Why You So Like That?

Singlish: a variety of colloquial English spoken in Singapore, incorporating elements of Malay, Chinese and other dialects.

Ever since school began, I am more conscious than ever of how unintelligible I can be if I do not make a conscious effort to (1) speak slower and (2) remove colloquial Singlish from my sentences. As it is, fellow Singaporeans find it difficult to keep up with my speed of speaking and I know that I have often lost people especially when I get increasingly excited about the conversation topic.

Regrettably, we are so used to understanding each other that we also fail to detect the "lahs" and "lors" that have become an indelible part of our normal speech. Outside Singapore however, the Singaporean accent and our pronunciation is quite distinctive and often a source of amusement. People generally find it difficult to understand us even though we have been educated to speak proper English. In fact, I have been told that Singaporean English is very much like hip hop in terms of the way we stress our syllabus, resulting in an almost staccato feel. While I have been baffled by this remark as I simply can't understand how we could sound like P.Diddy or Eminem in our daily conversation, it has made me more mindful of the way I speak if I hope to be understood in an international environment.

It finally dawned on me though how confusing Singlish might be for non-Singaporeans arising from this exchange at the school canteen among 3 Singaporeans:

Me: Let's order a few items to share?
R: What do you want to eat?
Me: anyhow anyhow lah. *Z nods in agreement*
R: OK. *heads off to get the food*

As you might have guessed, my flippant "anyhow anyhow lah" was meant to give R the go ahead to decide on the dishes to share for dinner. In fact, this came out of my mouth so nonchalantly that it only dawned on me minutes later how confusing it could have been.

So yes, while I have been trying to make an effort to enunciate more and be alittle less Singaporean in my speaking for the sake of being better understood, I'm also mindful that this is part of who we are and I should be more appreciative of this language that we call Singlish.

Indeed, it's about striking a balance and I was reminded about the need to embrace our roots by R, who has been propagating our way of speaking amongst non-Singaporeans. Just the other day, I heard a Chinese classmate say "No problem lah". ^_^

Just for laughs: