South Asian languages in Singapore are mainly used by the country's 348,119 Indian Singaporean residents, who form about 9.2% of Singaporean citizens and permanent residents.[1] As a result of historical migration and settlement patterns, Indian Singaporeans came to the island from various parts of South Asia speaking a variety of South Asian languages, mostly Tamil. Today, most ethnic Indians in Singapore are locally born second, third, fourth or even fifth generation descendants of immigrant forefathers. In addition, a substantial minority are recent immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.
In Singapore, a distinction is made between the ancestral ethno-linguistic identity of a person and the actual language that he or she uses or is able to use. Singapore's census takers make this distinction by capturing both types of data. Ancestral ethno-linguistic identity is captured under the category of 'dialect group' (although this term may be more appropriate for describing the linguistic composition of the majority Chinese, rather than Indians). In contrast, actual language use is captured by the term'language most frequently spoken at home'.
The various government statistics only refer to residents (citizens and permanent residents) and exclude those classed as "non-residents" who represent about 25% of the total population (mostly foreign students and workers).
^Singapore Department of Statistics (2007). Monthly Digest of Statistics Singapore, October 2007(PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-11-24. Retrieved 2008-01-06 – via singstat.gov.sg.
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