Angmoh try to speak Singlish, cannot meh?

In my last post, I talked about how my friend encountered wanted attention whilst traveling in Africa, when African kids would run up to her and shout "Japan, Japan!" My friend is from Singapore, so she didn't even know where to begin to deal with that situation given the huge language barrier with those African kids and she asked me whether or not they were just being friendly or if they were making fun of her. In today's post, I will deal with another situation which I encountered recently and you can then decide if this person was genuinely trying to establish rapport or if he was making fun of me. So this happened at work - I have a client, let's call him Harold (not his real name) and he is a British expatriate working out in Singapore. We generally have a pretty good working relationship until he did this one thing that really annoyed me - recently, he had asked me to help him with something, I did it and he replied on WhatsApp, "thanks lah." And I told him, "actually mate, that's not how we use the word lah in Singapore". It got awkward pretty quickly. If he had been a friend, I would have been a lot more blunt about how that could have come across as quite offensive, he sounded like a white person making fun of Singaporeans who can't speak proper English. But on the other hand, he was a client, so I was a bit more reserved in my instinct to berate him. He then actually owned up and said, "you know, my wife always tells me the same thing whenever I try to use lah, I never quite get it right." I then found out that his wife is a white British lady, but clearly she must have had far more exposure to Singlish to understand at least when to use 'lah'. 

I had wanted to include this story in my last post but I realized I could write an entire post on this issue given how sensitive Singaporeans are about it. Harold has been in Singapore for a few years but clearly has yet to pick up enough Singlish to understand when and how to use the word 'lah' correctly. Oh there are plenty of rules to follow in Singlish! His situation is hardly unique - there is a very large expatriate community in Singapore who make little or no effort at all to assimilate and they would use English to communicate with the locals, whilst judging the locals for having a Singaporean accent or using Singlish. Once in a while, I may meet an expatriate who has managed to understand how Singlish works, but finding a white expatriate who has learnt Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay or any other Asian language to a decent standard is extremely rare simply because there is little need to - most Singaporeans speak English to a pretty high standard, albeit with an accent of course. Now compare that to the situation in Japan where expatriates simply have to learn Japanese as the locals don't really speak any English, it then becomes a matter of survival to be able to do anything from paying your utility bills to getting your medicines at the pharmacy to ordering a meal at a restaurant. So if Harold had been posted to Osaka instead of Singapore, then sure he may have made a genuine effort to learn Japanese - but since he was in Singapore, then there was absolutely no need for him to learn a new language, not even Singlish. 

Hence in this case, Harold had at best misjudged the situation - he was by no means a racist, he was trying to establish rapport with me, he knew I was from Singapore and that was why he tried to use Singlish with me. He wasn't trying to make fun of the way I speak because we had met up in London before and I spoke standard English with him, not Singlish. Here's the thing about highly educated Singaporeans - they will have two ways of speaking English depending on the context: firstly there is standard English which is the kind of very international English they would use with foreigners, hence it is completely devoid of any influence from any other languages like Chinese or Malay, it doesn't have a strong Asian accent and the point is to make the English much easier to understand for the foreigner given that people from outside Singapore will be totally unfamiliar with the local accent. Then there are the working class, less educated Singaporeans who only know how to speak English one way: with a strong accent and it would usually come across as Singlish instead of standard English. I suppose a key reason why Singaporeans get upset when a white person tries to use Singlish is because they don't want to be mistaken as one of those uneducated, working class Singaporeans who struggle with English - they want to identify with the highly educated ones who speak English flawlessly without a hint of an Asian accent. Does this mean that Singaporeans are ashamed of their own accent? Not exactly, allow me to explain. 

I do speak Singlish but I make a point to do it only and exclusively with other Singaporean people who do speak Singlish like my family and friends from Singapore. The thing is that Singaporeans have loads of exposure to American and British English through movies, TV programmes, pop music and social media but your average white person in London or Los Angeles has virtually no contact with Singlish - thus I would never ever use Singlish with a foreigner for that simple reason: it impedes communication. I do remember this occasion years ago when I got into a taxi in Singapore with my American boss and he asked the taxi driver a question, "how did Telok Ayer get its name? What does Telok Ayer mean?" The taxi driver then enthusiastically went into a long story about the history of the area - my American boss nodded politely and smiled, but when we got out of the taxi he said to me, "could you summarize that story for me? I couldn't understand a word of what that taxi driver said but I didn't want to upset him. I know he was speaking in English but I had no idea what he was saying." But if you asked the taxi driver for his side of the story, he would probably tell you that he picked up an American passenger who was interested in Singapore's history and he had a lovely time giving the American loads of useful local information. I merely shrugged my shoulders and said, "I'm afraid he's a taxi driver, not a university lecturer so that's pretty typical." So I can imagine someone like Harold meeting loads of taxi drivers like that in Singapore, but what should the British or American person do if they wanted to establish rapport with us Singaporeans? 

There are white people who have lived in Singapore for a very long time (see the video below) and they have managed to develop a very authentic Singaporean accent. I know the son of one of the former high commissioners to Singapore and his Singlish is 100% spot on perfect, though his Mandarin leaves much to be desired, though he did get a pass in his O level Chinese back in the day! Sometimes we would just have a conversation in epic Singlish just for fun and people would look at him like, woah I didn't expect a blonde haired blue eyed white guy to speak like that. But as a non-Singaporean, how good would your Singlish have to be before I would be happy to indulge you like that? Let's turn this around and compare this to a situation I have at my gym: two languages that I get to practice regularly at my gym are Italian and German. I'm not fluent in either language, both my Italian and German are riddled with errors, but I have a wide enough vocabulary and grasp of the grammar that I am still able to communicate in both languages without using any English. Italian is my seventh language (after English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, Welsh and Hokkien) and German is my eighth language. Do my Italian and German friendly get upset with me when I make mistakes in their language? No, they are quite happy to indulge me because they know that I am trying hard to learn their language and more to the point, I am not making fun of their language when I make a mistake. I am respectful towards their language and culture and they would correct me when I make a mistake but they would never take offence if I conjugated a verb incorrectly.  

So if my Italian and German friends are so relaxed about me trying to speak their language incorrectly because they know that I'm not trying to make fun of their language, then why are Singaporeans so touchy when they hear a white person trying to speak Singlish then? This is because our society is now so 'woke' that the moment I hear someone like Harold say something like "thanks lah", I scream, "that's cultural appropriation, racist and offensive, the word lah is off limits to you white boy! How dare you use an Asian word with me?" Now even that does sound somewhat excessive to me - after all, I grew up in a family where we regularly spoke in a mish-mash of four languages: Mandarin, Hokkien, Malay and English so using words from a few languages in the same sentence was just completely normal, it was never considered offensive or politically incorrect. Whilst I tend to write in standard English here on my blog, the way I speak is far less standard and I regularly incorporate loan words from other languages. I had recently spoken at a conference in Brussels, Belgium where there were two official languages: Dutch and French along with English which was the unofficial language that everyone defaulted to when speaking to someone who didn't speak your language. And of course, I spoke in three languages at that event, switching back and forth between Dutch and French in an attempt to establish credibility with my Belgian audience. The people I met in Belgium weren't upset at all with the errors I made whilst speaking Dutch, they were just impressed that I made the effort. So why then did I find myself upset with Harold's "thanks lah" comment? 

Perhaps this is because I do feel very strongly that if you are an expatriate in a foreign country, then you jolly well make an effort to learn the local language. So if you're a British expatriate in Singapore, then you should make a genuine effort to learn Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay and either Tagalog or Tamil. And for someone like Harold to drop the odd 'lah' randomly into the conversation falls way short of what I had expected him to have achieved in the time he has lived and worked in Singapore. Let's compare this to my efforts to speak Italian and German with my friends at the gym: imagine if I only knew one or two words in Italian or German and I expected my friends to be impressed with that. No, that was never going to happen - you need a lot more than that to build any kind of rapport! In fact, I would describe my grasp of Italian and German to be intermediate, the equivalent of a high school student who has studied the language for about 4 or 5 years to reach a pretty decent standard. In fact, I know how to swear like a real Italian and can make most Italians blush with my outbursts in Italian. Now imagine if Harold had actually spent 5 years studying Chinese properly and if he was trying to practice his conversational Mandarin with me, then I would be more than happy to indulge him patiently. But no, he used one word to try to impress me and/or establish rapport and I thought, that sucks man - as a gesture to either impress me or establish rapport, knowing just one word in my language. It's the same thing when a white person says 'ni hao' to me, I'm like, "okay, unless you're going to follow that up with some fluent Mandarin, I'm going to attack you for being an autistic asshole - how dare you think I was going to be impressed with that one word?" 

So you may think, oh come on Alex, you're really too harsh on people like Harold who are trying to make an effort to establish rapport - perhaps it came out all wrong but it wasn't out of malice or racism, right? I beg to differ: I think if you're going to try to establish rapport, you need to find a way to do it successfully. If you happen to speak Mandarin, Malay or Hokkien, then we can bond by speaking those languages together. Likewise, Harold could have also found another aspect of my life to try to bond with me over that, "hey Alex, I noticed that you really like traveling, I saw some incredible photos on Instagram from your trip across South America this summer. I want to go to South America too next year, could you give me some recommendations?" Recently, I did an interview for my blog with my friend David who makes a living from computer games - as someone who hasn't touched any computer games since about 1992, you might think I have nothing in common with him but nonetheless I showed genuine interest in what he did for a living and we actually chatted for so long that I had to tell him that I had way too much material for my blog post already. Whilst I still have zero desire to play computer games, that didn't stop me from having that great chat with David about his career. Furthermore, I'm sure Harold and I have a lot in common given that we have both worked in finance in London for a long time - so it was rather foolish of him to try to show off to me that he knew one word in a language that I spoke; when really, Harold should have tried to find some other aspect of either our social or professional lives which we do share in common to talk about. 

So if you're going to do something, then do it right otherwise don't bother. Allow me to share two instances when someone had badly misjudged the situation and got the gesture wrong. Many years ago, my sister visited London along with a friend - let's call her Susan. We went for lunch at an Italian restaurant and Susan asked me if we should tip or not; I told her that in the UK, we don't really have a culture of tipping unlike America - it is discretionary, so if you are super impressed with the service or the food then you can tip if you like, but if you found it average or you weren't satisfied, then you're not obliged to tip. I thought I was clear enough and I wasn't going to tip given how I thought both the food and the service were below average, then Susan declared that she would tip and presented the waiter with a grand tip of £0.25 (US$0.32 or S$0.44). Not only was that an extremely stingy tip, she even went up to our waiter and proudly announced, "this is for you!" I should have given her some guidance as to what an acceptable amount would be for a tip, I would usually make it a round number like £2 or £3. But if you gave the waiter such a small tip, you're simply insulting the waiter - you're implying that the waiter is so poor that he would be hard up for that tiny amount of money. Thankfully, I had already put on my coat at that point and I quickly left the restaurant, so that's one Italian restaurant that I can never go back to again. In this case, making the effort to leave a small tip like that had done far more damage than actually not tipping at all: so either leave the waiter a decent tip or don't tip at all. You should have seen the look on that waiter's face.

The second example is from a house party I attended a while back - my friend Julie invited her friends over to her house warming party and most people would either bring her a gift for her new house, a bottle of wine or even some food for the party.  It wasn't compulsory of course and some guests showed up empty handed. This friend Frank (not his real name) showed up with a can of beer as a gift for Julie - it wasn't some kind of special beer or Julie's favourite beer, but it was probably the only thing that Frank had in his house so he decided to bring it as a gift. Some of the guests so Frank turn up and present Julie with that can of beer, whilst none of us said anything out aloud to Frank, we must have all thought the same thing, "cheapskates, good grief - are you serious? A can of beer? How can you turn up at Julie's housewarming party with a gift that cheap?" The irony of course was that whilst Frank had clearly committed a social faux pas by turning up with a cheap gift, some of the other guests turned up empty handed and yet they weren't labeled 'cheapskates' for not bringing Julie a gift. We gave them the benefit of the doubt that they had probably neglected to procure a suitable gift for Julie and they may sort that out in due course. Thus in both cases (the £0.25 tip and the can of beer), both Susan and Frank would have been far better off if they had not bothered to make the effort to tip or bring a gift because their efforts had misfired so badly that they would have been far better off had they done nothing at all. The same could be said about Harold, so if he simply said, "thank you Alex" instead of "thanks lah", then I would have been perfectly content with that. 

So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Are Singaporeans too protective about Singlish? Are we too sensitive when foreigners make an attempt to speak Singlish and get it wrong? Or should foreigners think twice before assuming that Singaporeans would somehow be impressed when they randomly add a 'lah' to the end of a sentence? How would you have reacted to a British expatriate in Singapore using the word 'lah' incorrectly in a sentence? Have you ever met an expatriate in Singapore who has mastered Singlish? And how are expatriates in Singapore ever going to learn some Singlish if we get upset the moment they even try? Do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.