A friend's blog entry prompted me to write this post. It is about the usage of English. Anyway, I have also been pondering over the past few days about English and Singlish. Perhaps Singlish is not that shameful after all.

There was an incident at a Chinese exam invigilation some time back. During the examination, we are required to speak Chinese at all times. During the briefing I met my co-invigilator, who is a stranger. When we got to know each other, I spoke English, probably in a very "kan tang" (which means potato) way. She told me later on that she thought I was very kan tang at first, she didn't expect I could speak Chinese better.

And I got to know a new friend recently, well I should say more of an aquaintance. I speak English to him, without the lah leh lor, and possible quite perfect English. Especially on msn, I have to resist the temptation of typing in the lahs and the lehs.

Then it caught on me that, in daily life, I don't seem to speak that kind of English to my friends. Most, or even all the time, we mix English, Chinese, Singlish and everything that we possibly know.

I thought about it, and to me, being able to speak Singlish to someone means that you are quite close with the person, at the very least you treat the person as a friend. It is a sign and a way to show affection to your close ones. See, even Korean has the formal and informal way of speaking, depending on how much respect and how close you are to the person. Singlish is the equivalent of informal Korean in English.

Moral of the story? Don't feel ashame using Singlish, but use it wisely, lah.