The sociolinguistic status of Malaysian English

Background. Malaysia as a multilingual country has Creoles and semicreoles which derive from varying competence in the various languages. One such variety is Malaysian (vernacular) English (ME), a semi-creole variant of English. While a similar variety of Singapore English ("Singlish"; SE) has been often described, ME has been more often omitted. However, the sociolinguistic situation of ME and SE is not the same. Material and method. Speakers of ME with Chinese LI have been asked to produce sentences and dialogues. These data have been collected, transcribed and analyzed. This paper makes introductory remarks about the analysis. Analysis. ME diverges from English (EN) in many ways; substratal influences from Chinese languages (Ch.) and Malay (ML; including vernacular forms) can be identified. Conclusions. ME converges with local languages (Ch., ML) at all levels of grammar and blends into the Malaysian brand of Chinese languages and participates in what is called bahasa rojak (lit. language salad, language mixing). The actual realizations of ME utterances also depend on the level of linguistic competence in Standard English. The function of ME in multilingual Malaysia is that of a dialect and sociolect of English, providing a specific identity for multiethnic citizens, while Standard English is the educated, formal register. In this respect, ME is equivalent to Mandarin Chinese which partially adapted to the Malysian linguistic scenery and increasingly forms a roof language for the South Chinese languages.