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Singapore English is the variety of English used in the city-state of Singapore, where it has been co-official since 1965 with Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, having already been a regional lingua franca since the early 19th century. As the key language of government, business, and education, it has uniquely acquired a large fully native-speaking community of non-Western origin. There are two varieties: educated, more formal usage, and a patois influenced by Chinese and Malay. Singapore English does not pronounce r in words such as art, door, and worker. It tends to have full vowels in all syllables (e.g., seven is pronounced "seh-ven" not "sev'n"). Words ending in k, p, and t, e.g., kick, stop, and put, are generally pronounced with "glottal stops." Those words ending in clusters such as -st and -ld are reduced to the vowel and the first of the last two consonants e.g., "fas" for fast, "sol" for sold. Colloquial usage diverges considerably from the standard, as in: You come or not? for Are you coming?; My dad, he come from Penang for My dad comes from Penang; This hotel cheap for This hotel is cheap.
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