Colourful Languages

Living in a multicultural and multiracial means that life is never monotonous, especially in the culinary and lingua aspects.

We always display our languages dexterity through our daily expression (both spoken and written), with a predominant English statement peppered with a smattering of Malay and Dialect. Sometimes, we may also be speaking in our mother tongues but replaced certain vocabulary with their English counterparts, mainly because at the critical moment, the mother-tongue word simply eludes us.

Some of the more creative ones even included our own local expression which involves a combination of different languages. Common expressions include “Buay Tahan” (Buay = (Hokkien) cannot, no, not; Tahan = (Malay) tolerate, bear).

Brother is again one of the most ‘outstanding’, in terms of coming out with incredulous expressions. Some of his recent inventions nearly caused me choking on my laughter. Imagine if I had laughed out loud reading my emails, my colleagues would have thought I have gone insane from the workload, so I had to control my laughter. I am not certain if they are his inventions or if he has simply heard these expressions somewhere.

Buah Long Long
- In normal context, it refers to a tropical fruit.
- In Brother’s context, Buah Long Long refers to a behaviour, eg, That XX really knows how to act, don’t know how to do but always buah long long in front of bosses.

Zhoon Zhoon Jiak Bee Hoon
- In normal context, zhoon zhoon and jiak bee hoon are separately used. Zhoon zhoon (Hokkien) means accurate. Jiak Bee Hoon (Hokkien) means eating rice vermicelli.
- In Brother’s context, this refers to so accurate that it is unbelievable, eg, Your business case shows $ x. Mine also shows $ x. Zhoon Zhoon Jiak Bee Hoon!

His inventions can even rhyme in Hokkien! They may not be those which will make it to Collin’s or Oxford Dictionary, but they are simply harmlessly funny and colloquial.

With such expressive languages, who says Singaporeans are boring.