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Although it is difficult to be precise about exactly when research on SgE commenced, the first book on the subject was published in 1974: Tongue, The English of Singapore and Malaysia. The work, which is ‘designed for the general reader and not for the specialist’ (p. v), includes a wide range of features typical of the local variety of English. However, it is unfortunate that one of the chapters is entitled ‘Some Frequent Sub-Standard Forms’ which he claims (p. lll) are ‘found, generally speaking, in the language of the less well-educated members of society but adopted by educated people when communicating with the latter and sometimes among themselves for humorous effect’. Actually, many of these forms occur in the speech of the highly (English-medium) educated in informal situations, e.g. the use of discourse particles, especially la(h) and a(h), and some of them even in quite formal situations, e.g. omission of be as copula or auxiliary, variation in the use of prepositions. There is no suggestion in Tongue’s book that SgE is in any sense a continuum and that there is system in the occurrence or nonoccurrence of certain features. Despite these reservations, however, Tongue deserves credit as a pioneer and the book is a valuable source of examples. Furthermore, Tongue makes some interesting comments on the development of this localized variety and on the legitimacy of such varieties.
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