Singlish - Vocabulary

Vocabulary

Singlish 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" (the use of the word "soccer" is not common in British media), though the word "football" is also taken to be synonymous with "soccer" in Singapore.

Singlish also uses many words borrowed from Hokkien, and from Malay. The most well-known instance of a borrowing from Hokkien is 'kiasu', which means "frightened of losing out", and is used to indicate behaviour such as queueing overnight to obtain something; and the most common borrowing from Malay is 'makan', meaning "to eat".

In many cases, English words take on the meaning of their Chinese counterparts, resulting in a shift in meaning. 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. ("Oi (also used as oy, although Singaporeans spell it as oi), can borrow me your calculator?"); and 'send' can be used to mean "accompany someone", as in "Let me send you to the airport", possibly under the influence of the Mandarin word "送" (sòng). However, we might note that Malay '(meng)hantar' can also be used to mean both "send a letter" and "take children to school", so perhaps both Malay and Chinese have combined to influence the usage of 'send' in Singapore.