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ENGLISH, as spoken by Singaporeans, is "weird".
At least, that's what some TAIWAN CELEBRITIES think. And they wasted no time in making their opinions known on a variety programmes in Taiwan.

In the 28 Jan epsiodes of the popular variety show Mr Con and Ms Csi aka Kang Xi lai le, the hosts and guests were seen making fun of the way Singaporeans speak English.

ARROY SHEN, former member of COMICBOYZ, describe Singapore's English as " weird" because Singaporeans intone the second syllabe of word upwards instead of downwards.

He said that he was taught to shorten " thank you" to " thank". Only problem was, it sounded more like " dance" when he said it. ARROY also demonstrated how Singaporeans pronounce "SORRY" while he was on a recent two month visit to Singapore.

He repeated " sorry" exaggeratedly, to much laughter from the show's hosts, Tsai Kang Yong and SELINA REN... He then showed how Singaporean pronounce " tissue paper", and this was again meet with roaring laughter from the hosts and other guests.

- one host then laughingly likened the Singaporean accents to the way THAI people speak English.

Xu Wei, an English teacher who was also a guest on the same episode describe an encounter with an immigration officer on a trip to Singapore.

She say in mandarin: i was wearing a loose fitting dress and the officer ask me " pegnan? pregnant? it than dawned on me that he mean if i was pregnant.

Another guest Ma guoxian also made fun of how Singaporeans refer to older people as uncle and aunties.

They are always "uncle" and " aunties" - just don't understand what they mean," he said.

After this episodes was shown in Taiwan, a segment of it was posted on youtube.

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That's an interesting article. Many years ago I had a female co worker from Singapore and she studied at UCLA. Her english wasn't that bad. I really want to test this theory when I go to Singapore. I think that in any country, you got to give these guys credit for trying. Some countries have more than one dialect which makes it interesting.

I've always thought it sounded like it had a Cantonese accent. But I also agree it sounds a little Thai as well.

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Go Bears!

Singaporeans can speak perfect English infront of foreigners. However, just like the South Africans, the Jamaicans, they would use a patois language called "singlish" when communicating with one another.

In fact, I used to work for a Taiwanese boss and her English was pathetically difficult to understand. In Asia, I felt the worst spoken English or the most difficult to comprehend accent of English would be Taiwanese and Indoensians. I get very impatient when I listen to them, especially Indoensians speaking English.

You must tape yourself speaking. I know im curious to hear your accent.

Mia, I was born in Taiwan and not Singapore.

I don't have an accent since I moved to California ever since I was little. People on the east coast do say that they could tell I'm from Cali from the way I speak.

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Go Bears!

It doesnt matter where you are born or whatever accent you have or have not.. i still wanna hear your voice LOL!

I used to live there and I can speak Singlish. It isn't that bad really.

I'm from Singapore originally so I think I'm qualified to comment!

In short, yes Singapore English really IS that bad!

However, the educated Singaporeans are fully capable of holding conversations with foreigners in PERFECT English. And their written English is often better than "native" speakers (Brits/Americans). It's just that when they speak in Singlish, no-one can understand them at all. It's like when Jamaicans speak their local "dialect". It's incomprehensible.

Singlish is made up of different sentence structures, borrowing from Chinese (both Mandarin and dialects) and Malay.

The trouble is a lot of the local working class Singaporeans can neither speak proper English nor proper Mandarin, they can ONLY speak Singlish! This is particularly true for those who are educated only up to secondary level i.e. 10th grade in the US.

My Singaporean friends in Hong Kong spoke perfect English! But they did have a noticeable accent, I have no idea how to describe it.