Welcome back to my Singlish teaching lesson. Before the I start the lesson proper, I would like to clarify something to prevent potiential future confusion.
Singlish is NOT broken english; broken english is a common mistake that we Singaporeans make, mostly for those who were chinese-oriented. In their mind, they tend to form their sentences in Chinese and then translate to english before they speak, thus the sentence structure of their english are incorrect or broken. Though it may be broken, foreigners are still able to guess and understand what it means.
But for Singlish, it is a language which Singaporeans speaks chinese, but combines it with english, and even dialects (for basic level we mainly talks about english only). Unlike broken english, we dont need to go through the sentence in our mind once and translate it, Singlish comes naturally. We can instinctively form a sentence in Singlish with much thinking (actually we dont think when we are speaking Singlish).
In summary - broken english is Chinese --translate to--> English, and Singlish is (Chinese + English + Dialects) fused together. Singlish is an art and i doubt foreigners will ever master it.
Okay back to lesson, today we will be giving a brief idea of when will the chinese words be in english. Its very difficult to be specific on when to use what, so i came out with a simple technique to roughly know which words to use.
When there is a choice of words with the same meaning, choose the one with lesser syllables. The following is some or the more commonly used Singlish in our daily life:
华语 -------------------- 新语
因为 -------------------- Cos
所以 -------------------- So
但是/可是 -------------- But
还是 -------------------- Still
然后 -------------------- Then
如果 -------------------- If
是不是 ------------------ Is it
对不对 ------------------ Hor
到目前为止 ------------- So far
Now i will form the chinese sentence followed by the Singlish sentence for comparison.
华语 - 因为他昨晚没睡好，所以今天迟到。
新语 - Cos他昨晚没睡好,so今天late.
华语 - 如果我告诉你，你能保守秘密吗？
新语 - If我告诉你,你能keep secret 吗？
华语 - 我是很想跟你们去购物，可是我的还有功课没做完。
新语 - 我是很想跟你们去shopping, but我的还有homework.
华语 - 你是不是把手机留在厕所里？
新语 - 你把手机留在toilet, is it?
华语 - 你先把滑鼠对准这个文件，然后点击两下。
新语 - 你先把mouse对准这个folder, then double-click.
华语 - 他什么都好，就是小气了点，你说对不对？
新语 - 他什么都好，就是小气了点，hor?
华语 - 到目前为止，他还是没有回复我。
新语 - So far, he still没有reply我。
Hope that until now you are able to follow.
Just 2 things to point out, you may notice that in the last Singlish sentence, the "他" became "he". This is a type of special cases, I call this 'Language Automatic Translate To English' - LATTE, where a single chinese word in between a few english words, in this case we will say "he" instead of "他". Again, i will talk more about LATTE in the future.
Another point is about "hor", beside the meaning of "对不对", it is used when you want to stress and emphasise a your point or when there is a short break between your sentences. Most of the time it is used behind the Singlish words mentioned above. Note: don't use two "hor" in a sentence. This is also another special case called 'Second Hor Is Terrible' - SHIT.
- 你先把mouse对准这个folder, then hor, 你double-click.
- If hor, 我告诉你,你能keep secret 吗？
- Cos hor, 他昨晚没睡好,so今天late. / Cos他昨晚没睡好,so hor,他今天late.
I think that is all for now, i will teach more on the choices of words next time. Just a recap, today you learned a basic technique for choice of words when forming sentences, and two special cases - LATTE and SHIT. I hope that you enjoyed this lesson and wont find it too dry.
*Lastly, always keep in mind that this is just a mocking blog on Singlish. Please don't really go and learn all this SHIT and LATTE thingy. Speaking proper English or Chinese is always the best way of communication.*
~milkteaisthebest~
Hilarious. :)
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