Singlish vocabulary

[1] 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, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, and Tamil, and sometimes other Chinese languages like Teochew, Hainanese, Hakka, Hockchew, and Mandarin.

For example, pek chek means to be annoyed or frustrated, and originates from Singaporean Hokkien 迫促 (POJ: pek-chhek).

[3] 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.

This is most obvious in such cases as borrow/lend, which are functionally equivalent in Singlish and mapped to the same Chinese word, 借 (Hokkien chioh, Cantonese ze3, Mandarin jiè), which can mean to lend or to borrow.

2002 saw the publication of the Coxford Singlish Dictionary,[9] a light-hearted lexicon which was developed from material posted on the website Talkingcock.com.

Letters contributed to the forum of The Straits Times, the main local newspaper, by readers have called for Singlish to be kept alive in Singapore.

The idea of promoting Singlish was raised as part of a larger debate on creating a uniquely Singaporean identity.

Local names of many food and drink items have become Singlish and consist of words from different languages and are indicative of the multi-racial society in Singapore.

However, as there are no English words for certain food items, the dialect terms used for them have slowly evolved into part of the Singlish vocabulary.