But whereas the physical environment of South Asia does not lead foreigners to expect the man in the street to converse in English, Singapore's does. The ambiance in this island-state, long a crossroads of East and West, is dazzlingly Western.

English is the official language in Singapore, although three-quarters of the population is of Chinese descent. The smart set affects American slang and accents.

It comes as a shock, therefore, when an exquisitely manicured young woman in a name-brand twin-set or a dashing young man in the latest cargo pants stares uncomprehendingly if you ask a street direction in English.

When younger Singaporeans do say something in English, they often mean something very different. When one of the students at the university where I teach said that "all" hadn't done a particular exercise, I thought that some had. But, no, "all" meant no one. Another student said that he had done a similar exercise "last time." There hadn't been a last time, for the class and I were new to each other, but I knew that "last time" means the past.

The confusion is common, one of an increasing number resulting from unconscious translation of Chinese constructions into English. It is an example of how "proper" English in Asia has been modified by speakers whose mother tongues have different rules for tense and gender - among other characteristics - making it increasingly difficult for outsiders to understand English as it is spoken locally.

I cannot blame my students too much, for a distinguished guest speaker spoke of "40-over TV channels" only the day after I had dinned into the class that the correct term was "more than 40." But it was puzzling when my host said he would "send" me after the party. Send me what or where, I wondered. Good chap, he was only offering to drop me home.

Singapore's government cares what Singaporeans say and how they say it. It prescribes British spelling and its Speak Good English Campaign discourages Singlish, a local English dialect spiced with Hokkien and Malay words that the government thinks is demeaning.

When an ad in Singapore showed a local boy with clenched fist upraised saying that if his father could play golf five times a week, he could have the milk food of his choice once a day, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong objected that the American idiom was inappropriate.

Yet, thanks to spellcheckers, students spell the American way. The computer thinks for them.

But it cannot save the language, English or American, from being reinvented with the grammar and syntax of the mother tongue. Only sound early schooling and better schoolteachers can.

A Singaporean editor I knew could hold his own in the Queen's English with the snootiest of speakers, while bandying witticisms in Singlish with coffee shop cronies. He had learned English from British teachers - or from punctilious Indians, who, as the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge famously said, are the last Englishmen.

But that was last time. He is 50-over.

The writer, a former editor of The Statesman newspaper in India, is a senior fellow in the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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