Some Sundry Singaporeanisms

In Singapore it is common to see words and phrases enclosed within quotes for the purpose of emphasis and nothing more.

In the above sign, the writer obviously wishes to emphasize that the house is new, yet the quotes suggest that the claim is somewhat misleading or dishonest — it is as if he were saying the house is ‘so-called “new”’ when it was in fact completely rebuilt.

In the long-established Motoring magazine, emphatic quotes proliferate like a disease:

Now for another Singaporeanism: What does the word ‘live’ mean?


An animate object that is live would probably be moving — but how can a crab be live when it’s all hacked up and shrink-wrapped? Evidently, to some Singaporeans, live means something like ‘fresh, never frozen’.

Finally, something from the Straits Times (9 August 2008): ‘The alphabet “b” is for commissioners registered in Selangor’. The word needed here was letter, not alphabet. In Standard English, the word alphabet refers to the entire set of letters from a to z.