Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Manglish

Many people ask if my friends and I were speaking English or any other language. I answered we're speaking Manglish. I take it as another language because it's a mixture of Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay and English. There might be more language that have a part of it in it but those I mentioned are the main part. Let's see some interesting Vocabulary on Manglish on Wikipedia.

ABC - Air Batu Campur
aqua - Derogatory term for transexuals
cut (other vehicles) - to overtake
gostan - derived from "go astern", reverse
geng - powerful, From Cantonese
hailat - In deadly situation. From the Cantonese profanity term 閪甩 .
kantoi - get caught in trouble.
leng lui - Pretty girl. From Cantonese 靚女
leng zai - Handsome guy.
mata - police (literally: eye)
outstation - out of town/overseas.
rubber - meaning eraser (for example "can I borrow your rubber?").
suey/sueh - having bad luck. From Cantonese and Hokkien word 衰
tapau/tarpau-ed - See take away.
- To defeat an opponent in games. Similar usage to the term pwned
action/askyen/eksyen - show-off
aiksy/lan si - arrogant, overconfident.
pai-seh - ashamed, embarrassed/embarrassing. 'pai seh' is of Hokkien origin
kena - to get caught/punished; often used like a noun ("I sure kena if I cheat")
saman - to issue a fine, usually in relation to a traffic offence, from "summons".
Die/Finish/Gone case/Mampus/Mampui/Sei/Pok kai/tiu-lor - generic exclamations to indicate "trouble", used like the English "damn it" or "to face the music". "sei" is usually pronounced as its Cantonese equivalent, "die".

Last but not least, most used phrase
yam-cha - socializing with friends in "mamak stall" Derived from the "Yum Cha" used in Cantonese.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

agree agree
how bout name this language as rojak ?

u know who am i

said...

It's one of the name. Haha. Those that listed are mostly Cantonese one. Need to find some Hokkien one. =D

SilverIsle said...

Haha. Good one. LOLz.