Singapore Culture & Language

Singaporean culture is plural by design, and food is where the plurality is most visible and most enjoyable.

Hawker culture

UNESCO-listed in 2020, and the genuine heart of daily life. Street vendors were moved into purpose-built centres from the 1970s, and what survived is a network of hundreds of stalls where a specialist cooks one dish for decades. Hainanese chicken rice, chilli crab, char kway teow, laksa, nasi lemak, roti prata, bak kut teh and satay are the canon, and the queue is the recommendation.

Peranakan heritage

The Straits Chinese culture produced nonya cooking — laksa, ayam buah keluak, kueh — along with beaded slippers, porcelain and the pastel shophouses of Katong and Emerald Hill.

Faiths side by side

A Taoist temple, a mosque, a Hindu temple and a church can sit within a few streets. Thian Hock Keng, the Sultan Mosque and Sri Mariamman are all worth entering, and the religious calendar means something is being celebrated most of the year.

Arts

The National Gallery holds the largest collection of Southeast Asian modern art anywhere. Theatre and literature in four languages, and a film tradition that has grown since the 1990s.

Public housing as a cultural fact

Around eight in ten Singaporeans live in flats built by the Housing and Development Board, and they own them. The estates — each with its own hawker centre, market and void decks where weddings and funerals are held — are where the national culture actually happens, and the ethnic quotas that govern who can buy in each block are the most concrete expression of the multiracial policy. Tiong Bahru, the oldest estate, is now a conservation area.

Architecture

Shophouses conserved rather than cleared, colonial civic buildings, and a contemporary skyline that takes real risks — Marina Bay Sands, the Interlace, Jewel Changi.

There are four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Malay is the national language and the anthem is sung in it; English is the language of government, business, law and schooling, and is what everyone uses across communities.

A visitor needs only English, and it is spoken universally and fluently.

What you will hear is Singlish — English with Hokkien and Malay grammar and a set of sentence-final particles. Lah for emphasis, can and cannot as complete answers, shiok for delicious, makan for eating, chope for reserving a table. It is not broken English but a stable creole, and understanding a little of it makes the place much more legible.

Older Singaporeans may speak Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese or Tamil at home rather than any official language.