Sub-varieties have often come about from former English-speaking conquerors in various areas of the world. For example, the British English has influenced India; American English has left its mark on Korean and Philippine English in ways of accent, pronunciations and spelling of words. This is known as 'indigenized variety'.Some English lg varieties have come about while functioning as a bridge of communication between two different lg groups. A 'variety' that is shared by the two, likely becomes the second lg of the country. This type is often referred to as 'pidgin'. Nigeria has such a bridge among its peoples.
When the pidgin variety becomes the L1 (first language) of children, it will eventually become its own distinct lg with unrestricted use among the general populace. Such 'pidgin' is then termed 'creole'. A good example of this is the Hawaii Creole English.
Minority groups like to get into the mix by adding their own identity within their particular ethnic group such as the African-Americans. Some call it "Ebonics"--the lingo they generally only speak among themselves yet in addition to the more 'standard language' of their country. This is termed, 'minority dialect'.
Coming back to the indigenized variety in my local community...Sabah, Malaysia was colonized by the British prior to WWII so that the English spoken here was/is, of course influenced greatly by them. However, it is now a far cry from 'proper and standard' British English.
One does not know what to call the local English. It is different from nearby Singapore's 'Singlish'. It is different even from West Malaysian English. It is more like 'Manglish'; that is, mangled English to ones' delicate mother tongued North American English ears. Again it is a far cry from the good Queen's English of Britian.
Okay, okay, it's not 'incorrect' it is 'different' (refer to article re: English's Many Flavors for this definition). How did it become so, "different"?
When I first came to this community, the English was "all Greek to me" as it was liberally sprinkled with Malay, Chinese and dialects of Chinese and even spiced with tribal group speak. Once in a while a truly "English' word would be spoken and then the thread of the conversation could be somewhat comprehended. In addition, direct translations into English from the above mentioned lgs were also interjected; carry over accents and pronunciations definitely interfered with the way the English was spoken.
Written works were also affected. Just a glance at almost any of the daily newspapers...grammar was thrown out of whack, again by gross interference of the L1 (mother tongue) into the L2 (second language) English resulting with a fossilization of errors in print. "You say me" and "Where got, ah?" are interesting samples.
As English native-speaker teachers were replaced by locals whose English was learned as a second lg, much interference of the L1 came into play until the Sabah English devolved to what it is today.
Unfortunately, a whole generation of students was severely cut off from English when the medium of teaching all subjects in schools was switched from English to the national lg. It's been a tough road for the general populace to regain even a semblance of communicative competence in English.
Fortunately, science and mathematics being taught in the English medium was re-introduced several years ago. Unfortunately, recent decisions are to revert those subjects back to the national lg once again. A great deal of confusion ensues among teacher and student masses alike with predictable scrambling of English in its wake.
Summing up, the development of English in Sabah had an excellent start. The many years of adverse ups and downs left it very different from the original model. However, despite all the 'distorted' input, a person can still get by once attuned to the 'Sabah Indigenized Variety' of English used by today's generation. After all, is not variety the 'spice of life'?
~ERC-2010~
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