the Language-Mixes Project

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Today, for the International Day of Multilingualism we’ll be sharing lots of stories about multilingualism in Singapore – what it’s like to grow up in such a multilingual place, how different people feel about their different languages, and some of the core research questions we are working on as a team.

Hi, I’m Kathleen, and I have a 16 month old daughter. My husband is Italian and a psycholinguist, so discussing how our child will grow up linguistically is an interesting matter for us.

We want our daughter to be able to communicate with her grandparents, as one side speaks Italian and the other side speaks both Mandarin and Teochew. Growing up, my parents wanted my Mandarin to be good, so they did not speak to me in Teochew. Because of this I was not able to communicate smoothly with my Teochew-speaking grandparents, and I missed out on having a closer relationship with them. This is a common phenomenon in Singapore.

These days, many parents in Singapore are worried that hearing more than two languages might be too much for a baby. My parents fall into this category. Although they speak to each other in Teochew, they only speak in Mandarin to my daughter. But when we look at the science, we know that around the world, many babies grow up hearing many languages at the same time, and they do just fine! There is no scientific evidence that hearing more than two languages is bad for a baby. It is still an effort to convince my parents that it is alright to speak to my daughter in Teochew, but we are doing our best!

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At BLIP Lab we’re launching a series of investigations into how different families decide which of their languages they will speak around their babies, and how the different combinations influence language development. You can find out more about our Singapore talk-a-thon, or sign up and express an interest in joining our 500 families!

Did you know that alongside their other languages, Singaporeans speak a special kind of language called Singlish? Singlish is a ‘contact language’ that arose over hundreds of years of East/West trading through the free port of Singapore. Singlish combines words and phrases from English, Malay, Chinese Dialects and lots of languages, woven together in a unique grammar that has influences from Chinese. Although it is considered informal speech in Singapore, Singlish has its own unique structure, and can be very difficult for outsiders to learn! These days Singlish dictionaries can be found in local bookstores, and lots of Singaporeans feel a kind of Singlish pride – lah!

Preeti says: Speaking in English is common in my daily life in Singapore – I speak in English with my family, friends and even colleagues. But when I lived in Sydney for six years, I avoided the usage of ‘Singlish’ when I spoke to my professors and fellow classmates. It felt strange to speak in Singlish because it was not the norm in Australia, and I felt the need to blend in as well. 

Have you ever switched between different versions of English because of where you were or who you were speaking to? Linguists call this kind of switching ‘diglossia’ since a person speaks in two (di-) different codes (-glosses). It’s similar to bilingualism don’t you think?

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Today, for the International Day of Multilingualism we’ll be sharing lots of stories about multilingualism in Singapore – what it’s like to grow up in such a multilingual place, how different people feel about their different languages, and some of the core research questions we are working on as a team.