Singlish WOTD: Boleh

Your Singlish Word of the Day is: Boleh

Defn: Can do, it's possible

From Malay.

Singlish WOTD: Chiobu

Your Singlish Word of the Day is: Chiobu

Defn: Good-looking female, babe, hot chick

From Hokkien.

Singlish WOTD: Makan

Your Singlish Word of the Day is: Makan

Defn: eat

From Malay. For example, "Let's go Makan."

Singlish WOTD: Gostan

Your Singlish Word of the Day is: Gostan

Defn: Go backwards, reverse, back up

From Pidgin English originally from the nautical phrase "go astern".

Singlish WOTD: Chope

Your Singlish Word of the Day is: Chope

Defn: Reserve, pre-book, claim

From chop; to leave a mark. Singaporeans have a habit of leaving objects (often tissue packets or umbrellas) on seats or tables to reserve them while they go and order. "Don't take this seat, I choped it already."

Choping can catch foreigners in tense situations because unless you know the convention, you can quite valid assess a restaurant table as vacant and when the prior claimants return, they usually take an aggressive stance believing their chope is as good as law.

Compare with Germans leaving towels on sun loungers around Costa del Sol hotel pools.

An Irritating Truth (lah)

I've written before about how Singaporean speech is an eclectic tonic of English and Chinese with mixed vocabulary, grammar and accent. For balance sake, I should point out examples of excellent English use.

A newspaper covered an explosion in some Bukit Merah flats which blew out windows and substantially destroyed or damage several units. After describing the neighbours collection of belongings, the article went on to quote the fire dept:

"A gas leak is believed to have contributed to the explosion"

Well, Duh! But I wonder how many people would have carelessly used "caused" in this instance? A cause is certainly more definite but likely overstating the body of evidence. Next up is an example of a colleague answering the 'phone in the office:

"Yes?" ... "This is she" ...

That's nice and absolutely correct. It's all a matter of background of course. Schooling and parents' speech at home are primary contributors.

But 2 memorable examples from over 18 months is worrying thin evidence of strong language competency. Singapore should be in a supreme position to capitalise on its widespread English and Mandarin ability. They should be a regional Rosetta Stone, valuable in the global marketplace but, in all honesty, the opportunity is being squandered by the casual mish-mash that is Singlish combined with the regional accent.

I think it's quaint and fun, but the harsh economic reality is that the status quo vox populi may be cute & comforting but on the world stage, it's baby talk that needs to be left behind.

Pasar Patois

Soon after arriving, I was asked how I was getting on with Singlish? "Fine" I said, I've been working in Asia for years. "Ah no", they said, Singlish is different, it's not just an accent, but an amalgam of languages including many loan words, mostly Hokkien, e.g.

"Wah, it's cheem ah?", meaning it's complicated or deep.

I don't speak Hokkien or Hindi or Urdu or much Malay so all loan words could be a problem to comprehension, but that's nowhere near the most interesting aspect of Singlish.

In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often) closely-related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. Singapore has a diglossic continuum of elite English, through Singlish and ending in Mandarin/Hokkien Chinese. People speak different languages, by choice, depending upon the situation. On the street, pasar patois ("market speak") mixes language, accent and vocabulary to establish the speaker's social class. And people migrate up and down the continuum to suit the situation, a bit like putting on a posh accent when going into an estate agent.

Regular readers here will now be wondering what the Government is doing. Checkout the Speak Good English movement launched in 2000 to encourage improvements in English. It is focusing on encouraging standard English sentence construction, rather than the common direct Chinese-to-English transliteration, e.g.:

Singlish: What time start?

English: What time does the event begin?

I like Singlish as I like all languages. It's a magic code to achieve things, like saying "peng" to a Thai taxi driver to negotiate the price down, Singlish can sometimes get more done than standard English. If there is a problem at work, a quick "How to do?" works wonders - it sounds familiar, non-threatening and invites cooperation. Sounds good to me!