but i just had the most con-fucking-fusing conversation of my life trying to manage my cellphone account here in Sing.
"The vocabulary of Singlish consists of words originating from
English,
Malay (mainly Bahasa Melayu rather than
Indonesian),
Hokkien,
Teochew,
Cantonese,
Tamil,
Bengali,
Punjabi and to a lesser extent various other European,
Indic and
Sinitic languages, while Singlish syntax resembles southern varieties of Chinese. Also, elements of
American and
Australian slang
have come through from imported television series. Recently, due to the
fact that Mandarin is taught to most Singaporean Chinese students in
school, Mandarin words have also found their way into Singlish."
idk if thats a mindfuck for you but it goes to show how complicated this stuff can be to understand.
heres the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish
here are some phrases as well:
- Dis country weather very hot one. – In this country, the weather is very warm.
- Dat person there cannot trust. – That person over there is not trustworthy.
- Tomorrow dun need bring camera. – You don't need to bring a camera tomorrow.
- He play soccer also very good one leh. – He's very good at playing soccer too.
- Not good one lah. – This isn't good.
- Cannot anihow go liddat one leh. – You/it can't go just like that.
- How come never show up? – Why didn't you/he/it show up? (See the use of never in place of didn't under the "Past tense" section.)
- I li badminton, dat's why I every weekend go play. – I like badminton, so I play it every weekend.
- He not feel well, so he stay home sleep lor. – He's not feeling well, so he decided to stay home and sleep!
theres more on the wiki link but holy shit, ive lived here for almost 6 months and still every once in a while i find myself totally lost in translation in an "English" speaking country.
