Singapore’s Language

Q1. Work on the file entitled “Cantonese loans”. Based on the analysis of data, which three Cantonese loans that can be said to be the least stable in the Singlish lexicon? (3 points) I have chosen the three bold ones.
– tabao
– taitai
– sampat
– pokgai
– hampalang
– kancheong
– lupsup
– choy
– calefare
– humsup
– paktor
– gaodim
Q2.
Provide three reasons (with evidence from the data) for your answers to the previous question. (3 points)
Q3.
Analyse the usage and knowledge of these two words, orbid and obiang. They both mean the same thing, ie. to describe something or someone as being unfashionable. Orbid is an English loan (offbeat), and obiang (donor language unknown, but likely to be Hokkien). List some observations from the data provided. (2 points)
Q4.
Analyse the data in the file “toh”. In this file, you will see three words: “tsiatoh”, “bao toh”, and “tohnation”. List the ONE biggest observation in this data. (1 point)
Q5.
‘tsiatoh’ is from Malay “jatuh” to mean ‘fall’.
‘baotoh’ is from Hokkien, to mean “to snitch or to betray someone”
‘tohnation’ is a blend of both Hokkien and English. ‘Toh’ in Hokkien is to fall and ‘tohnation’ is a situation where a person, or a group of people, are knocked out from exhaustion.
Given what you know about these three loans, provide an explanation for the knowledge and usage patterns of these three words as presented in the data. (4 points)
Q6.
You will see, in three files, loans that are from donor languages that were not part of the linguistic ecology in the early development of Singlish, specifically English (in the “English” file), Mandarin (in the “Mandarin” file), and some other languages (in the “others” files). Clearly, Hokkien and Malay – the two main donors, do not feature here. In no more than 500 words, using evidence from the data, provide a picture of what might be the trend for new loanwords to enter Singlish. Your answer can look at the donor language, usage patterns, demographics of users, amongst other factors. (12 points)