Singlish vocabulary

Singlish is the English-based creole or patois spoken colloquially in Singapore. Although English is the lexifier language, Singlish has its unique slang and syntax, which are more pronounced in informal speech. It is usually a mixture of English, Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, and other local dialects like Hokkien, Cantonese or Teochew. It is used in casual contexts between Singaporeans, but is avoided in formal events when certain Singlish phrases may be considered unedifying.

Some of the most popular Singlish terms have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 2000, including Wah, Sabo, Lepak, Shiok, and Hawker centre. On 11 Feb 2015, Kiasu was chosen as OED's Word of the Day.

Singlish vocabulary formally takes after British English (in terms of spelling and abbreviations), although naming conventions are in a mix of American and British ones (with American ones on the rise). For instance, local media have "sports pages" (sport in British English) and "soccer coverage" ("soccer"—originally slang for Association football—while used in Britain, is more usually called just "football"). Singlish also uses many words borrowed from Hokkien, the non-Mandarin Chinese language native to more than 75% of the Chinese in Singapore, and from Malay. In many cases, English words take on the meaning of their Chinese counterparts, resulting in a shift in meaning. It is also taken from Indian words such as "dai" meaning "hey", "goondu" meaning ''fat" etc. This is most obvious in such cases as "borrow"/"lend", which are functionally equivalent in Singlish and mapped to the same Mandarin word, "借" (jiè), which can mean to lend or to borrow. For example: "Oi, can I borrow your calculator?" / "Hey, can you lend me your calculator?"

There have been several efforts to compile lexicons of Singlish, some for scholarly purposes, most for entertainment. Two early humorous works were Sylvia Toh Paik Choo's Eh, Goondu! (1982) and Lagi Goondu! (1986). In 1997 the second edition of the Times-Chambers Essential English Dictionary was published. To date, this is the only formal dictionary containing a substantial number of Singaporean English terms. Such entries and sub-entries are arranged alphabetically amongst the standard English entries. A list of common words borrowed from local languages such as Hokkien and Malay appears in an appendix. It appears that no subsequent editions have been published.

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