Singaporean English, Singlish, Singrish

People here speak English, but their own version, Singaporean English, Singlish for short.  They use very proper words because they were once colonized by the British, such as queue instead of line. However they often so not use pro-nouns such as it or the.  A common thing is to ask Can-lah? or Cannot lah? Which they use for every situation, in a taxi they ask "can turn lah?" or in the pharmacy they ask "can buy without prescription lah?"

And the -lah part is used often, after a statement, expression, or question.  Kind of similar to the way they use "Ay" after questions in in Canada.

The Singrish part comes in because there are people from all over the work here, and they often have a heavy accent, so jokingly many say "Singrish." Communication here is a lot more difficult than I thought.  I asked my co-workers, and they do not have a difficult time understanding me because of the American television available here.  But I do have a difficult time understanding others because of the Singlish combined with the heavy accent.  I try my best to understand by using the repeat back method.  I repeat back what the person said to me to verify if what I heard was in fact what they said.  I think this is a good method to use whether or not there is a language barrier in healthcare.

And then there are some things I just find childlishly amusing, "hump ahead" instead of bump:

More to come soon!