Southeast Asia

Abstract

This chapter provides an areal profile of Englishes in Southeast Asia (SEA), focusing on the three core Outer Circle varieties, namely Singapore English, Malaysian English, and Philippine English, outlining the historical and sociolinguistic contexts for their evolution, and highlighting substrate influence in the contact dynamics of their multilingual ecologies. Common features of phonology and grammar, and particles and mixed codes are illustrated. The article also goes beyond the three core SEA Englishes to consider (i) the situations of the other SEA countries, considered in the Expanding Circle, but where English is spreading more widely and swiftly than before; (ii) the feature of tone, so far only documented in SgE, but, given SEA’s tone-language ecologies, with the potential of becoming a feature characteristic of the region; and (iii) current social and economic developments in SEA which have implications for the social fabric, the ecology, and the evolving varieties of English.