Talk of The Devil
I came to realize the fact that I am unable to correct some of my Singlish after staying here for about a year. I still remember several hilarious incidents that happened last year. 1st was when I SMS my Aussie friend to get the contact numbers of another friend. In the SMS, I typed something like this, "Can give me the contact number of XXX? house phone and HP." He only replied me the house number. It hit me that he did not know what HP meant. The next day I explained the term to him and we had a good laugh.
Another incident was at a food stall. I think I wrote this in 1 of my previous post but I am not entirely sure and lazy to check my archive. I am seated on a 4 persons table alone while this lady came up and asked, "Is this seat FREE?". I replied 'NO' before she even started asking. She was dumbfounded, all the evidences showed that I was alone. After seeing her expression, I asked her what did she say. Then I replied, yes, after listened to her question completely.
I could not help but think about why it happened. In SG, people would ask, "Anybody sitting here?" which is direct translated from Chinese, "有人坐吗?". Singaporeans have been hearing that phrase for their whole life that subconsciously they will reply 'NO' in any situation. I have seen cases in a noisy area where people just used 'head language' to reply 'no' when people come up to them pointing at the chair. I wonder what will happen if I do the same thing over here in a similar environment.
After about a year, I still notice that sometimes, I will use 'I and my friends' instead of 'My friends and I'. I will repeat what I said in the correct form whenever I notice a strange expression on the person I am talking to. Perhaps I still need more time to correct my Singlish to English.
posted by Estan @ 10:40:00 PM (GMT+08:00).
