Singlish in Oxford English Dictionary!?!

Yesterday while browsing news at Asiaone mobile site, I saw this article which mentioned Singlish and Oxford dictionary, on closer look I realized that it's The Oxford Dictionary, the same "brand" that I used when I was in primary and secondary school, all the way until internet became so common that one can google anything. I used to have a mini Oxford dictionary which helped me a lot during my early years, but nowadays I just google.

Anyway I find it funny that they added Singlish into their dictionary because Singlish is really a mix of different languages and dialects and short forms, like many people say, it's a Rojak language, and Rojak is Malay for mix together.

But then if these words are so commonly used by people, I guess it would be helpful to be included, but in a Singlish dictionary or something, but since they already included, so be it lol.

These are the 19 words that they added, most of which I have used except Chinese helicopter, lepak and lepaking. You can check out the site here.
  1. ang moh
  2. blur
  3. char siu
  4. chilli crab
  5. Chinese helicopter
  6. hawker centre
  7. HDB
  8. killer litter
  9. lepak, n.
  10. lepak, v.
  11. lepaking
  12. shiok
  13. sabo, n.
  14. sabo, v.
  15. sabo king
  16. sotong
  17. teh tarik
  18. wah
  19. wet market
Just from this list I can see a few languages, ang moh is Hokkien, char siu is Cantonese, blur is English, lepak is Malay.

Then sabo is short form of sabotage.

Even HDB also in dictionary lol what the heck.

But this list is just a little bit of Singlish, there are still plenty other words or phrases, like Wa Piang Eh, similar effect to Wa Lau Eh, more evolved and funnier version is Wa Liew Eh, it's like OMG or Oh Shit, similar effect.

There's also lobo which means do nothing, usually we say Sibei Lobo, Sibei means very very, basically it is an emphasized version of very, so Sibei Lobo means very very do nothing lol. Sometimes we also say Sibei Slack, Slack also mean do nothing.

Singlish is what most of us grew up with, I think only people who live in Singapore know how to appreciate it, it's so casual, so easy to put forward opinions, for me it is very homey, but it's still funny when I see it in Oxford lol.

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