Lah is to a Singaporean what boff and quoi are to the French. Perhaps you've heard of Singlish? It's the combination of English, Hokkien and Malay slanged here. Apparently the government are trying to get rid of it. It's almost impossible to understand. There's far more Sing to it than Eng.
The people I teach often speak Singlish. Some of the very little ones try speaking Mandarin to me. There's a very specific expression that a 5 year old child has on it's face when asking (urgently) to be allowed to go to the toilet, lucky as in this instance he was asking in Mandarin and I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. There's something very charming in that he assumed that I would be as multi lingual as he is and as most of the people here are.
Childhood development is very fascinating to me. What people are able to do at what age. At primary one (six and seven year olds) children can't spread out. They are still developing spatial awareness. Jostling together they will be very uncomfortably squashed up until the brighter ones call me over, look up with big, worried eyes and say 'ahh bit squeezy, lah'. Weirdly they cannot un-squeeze themselves and need me to help.
I remember touring a play into primary schools and how the lines of very little ones would trail into the hall where we had put up our set. They would follow each other and then, when told, stop and drop to sit down where ever they were. They wouldn't move so that they had enough space and if they ended up sitting facing away from the stage rather than move their whole body to face it they would just twist their heads around. For the entire performance.
Teenaged patois is a thing unto itself. A common warm up game for drama is called zip zap boing. There are many different versions, but basically you pass a zip sound around a circle by saying zip in turn and pointing your hands towards the person next to you. If you want to change directions you say boing and if you want to pass the sound across the circle you say zap. It's supposed to be fast and focused. Fast and focused is hard for most teenagers. They think I'm 'siow' (crazy) asking them to do speech exercises and play strange games anyway. Zip zap boing in their hands sounds a bit like this:
'Ahhhh, zip lah. Ahh zap lah. Ahh. Boing lor, ahh.'
A lot slower than originally intended.
The people I teach often speak Singlish. Some of the very little ones try speaking Mandarin to me. There's a very specific expression that a 5 year old child has on it's face when asking (urgently) to be allowed to go to the toilet, lucky as in this instance he was asking in Mandarin and I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. There's something very charming in that he assumed that I would be as multi lingual as he is and as most of the people here are.
Childhood development is very fascinating to me. What people are able to do at what age. At primary one (six and seven year olds) children can't spread out. They are still developing spatial awareness. Jostling together they will be very uncomfortably squashed up until the brighter ones call me over, look up with big, worried eyes and say 'ahh bit squeezy, lah'. Weirdly they cannot un-squeeze themselves and need me to help.
I remember touring a play into primary schools and how the lines of very little ones would trail into the hall where we had put up our set. They would follow each other and then, when told, stop and drop to sit down where ever they were. They wouldn't move so that they had enough space and if they ended up sitting facing away from the stage rather than move their whole body to face it they would just twist their heads around. For the entire performance.
Teenaged patois is a thing unto itself. A common warm up game for drama is called zip zap boing. There are many different versions, but basically you pass a zip sound around a circle by saying zip in turn and pointing your hands towards the person next to you. If you want to change directions you say boing and if you want to pass the sound across the circle you say zap. It's supposed to be fast and focused. Fast and focused is hard for most teenagers. They think I'm 'siow' (crazy) asking them to do speech exercises and play strange games anyway. Zip zap boing in their hands sounds a bit like this:
'Ahhhh, zip lah. Ahh zap lah. Ahh. Boing lor, ahh.'
A lot slower than originally intended.
lol. most of the times, using fillers like 'ah' and 'lah' is a form of endearment, in some cases :)
ReplyDeleteyour little students sound very cute... lao shi...