depending on the situation; for example, an office worker may speak with less colloquialism and with a more British accent on the job than with friends or while out shopping. syllable-timing, where speech is timed according to syllable, akin to the English of the Indian Subcontinent. (Elsewhere, speech is usually timed to stress.) A quick, staccato style, with "puncturing" syllables and well-defined, drawn out tones. Non-rhoticity, like most varieties of English language in England. Hence caught and court are homophonous as (in actuality, or ); can't rhymes with aren't, etc. The "ay" and "ow" sounds in raid and road ( and respectively) are pronounced as monophthongs, i.e. with no "glide": and . is pronounced as [t] and as [d]; hence, thin is and then is . Depending on how colloquial the situation is: many discourse particles, or words inserted at the end of sentences that indicate the role of the sentence in discourse and the mood it conveys, like "lah", "leh", "mah", "hor", etc. Singapore Singapore is effectively a multilingual nation. The Singapore government recognises four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil. Students in primary and secondary schools learning English as the language of instruction also learn a second language called their "Mother Tongue" by the Ministry of Education, where they are taught Mandarin Chinese, Malay or Tamil. A main point to note is while "Mother Tongue" generally refers to the first language (L1) overseas, in Singapore, it is used by the Ministry of Education to denote the traditional language of one's ethnic group, which sometimes can be their second language (L2). There are two main types of English spoken in Singapore – Standard Singapore English and Singlish. Singlish is more widely spoken than standard English. It has a very distinctive tone and sentence structure which are both strongly influenced by Malay and the many varieties of Chinese spoken in the city. A 2005 census showed that around 30% of Singaporeans speak English as their main language at home. There are many foreigners working in Singapore. 36% of the population in Singapore are foreigners and foreigners make up 50% of the service sector. Therefore, it is very common to encounter service staff who are not fluent in English. Most of these staff speak Mandarin Chinese. Those who do not speak Mandarin Chinese tend to speak either broken English or Singlish, which they have learnt from the locals. Antarctica