新加坡華語的特色與文化在教學上的角色

Characteristics of Singaporean Chinese and the Implication in Teaching

本文描述新加坡華語的語音、詞彙、句法與語用等等方面的特色，並認為這些很穩定的共同特色，已經足以構成新加坡華語獨立的腔調，應當視為「華語」的一種方言或類別。由於新加坡華語的形成，與華人和當地的其他族群在語言溝通之間混合形成的，頗具有地方色彩。其次，新加坡華語的許多詞彙，來自於華語和馬來語或英語的互動，反映了多元族群在食衣住行等等文化上的特性，因此研究新加坡華語無法避免文化和歷史。同樣地，在華語教學上，新加坡華語擁有與大陸普通話或臺灣國語等一樣的地位，是一種方音，也是一種教學應該要教的對象。語言和文化應該看成一體的兩面，很難分割，成功的語言教學，最好能兼顧語言和文化的表達。

The basic goal of this article is to characterize the specific properties making Singaporean Chinese different from Putonghua or Mandarin in Taiwan. In consonants, there are no retroflexed fricatives, no palatalization, and full of variation between [f] and [hu]. The most outstanding aspect lies in the socalled fifth tone, which is phonetically a high falling tone, used for words ending with p, t, k in the Middle Chinese. There are also five syntactic structures quite strange, for instance, adverbs like cai and xian are put after what they modify, e.g. liangkui cai 'only two pieces'.. However different Singaporean Mandarin may be, it should be considered to be a variety of Mandarin and it should be taught in class.