The Leeter Spiaking Singlish Book 2: Idioms

Following on the success of his 2017 hit, Spiaking Singlish: A Companion to How Singaporeans Communicate, Gwee Li Sui is back with a series of three “Leeter” books covering the quintessential features of Singlish, Singapore’s unofficial language – written in Singlish! In this second volume, we learn that Singlish is not just about lah and leh: “Singlish oso got idiom and proverbs wor. Such kinds of expression make natural sense within a language and often cannot be translated without lugi-ing some depth. Consider how much shiokness ‘blur like sotong’ and ‘bak chew tak stamp’ bring to a situation with people being tekanded. Use ‘pattern more than badminton’, ‘mee siam mai hum’, or ‘last time policeman wear shorts’, and you’ll have pecah lobang your true fewling on a matter without saying more.”

Dr Gwee Li Sui is a former academic who now labours in the arts as a poet, writer, editor, literary critic and graphic artist. He wrote Singapore’s first long-form graphic novel, Myth of the Stone, back in 1993, and has five books of verse to date. He has edited numerous literary anthologies, including Singathology: 50 New Works by Celebrated Singaporean Writers (2015).