Living in Singapore is really cool. I mean besides the facts that we are clean, safe, and all the other blah blah blah world no.1 things that make me really proud, I also embrace on our whole multi-culture and multi-racial thing. Especially when you visit a hawker centre and you can order Malay food, Chinese food, and these days even Korean or Japanese food.
But, there is one thing about Singapore that I really can't stand. (Okay, maybe more than one, like kiasu Singaporeans, self centred, self entitled, etc etc, but that is another problem for another time.)
It is how crazy our language can be.
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| Image source: TheSmartLocal |
1. Wah Lau
Okay lah, this is the easier one. Wah Lau is probably Hokkien which means "My Father". So I believe this is like a hokkien version of "Oh my god" since people go to church also call the priests - father. God, priest, father, same same I guess.
But it gets a little more confusing when you have variables like Wah Lan, Wah Biang. I know "lan" is like dick but what is biang?
2. Mum Mum
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| Mad awesome Galaktobureko from Aryaa! |
3. Orh Orh/ Gao Gao
4. Void Deck
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| Image source: ghettosingapore |
5. Pom Pom
Seriously, this is the whole reason why I wrote this article. I told my friend about the word pom pom and she has no idea what it was. We had a very long heated debate on wtf is pom pom, the origin, what are the other forms of this word, is it from hokkien? Cantonese? Thai? What is the past tense? I almost died. But according to old wisdom from my mum, it is just the sound of water. Which my friend ain't very convinced.
These 5 words are just some of the many "Singapore Words" that we use it so often that you might not even question yourself about it. What are some of the other words that should make it to the list? In other news, some other 19 luckier words actually made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. So does that means I can now use these words during my O level? Does that means that these words are now English and not Singlish?
