“Having here, take away?” The girl behind the food counter asks me. In other words, dine in or take out?
This is only one of the seemingly unusual yet commonly heard phrases here in Singapore.
Take this question from one of my teammates. “Try to approve. Can?” My other teammate’s answer: “Cannot.”
But the most common word would have to be “lah” which they insert in almost every sentence. Take what the salesgirl told me and Cate when we came back tonight to buy the discounted mattress. “I’m so sorry lah, I am busy lah. You just pay me lah and then bring the mattress, can?”
Sometimes they also say “leh” or even “loh.” Don’t know if there’s any difference though.
Then I realized, we also have that in Bisaya or Chavacano. Bisayans and Chavacanos, you will notice, always insert the word “man” in their sentences, even if they are speaking in Tagalog. Sabunutan man talaga kita ba. Nasaan na man daw siya? Hala maganda man yun!
I didn’t even realize we do that until I lived in Manila and had real Tagalog folks point that out to me. And all those years I thought I could speak fluent Tagalog. Turns out I only made sense to people who lived in my hometown, who are used to people using three to four different dialects to say one sentence.
But after four years of living in Metro Manila, I learned to lessen my bilingual way of speaking. It was a struggle, of course. Especially when I had to give up my favorite expression – “lasang” – which literally means nonsense. In Manila whenever the word rolled off my tongue, I’d force myself to change the second syllable to “bo” instead because at least, “labo” is a Tagalog expression.
But when I got here, I discovered that I would instinctively speak bilingually again, whenever I spoke to Cate or Rodel or Tyne. I suppose it’s an instinct to adapt to your environment. “When in Rome, do what Romans do,” as the saying goes.
That is why when my friend Chu, who works in Thailand, speaks English, he adapts a Thai accent. Problem is, he has adapted to it so much that he takes the accent even when he’s not in Thailand.
Uh-oh. Will that also happen to me lah? Can!