As we saw in the previous chapter, the city-ports of Monsoon Asia were characterized by multiculturalism and pluralism, suggesting that they were linguistically diverse environments in which languages such as Javanese, Sundanese, Malay, southern Sinitic (Cantonese and Min), Tamil, and Arabic were dominant in different functional domains. A similar linguistic ecology can still be found in city-states such as Singapore today, as well as many harbours of the region. Inhabitants of these environments are predominantly multilingual, usually raised in households where at least two different languages are spoken, and exposed to other languages from very early on, through the playground, the extended family, domestic servants, etc. In a typical Chinese Singaporean household, for example, parents will most likely communicate in either Singlish, an Asian variety of English with a Sinitic-type grammar, or Mandarin, though parents, and most likely grandparents, may certainly be acquainted with other varieties of Chinese such as Hokkien and Cantonese. There will also be friends who, next to English, speak a South Indian or a Malay variety, and Singlish in fact reflects the presence of these languages in the society, at least in its vocabulary. Nannies are usually involved who speak either a language of Indonesia or the Philippines, or perhaps a South Asian language: their English reflects features of these linguistic backgrounds which also enter the ecology in which speakers interact.