LAnguage of SIngapore

Singapore has four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.English is the common language of the nation and is the language of business, government and medium of instruction in schools. Public bodies in Singapore conduct their businesses in English, and official documents written in a non-English official language such as Chinese, Malay or Tamil typically have to be translated into English to be accepted for submission. The Singapore Constitution and all laws are written in English,and translators are required if one wishes to address the Singaporean Courts in a language other than English.However, English is the native tongue for only one-third of all Singaporeans, with roughly a third of all Singaporean Chinese, a quarter of all Singaporean Malays and half of all Singaporean Indians speaking it as their native tongue. Twenty percent of Singaporeans, or one out of every five, cannot read or write in English.
Many, but not all, Singaporeans are bilingual in English and another official language, with vastly varying degrees of fluency. The official languages ranked in terms of literacy amongst Singaporeans are English (80% literacy), Mandarin Chinese (65% literacy), Malay (17% literacy) and Tamil (4% literacy). Singaporean English is based on British English,and forms of English spoken range from Standard English to a pidgin known as "Singlish". Singlish is heavily discouraged by the government.^[159]
Chinese is the language that is spoken as the native tongue by the greatest number of Singaporeans, half of them. Singaporean Mandarin is the most common version of Chinese in the country. with 1.2 million using it as their home language. Nearly half a million speak other Chinese languags (which the government describes as "dialects"), mainly Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese, as their home language, although the use of these is declining in favour of Mandarin and English.^[161]
Malay was chosen as the "national language" by the Singaporean government after independence from Britain in the 1960s to avoid friction with Singapore's neighbours — Malaysia and Indonesia — which are Malay-speaking. It has a symbolic rather than functional purpose. It is used in the national anthem "Majulah Singapura"and in military commands. Today, in general, Malay is spoken within the Singaporean Malay community, with only 16.8% of all Singaporeans literate in Malay and only 12% using it as their native language.
Around 100,000 or 3% of Singaporeans speak Tamil as their native language. Even though only Tamil has official status, there have been no attempts to discourage the use or spread of other Indian languages.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore(16 feb 2013)