Chiong. Heng. Gostun. Don’t know these words? Then pay attention to these videos and learn some Singaporean English.
Swerve Community, a group that produces entertaining videos focused on Southeast Asian news and culture, has come out with a couple of videos featuring non-Singaporean folks trying to pronounce and guess the meanings of a variety of Singlish (the colloquial language of Singapore) words. How many can you get right?
▼ Foreigners try to speak Singlish (Part 1)
Wahlao, that was hard! While the guest foreigners were familiar with some of the Singlish, like Wahlao (Crap! or Wow!), they were not so quick to guess the meanings of some of the others, but, hey they still did better than we did! The words started getting trickier too, like the ones with more than one meaning! Take chiong for instance—it can mean to rush, to study or to party. You really have to use context clues when you hear that one!
▼ Yo, do you want chiong tomorrow night? I’ll bring some… books.
▼ Apparently, the gang was really able to tahan (endure), so they made a Part 2 with even more fun words!
Some of these words they basically just handed to English speakers, like nehmind; that’s no challenge at all, it’s clearly just an abbreviation of “never mind.” But others words, like lobang, which is derived from Malay, are not so easy. Who would think lobang would mean “a good opportunity or deal”?
▼ Then again, even some of the words derived from English are hard to figure out… “Go astern?!”
So, how’d you do? Do you think you could now navigate the streets of Singapore like a native? Let us know how you fared in the comment section below!
Source: YouTube/Swerve Community via Coconuts Singapore
Top image: YouTube/Swerve Community
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