Sheng Jiong wrote:
Singlish, like Cantonese, are widely used in informal
dialogues and
writings. But it not "natural" for Singaporeans or Hong Kongers to
write formal essays using Singlish or Cantonese, and neither are they
accustomed to read any formal written works (such as an encyclopedia)
that are published in languages that they think should only occur in
daily conversations.
While this is true, several other languages and language dialects for
which it's also true are very recently being used in formal settings.
For example, the Scottish Parliament has a version of its webpage
translated into Scots [1], which is to a first approximation a phonetic
way of writing English spoken with a Scottish accent, plus some modified
grammar and vocabulary. Similarly, Northern Ireland distributes
election materials written in Ulster Scots [2]. If anything, Singlish
is less mutually intelligible with "standard English" than either Scots
or Ulster Scots are. The main difference seems to be that, while the
Scottish government wishes to promote the use of Scots as a legitimate
language, the Singaporean government takes the opposite view of Singlish.
Other, more creole-like examples are the Haitian mentioned earlier, and
even modern Greek, which until the 1970s was considered an informal
language not worth writing down, and all formal communication was
written in an official standard Greek that few people actually spoke in
daily life.
I guess this brings up the question of how we distinguish between
these. Should we care what the relevant governments think?
-Mark
[1]
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/index.htm
[2]
http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/languages/ulsterscots.cfm