Word: hokkien
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Written with a mix of phonetic Hokkien dialect and English, Shiga creates a fascinating and little-seen world. In both content and artwork Shiga emulates the style of Lat, a cartoonist with a Charles Shultz-level reputation in South East Asia. Having only started cartooning in 1995, Shiga has an extremely simple, cute and doodley drawing style. But watch out. With the kind of reversal that you later appreciate as a Shiga trademark, two thirds of the way through "Double Happiness" Tom takes an absurdly cruel beating at the hands of some thugs who seem to think he knows something...
...pornography. But it's one of Singapore's best-loved quirks, used daily by everyone from cabbies to CEOs. Singlish is simply Singaporean slang, whereby English follows Chinese grammar and is liberally sprinkled with words from the local Chinese, Malay and Indian dialects. Take jiat gentang, which combines the Hokkien word for "eat" (jiat), with the Malay word for "potato" (gentang). Jiat gentang describes someone who speaks with a pretentious Western accent (since potatoes are considered a European food), as in "He went to Oxford to study, now he come back to Singapore, only know how to jiat gentang...
...sotong (clueless as a squid). At work, I've often been reprimanded for having an "itchy backside," meaning I enjoy disrupting things when I'm bored. When I don't understand what's going on, I say, "Sorry, but I catch no ball, man," which stems from the Hokkien liah boh kiew. There's an exhaustive lexicon of such Singlish gems at talkingcock.com, a hugely popular, satirical website that inspired the movie. Its director, Colin Goh, has also published the Coxford Singlish Dictionary, which lovingly chronicles all the comic eccentricities of Singapore's argot. Since its April release, the book...