What’s it like to learn a language in a country with 4 official languages? How does English bring people together? Find out in season 2 episode 2 of Language Stories.

Why Singapore?

I always loved Singapore from my first visit back in 2011. When we decided to head back to the region to record season 2 of Language Stories, Singapore was the natural choice to fly in and out of, and also a great choice for an episode initially based on the fact that it has four official languages. Yes! Four!

How could we not make an episode here?!

The Video

The Podcast

Featuring

Singapore Meet-Up – Cheng connected us with this meetup group and the hosts and members all welcomed us with open arms, which isn’t always easy when 2 people show up carrying a camera! If you’re in Singapore on the weekend, be sure to check if the group is meeting that weekend.

Zinkie Aw – Zinkie is a full-time photographer behind the project Singapore Lang, which led to the book What The Singlish?. You can find out about more of her work here.

Lilian Lee – Lilian is the creator of Say What, a company that makes an awesome card game for language fans to have fun with a range of languages including Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, Singlish, and Japanese. Take a look here.

Eva Neo – Eva is a talented comic artist from Singapore whose experience living abroad in Japan inspired her first comic book, Eva, Kopi and Matcha. Check out her work here.

Further Reading + Resources

Languages of Singapore – Wikipedia – a great general overview of languages in Singapore.

Speak Good English Movement – The official website of the Speak Good English Movement. Read this as well for an objective perspective.

The Language The Government Tried to Suppress – BBC – a longform article about Singlish and its history in Singapore.

National Statistics – Singaporean Government – some statistics on the population of Singaporean, including language stats.

Tamil Language Council – The official website of the Tamil Language Council in Singapore.

Malay Language Council – The official website of the Malay Language Council in Singapore.

Speak Mandarin Campaign – The official website of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Singapore. Read this as well for an objective perspective.

So, Expats Are Taking Classes To Learn Singlish In Singapore (P.S. It’s FREE!) – an article from 2017 about expats in Singapore learning Singlish.

Singlish Crash Course – some Singlish basics to spark your interest!

Our Sponsor

A huge thank you to Lingora for sponsoring season 2 of Language Stories!

Lingora is a new online language community where you can share written and spoken practice in the language you’re learning and get real feedback from the community. What’s great about Lingora is that they help to eliminate the “umms” and “ahhs” by giving you prompts for your writing and speaking. And the really great bit? It’s 100% free. Yup. Totally free feedback on your language practice.

But there’s more to Lingora. You’ve also got the option for free lessons, live chat, and paid for lessons with tutors. Basically, all bases are covered.

You can support Language Stories by signing up for free to Lingora at elingora.com.

Support The Show

The best thing you can do right now to support the project is threefold, and if you’ve ever listened to any podcast before, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with what I’m about to say!

1. Subscribe – by subscribing to the Language Stories podcast in your favourite place and YouTube for the sister videos, you’re going to keep up with all future episodes. Woop!

2. Review – when it comes to the tech stuff, reviews are pretty important. Reviews help to tell iTunes that people like the podcast, and that helps to raise the profile so that new people can find it easily. Yay!

3. Tell a friend – word of mouth still wins! If you know someone who would love Language Stories, tell them about it. And if they’re new to podcasts, walk them through the process to subscribe them. Woohoo!

To make it as easy as possible to share the podcast, click here to tweet about episode.

Share Your Story

If you have a Language Story you’d love to share, or if you know someone that does, get in touch.

I always love to hear from you! Your feedback helps to shape future episodes so thank you.