I had the chance to catch the much awaited sequel to Batman Begins the other night. The Dark Knight most certainly lived up to its expectations and was thoroughly enjoyable. But I’m not a movie critic and our Contact Singapore blog is definitely not rottentomatoes.com. So why am I writing about the Dark Knight?

 

Well it’s got to do with the Joker’s catch phrase “Why so serious?”. It caught me by surprise that the catch phrase sounded Singlish – a unique blend of Singapore English that is used colloquially and mixes different languages that Singaporeans speak, including Malay, Tamil, some Chinese dialects and local slang. Because if you were to say the sentence in standard English, you would include a pronoun such as “Why are you being so serious?”. For a detailed write-up on Singlish, you can refer to this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish.

 

I have forgotten the number of times foreign friends exclaim their surprise when they hear Singlish. “Are you speaking English?” is a common response because they catch some English words mixed in with other sounds that are completely unfamiliar to them. Luckily, Singapore uses standard English in business and formal situations so there is absolutely no language barrier for English speakers. But those who want to immerse themselves in the local culture can pick up Singlish and join in the fun to say things such as “Why so serious?” and try to decipher the nuances of “lah”, “leh”, “loh”, etc. And for Singaporeans out there, Singlish invariably provides a unifying “language” and is a way for those living overseas to identify and share a sense of familiarity with one another.