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“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a pangram, a sentence with all 26 letters of the alphabet. Font sellers love this sentence since it showcases all 26 letters in one go. This is a podcast, so how things look don’t matter as much as how things sound, and we became curious about the Singapore accent for English. We got some of the best voice talents to read that sentence out loud – one phrase, 20 voices. 

In this episode, we use the monomyth template, commonly known as “A Hero’s Journey”

Act 1 – I Get No Respect: Singapore English in the mid-90s was a local use-only accent for English

Act 2 – The Mentor: we sit down with Assoc Prof Tan Ying Ying, who works on Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University and talk about the wonderfully unique accent here in Singapore. 

Act 3 – Nativeness: Lim Yu Beng helps us hear the subtle differences in the range of local Singaporean accents

Act 4 – The Prodigal Son. Or Bastard Son: we go Singlish, with Naomi Yeo demonstrating the local hybrid of English with Malay, Indian and Chinese Dialects

Act 5 – The Triumphant Return: Singapore undergoes a huge makeover, which turns Singapore English into a regional superstar. Robert Gaxiola, a superstar creative director who has worked on pan-Asian campaigns talks accents for Pan-Asian campaigns

This is a fun one!