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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Singlish and Malaysian Chinese's Manglish

Link: http://www.thesmartlocal.com/read/20-singaporean-slangs

So, the blog post that I've linked stated these words as singaporean slang/ singlish, but I beg to differ since most of these words I do often hear around Penangnites (namely Chinese Penangnites). These words practically originated from hokkien or cantonese dialects, occasionally mixed with english lol. 

I do also believe that some of our fellow countrymen/women of other races can understand these words as well - since we use these words so often lol.

I'm kind of surprised that they didn't put in 'sibeh' as one of the slang words used. 'sibeh' actually means extremely... um well, somewhat lah~ xD And well, eeyer~ is also the same as aiyer~ Oh and for 'pang seh', we Malaysians say it as 'pang pui kee' (hokkien) or 'fang fei ji' (mandarin) or 'put/fly aeroplane' (Manglish... lol). For 'steady' leh, we also usually use it for complimenting a work in progress that is going well/completed or complimenting on what the person have done to calm a situation down/ do something right. For example,

A: 'You've finished that assignment Dr Tan gave us last week?'
B: 'Yalah (which means 'yes, of course'). I finished it a few days ago liao (which means 'already' and yes, I understand that using both 'ago' and 'already' is repetitive, but lol, there you go! A fine example of Manglish in action xD)'
A: 'Wah, steady lo. I haven't even started yet...'

And actually, 'simi' means 'what is' and is not just 'what' as stated in the article :P And there's another variant of the hokkien word of 'simi' which is 'hām mī' (it depends on which area you use it in - for Penang, you use 'ham mi'. For Klang, Selangor or in Singapore, you use 'simi' :P). For 'taiji' (pronounced as tǎi jǐ), we Penang Hokkien people also use a different word - 'sǔ'. I believe English-as-mother-tongue countries use a shortened version of 'what's the problem?' as well - 'What's up?'

It's great for some light reading and for a few chuckles. So... enjoy! :)

P/S: Actually, I find myself having fun thinking of all the slangs/ mixed-dialects that we use on a daily basis that people from other places may not even comprehend (perhaps not even the people from China/Singapore). :D Perhaps I'll add more slangs to the list in the article - like kanasai (or KNN), a-bo-den, beh tahan, jiak sai, can/want die lah (or 'die liao lah'), on!, ho jiak, okay bo?, Chiu~ or Cheh~, aiyo, alamak, 'you ask me, I ask who?', see how lah, mai siao siao, bo pian, gin/gan-jiong, chop, chup, wah pro lor, kok-tao, long-piak, du-lan, pek-chek, xia sui, gostan, win liao lor etc etc xD

Oh though I think I should add that these slangs are usually used by the rougher crowd (if you know what I mean), but despite having a higher education in the belt with a postgrad ongoing, I still find myself using these words from time to time. :P

So, I've come up with something like a dictionary for Manglish/Singlish/whatever you like to call it :P Do check it out!
An Improved Introduction to Manglish/Singlish or whatever you call it

Another somewhat-related topic - the different kinds of Yes in Malaysia:
http://aveyntoh-blog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-different-kinds-of-yes-in-malaysia.html

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