Arthur Yap is so smart
2 mothers in a hdb playground
by Arthur Yap (see 26 June 2006)
Can you hear the interference from dialects and other languages native to Singaporeans?
I now realise - could this be where the ubiquitous "Ah Beng" as a term came from? Notice how the second line really duplicates the way we might say it in colloquial Mandarin - yi jing (already), or the syntax of Malay kereta sini, kereta sana (car here, car there), ni zhi dao wei she mo
(because you know why), ta men zhuo de hao xiang bu yao qi lai (they all sit like don't want to get up) yi ding shi hao (sure must be good). (Forgive my very faulty Hanyu Pinyin). I am sure you can find more examples in the rest of the poem.
Interesting observations made by Arthur Yap about how we appropriate/hijack words from Malay or the Chinese dialects to use in daily conversation:
jamban - toilet in Malay (this would be very familiar to all older Singaporeans)
toa-soh - "the wife of an elder brother" in Hokkien
tuition teacher - an idiosynscrasy of Singlish when "tutor" should be used
chya-hong - literally meaning "eat wind" in Hokkien which refers to taking a drive
The poem is also a wonderful time capsule - like the Mediacorp series "Growing Up" that starred Lim Kay Tong and Andrew Seow. These "2 mothers" here are talking about a time when the key indicator of financial progress was home renovation,so mosaic floors were regularly giving way to terrazzo floors, Diethelm was the furniture showhouse of choice. Complan was also the nutritional supplement many had heard of. You will notice that some things never change. Housewives whose identities are caught up the sofa covers they cannot remove will always talk about the little items of material wealth.
Arthur Yap is ....so smart. We have to thank him for showing the world how meaningful our Singlish is, for conveying its uniqueness while commenting on the universality of the preoccupations of these 2 mothers
by Arthur Yap (see 26 June 2006)
Can you hear the interference from dialects and other languages native to Singaporeans?
I now realise - could this be where the ubiquitous "Ah Beng" as a term came from? Notice how the second line really duplicates the way we might say it in colloquial Mandarin - yi jing (already), or the syntax of Malay kereta sini, kereta sana (car here, car there), ni zhi dao wei she mo
(because you know why), ta men zhuo de hao xiang bu yao qi lai (they all sit like don't want to get up) yi ding shi hao (sure must be good). (Forgive my very faulty Hanyu Pinyin). I am sure you can find more examples in the rest of the poem.
Interesting observations made by Arthur Yap about how we appropriate/hijack words from Malay or the Chinese dialects to use in daily conversation:
jamban - toilet in Malay (this would be very familiar to all older Singaporeans)
toa-soh - "the wife of an elder brother" in Hokkien
tuition teacher - an idiosynscrasy of Singlish when "tutor" should be used
chya-hong - literally meaning "eat wind" in Hokkien which refers to taking a drive
The poem is also a wonderful time capsule - like the Mediacorp series "Growing Up" that starred Lim Kay Tong and Andrew Seow. These "2 mothers" here are talking about a time when the key indicator of financial progress was home renovation,so mosaic floors were regularly giving way to terrazzo floors, Diethelm was the furniture showhouse of choice. Complan was also the nutritional supplement many had heard of. You will notice that some things never change. Housewives whose identities are caught up the sofa covers they cannot remove will always talk about the little items of material wealth.
Arthur Yap is ....so smart. We have to thank him for showing the world how meaningful our Singlish is, for conveying its uniqueness while commenting on the universality of the preoccupations of these 2 mothers
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