Singlish

[Rufus]

Does anyone care to share her/his opinion about Singlish?
Are there any books on the local dialect?  

[Ovidiu]

I don't know any books, but i can recomend a very interesting web page http://www.uncle-mark.com/

[Nicolette]

Singlish... there is a book about it -but what do you want to know? there'll be some malay thrown in, a bit of the dialects
lah means nothing & we throw it at the end of a sentence
meanwhile oei is to try & get your attention..

email me lah.

[Carl]

Singlish is not a dialect but the semi-demi-literate Singaporean's version of English.

You think of Singlish as a literal translation of an expression in Chinese (or Malay) into English - but without any regard for tenses and sometimes the definite or indefinite article are omitted. And a word is added here and there which while totally meaningless to English speaker nevertheless does convey more to the Singlishman.

For example,

"Do you want ....?"

would be

"You want don't want ...?"
pronounced "You wan don wan"
with the final consonants silent.

"I don't have enough money" OR "There is not enough money" is rendered as "Money no enough" in Singlish.

Sometimes a word found in a Singlish expression can be left out without any loss in meaning, but which the Singlishman still uses anyway.

For example:

English speaker to Singlish air hostess: "So, what were you doing before you became an air hostess?"

Singlish air hostess: "Study law."
(This "law" here can be omitted and not change the meaning. It is used anyway so that the sentence sound more complete, smoother, less abrupt.

English Speaker, thinking that the air hostess used to be a law student: "Why did you give up (law) to be an air hostess? "

Singlish air hostess: "Cannot meh?" meaning "Can I not do it --- give up my studies to be an air hostess." The "meh" here serves the same function as the "law" above.

And of course there is this biquitous
"lah." "Lah" is like "man" to a Brit or like "like" to the Yank.

So the Brit will say, "I'm not hungry man..." while the Singlishman will say "I'm not hungry lah..." Or maybe the yank will say, "I'm like not hungry."

But the difference between English and Singlish is not only in the spelling or pronunciation of individual words or the "fillers" like "man, lah, law". The speech rhythm and speech music are also totally different. Sometimes you do not know whether a man is referring to cemen(t) or semen.

And if you make a phone call, you may hear a recorded message that asks you to "ho on" because no one is free to attend to you.

Many football fans here root for ManCHESter.

[Singaporean]

Aiyoh, don't listen to Carl. He's ang moh, what does he know about Singlish?  

Lah, Law/lor (it's not the graduate subject), meh, leh etc etc all come from Chinese that has all these "moderating" sounds that don't mean anything but are added to soften a question or statement. Like if you say "don't do that", it's kinda harsh; if you say "don't do that lah", it's softer.

In Carl's exampl of "study lor/law", it really means "of course I was studying/in school, silly"

And the reason Singlish involves dropping ending consonants is because Asian languages don't end in hard consonants like t or d or l

[Iceman]

Carl fella

If you visited Ireland, Wales, Scotland or the midlands of England then I'm sure you'd agree that Singlish aint really that much of a problem to understand...

Unfortunately most of them (and half of London) also support ManU??

[abc]

singlish is just one of many colourful variations of english language in the world.  reading the script for Trainspotting should convince you of that.

[carl]

Singapore, don't call me "ang moh" lah. Ang Moh literally means "Red Hair" because apparently the first europeans the Chinese people saw had "red" hairs. Probably brown or rust.

But Singaporean is right, lah, makes a statement less harsh.

I forgot to say, sometimes you can throw in a "what" as in "You said you did not want what." If you just say, "You said you did not want," then you might add: "So that's it."

But the "what" is also an appeal to the listener to be reasonable, lah. It is like saying "Come on, lah, don't get mad, lah, it was you who said you did not want."

[evehow]

Hah?  What talking-you?

I catch no ball.

Visit www.talkingcock.com  (Lexicon of Lah) and www.sintercom.org  (Cafe Vanda) for more delightful Singlish!

I read, I also chio-kah-peng (laugh until fainted)!

[ah beng]

> chio-kah-peng (laugh until fainted)!

Ermm... more accurate one hor is "laugh until flip over" lah

u guys who posted earlier hor, actually dunnid the comma before "lah". we say everything continuously one.

[evehow]

Aiyoh, blarder, "peng" si (is) "pengsan" mah, Malay word for "faint."

See, even I more crever (clever) than the Leksikon!  Hee hee!  

[Nicolette]

oei - pensan is not malay okay?
aiyah... just relak lah - you come different country... you cannot expect everyone to talk like from where you came from right? so relak brudder, don't so like that. (it's not like it's that hard to understand - it's just expressions - some other accents good lordy, you can barely understand the whole sentence)
in case you want to know
aiyah: when you're quite fed up/ suddenly realize something.
relak- relax
lah -.... (shouldn't you be used to it by now?!)
ang moh, masaleh = caucasians in general (i'm singaporean, i still get called that so)
So. have fun. eat, drink, be merry. a couple of months & you'll be talking like us

[Chichi]

"Pengsan" IS faint in Malay.

[Lenore]

Wah, Evehow, xie xie!  I chio kao peng read Cock.

[Nicolette]

Pengsan is cheena okay? it's not melayu