By: Cindy Khoo
“Boleh, boleh. Can lah, I wait. Buey yow gin lah, can.”
If you say “huh” to that, you are obviously not Singaporean. It is Singlish for “Can, I’ll wait. It’s okay, no problem.”
If you are Singaporean, on the other hand, you probably also would not be surprised even the smallest bit if I told you the person who said that was Indian. She was a nurse on the phone at the clinic I visited for my pre-employment medical examination.
Coming home to Singapore provided some reverse culture shock. As quickly as my skin grew more accustomed to the Singapore sun, my ears also gradually got used to the Singlish permeating public space. Which is to say, not very quickly.
Compared to my reaction to this horrid heat wave, however, my reaction to Singapore The Perpetual Booming Sound Room of Singlish leans towards positive glee. I cannot get enough of it!
It used to perk me up immediately when sounds of Singlish reached my ears when I was studying or working overseas. The most instinctive reaction was then to seek out the origin of the sound of home, after which I could slyly sneak up behind my countryman, just to soak up all that lah’s, lor’s and leh’s, especially when it might have been very rare. After all, Singapore’s four million population would have been spread very thin if it did travel to all corners of the world.
Today, living in Singapore, the tastes and sounds of home come from all directions, but I maintain a weird fascination and attraction to Singlish.
I continue to be amazed at the way sentences are strung together with a sampling of Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin and English, and how easily everyone understands each other and how we always almost instinctively know why certain combinations worked and why others didn’t.
It can be a pain to a person’s ears, when they would expect more formalized English such as when someone is making a speech (on any topic other than Singlish, I suppose.) Most other times, it is like music. Music of a less-than-mainstream genre perhaps, but certainly music to me.
As the time comes this summer – always summer in Singapore, but trust me we know when Real Summer is, because that is when the island is heated by the Great Singapore Sale – the government is launching a Speak Good English campaign. Teachers, concerned parents and well, other people who are just plain kaypo have written into the papers asking for Singlish to be expelled from classrooms, as it corrupts the young ones’ ability to learn proper Queen’s English.
Singapore Brief
Capital: Singapore
Population: 4,425,720 (July 2005 est.)
Ethnic mix: Chinese 76.7%, Malay 14%, Indian 7.9%, other 1.4%
Languages: Chinese (official), Malay (official and national), Tamil (official), English (official)
SOURCE: CIA Factbook
They argued the merits of re-emphasizing the grammar in the English language, to battle the apparent lack of order in Singlish.
The apparent lack of order, that is.
If you have listened to new foreigners feigning familiarity with Singapore by throwing in a couple of “lahs” and “lehs” in their daily speech, you might find some disastrous examples of how they should not be used. We must applaud them for effort, alas, the pain of hearing such abuse to our beloved Singlish! But they know no better, and who is here to teach these poor misguided expatriates the grammar of Singlish?
Perhaps we could open a Singlish clinic. We have the academic Professor Anthea Franser Gupta who gives credibility to Singlish lovers’ claim to the linguistic richness of Singlish. We have a ready dictionary and we have the enthusiasts like “mr brown” and The Calm One who are more than happy to spread the love (and lesson) in Singlish on the Internet. And then we have that huge market of expatriates in Singapore who are dying to crack that tough shell separating them from being a local and forever being an outsider.
Yes, there are rules to Singlish, and no, we don’t take lessons, but we all know them. It is a binding force among Singaporeans regardless of education, social status, income level and race, of which I am personally immensely proud.
My message to non-Singaporeans: “Don’t anyhow use ‘lah’ ok, where got so easy one?” (“Please do not abuse the word ‘lah,’ it is not as easy as you think.”)
Still, Singapore is an immigrant country, so we welcome you to come in and learn. Our language speaks as much about our history and culture as any language does. If you live here long enough and have learned to spout Singlish as well as any good old traditional Ah Beng can, who knows you could have added to the evolution of the language just as much as the language has shaped you.
This summer, the Singapore sun burns my skin, while Singlish warms my heart. 
Cindy Khoo is a Halfway Staff Writer
(Credit: All definitions of Singlish terms I have used, such as “Ah Beng” and “kaypoh” can be found in the Coxford Singlish Dictionary at talkingcock.com.)