Globally there are of course many varieties of the English language. This volume of the Cambridge Advanced Studies in language series deals with "Singlish", the local vernacular which absorbs a wide range of accents, dialects, and structures influenced by Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, Hokkien, and Tamil as well as British, Australian and American Englishes. After an overview of the historical background the tools of linguistic analysis are applied to the local syntax, phonology, grammar, vocabulary and discourse. With graphics, tables, bibliography and index.