The dynamics of multilingualism in contemporary Singapore

Historically, Singapore was home to a heterogeneous and highly multilingual population from across the Asian region and elsewhere in the world. In contrast with its historical past, or even the early days of the post-colonial period, Singapore’s earlier diverse and linguistically heterogeneous society has evolved into a multi-ethnic nation state, with four official languages, of which three are recognised ‘mother tongues’. This paper reviews the historical and contemporary dynamics of multilingualism in the Singapore community, and also serves as an introduction to the five other papers in this symposium on ‘English in multilingual Singapore’.