We laugh every day at things that are said around us that we don't understand. English is one of the four national languages of Singapore (Malay, Tamil, English and Madarin) yet communication is often a little tricky. First of all, local Singaporeans often speak Singlish which is a dialect that is sort of a mashup of English along with Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, and Mandarin thrown in along with the frequent use of the word "lah". The mixing of different languages within one sentence manages to confuse me every time, even when the person is technically speaking English!
Since taking Mandarin, I've realized that a lot of the problems I have with understanding Singlish stem from the fact that Singlish, like Mandarin, rearranges the sentence so that the subject is often at the end of the sentence or not referenced at all. "Dis country weather very hot one" is translated "The weather is very warm in this country". A very common phrase is "No good lah" meaning "This isn't good". In Singlish, as in Mandarin, "yes" is said as "can lah" and "no" is "no can lah". And the verb "to be" seems to be optional and is often just left out of the sentence.
That being said, we've had no major problems with languages here (aside from confusion on the phone sometimes). BUT we have learned a lot of new words thanks to our friends from so many different countries. We thought we would put a list together of some of favorites (mostly from the British and Australians):
- Lift = elevator (we have a lift lobby in our condo and we take the lift up and down)
- Carpark = garage
- Frocked up = to get dressed up
- Shattered or Knackered = exhausted (often happens after a tennis match!)
- Rubber = eraser
- Footy = Australian rules football (not be confused with American football, or European futball)
- Fanny = female private parts (hence a lot of laughs about the fact that we call the butt a fanny and we refer to the silly packs some people wear around their waist as "fanny packs". They call them "bum packs")
- Bespoke = custom-made (for instance, you have a bespoke dress if you have it altered to fit)
- Bee's knees = awesome
- Pissed = drunk (piss is another word for beer)
- He's been Retrenched = he's been fired from his job
- Boot = trunk of the car (the boot is searched each time a car drives onto our school campus)
- Alight = get off/out (we alight at the bus stop)
- Root = politer word for f#@k (hence singing "root, root, root for the home team' gets a lot of laughs)
- Barrack = to cheer for your team
- Cooked chook = roasted chicken
- Flapjacks = kind of like our granola bars (definitely not a pancake which I have heard before)
- Your bathers = swim suit ("don't forget to bring your bathers and rashie to the pool")
- Rashie = swim shirt
- Budgie smuggler = a man's speedo (a very common sight in Asia)
- Bludger= someone who's being lazy
- Chips = french fries
- Crackers = what we refer to as chips
- Esky = large drink cooler (it's a brand name same as we might same Igloo)
- Grog = beer
- Sunnies = sunglasses
- Whacker = dickhead, annoying person
- Champers = champagne
- Thongs = flip flops (have to say I laugh every time someone talks about their thongs!)
