An introduction to Englasian

How to order fast food in Asia
By Nury Vittachi

MY FRIEND’S DAUGHTER works in a fast food shop in Hong Kong. I watched her and her friends in action the other day.

                The weird thing is that the staff can communicate perfectly well in English with anyone from Hong Kong, South Asia, East Asia, or pretty much any other part of the region.

But when a fresh-off-the-boat tourist enters the restaurant, communication gets difficult. Monolingual English speakers from America, for example, “hear” Asian-English words differently.

               Fast food server: Harlowelcumkaneye L. pyoo?

                Customer: What?

                Fast food server: Harlowelcumkaneye L. pyoo?

               Customer: Er, yes, I’d like one cheeseburger please.

                Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon?

                Customer: Excuse me?

                Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon?

                Customer: Oh, no, I don’t want a double-Swiss with Baygon, I mean bacon. I just want a normal cheeseburger.

                Fast food server: Humbugger wit jees. Setter Al Eckart?

                Customer: Pardon me?

                Fast food server: Setter Al Eckart?

                Customer: Ah, got it. A La carte, please.

                Fast food server: One-for-rice wee tat?

                Customer: No, I don’t want rice, thank you very much.

                Fast food server: One-for-rice wee tat!

                Customer: Oh, yes, please, I want fries with that.

                Fast food server: Smormy dyumludj?

                Customer: I’m sorry, would you mind…?

                Fast food server: Smormy dyumludj. U juan smor, me, dyum, ludj?

                Customer: Medium.

                Fast food server: Ad too duller soup a size.

                Customer: What?

                Fast food server: Ad too duller soup a size.

                Customer: Not supersized, thanks. I’m fat enough already, ha ha!

                Fast food server: Wad rink u juan?

                Customer: Fresh orange juice, please.

                Fast food server: Fray soringe ad too duller. Chippa u buy set.

                Customer: Okay, gimme a set.

                Fast food server: Wit set you juan?

                Customer: Cheeseburger.

                Fast food server: Dull Swiss wit Baygon set?

                Customer: Excuse me?

                Fast food server: You juan dull Swiss wit Baygon set?

                Customer: No, I don’t want – actually, maybe I do want Baygon. At least it would kill my appetite.

               How come Asians can communicate with other Asians using this bare-bones English, while tourists struggle with it? Because English is really a whole group of languages. A tourist who speaks only “the Queen’s English” limits himself to communicating with speakers of that dialect. But if you speak Asian English—which I propose we call Englasian—you end up with a language the majority of people on Earth can understand.

                In fact, I reckon we should train the Queen of England to speak it. I can just picture her on her next tour of Asia stepping off the Royal yacht and saying: “We are most amused to be here. My husband and I would like to say harlowelkumkanwee L. pyoo.”

**

Tomorrow: The questions Asian men will never answer

Comments

[the flip side]

i understand that your post is meant to encourage the world to study each others' languages and cultures. however, i think that you misunderstand the blending of two languages.

for example, "spanglish" (spanish and english) happens when people mix words from each language, which result in a coherent blend that is easily understood if you know both languages.

your suggestion of "englasian" is something very different. englasian is not a mixture of asian (chinese for example) and english words, but rather the result of lazy pronunciation. with better training in schools, anyone can sharpen the sounds that come out of the mouth.

on a final note, tourists and native english speakers need to slow down their speech and be open to other languages, but asian english speakers also need to "step up their game" if anyone is going to properly communicate. there's a serious problem if native english speakers cannot even understand a simple order from a western food chain like mcdonald's as you allude to. the solution is not slurred speech, but in stronger english skills.

[Darwin]

In Sri Lanka if people mix up English words with Sinhalese words during a conversation, we call it 'Singlish'. Your example is more to do with lazy pronounciation rather than mixing up two different languages.

[Nury]

Flip and Darwin, to some extent I agree with what you two both have said. People who repeat things in a different language a lot tend to clip the words into simpler bits.

But on the other hand, if it was just a matter of lazy pronunciation, then we'd all have difficulty understanding it. Yet I think Asians from all mother tongues understand Asian English more easily than Western speakers of English.

I actually think Asian English is clipped and simplified into ways that make it easier to understand (for the initiated) than standard English.

For example, the over-wordy "So,do you think you are able to do it?" becomes in Asia the simple "Can-or-not-la?"

Hi, Darwin, did you know that your gender is being discussed on a separate thread?!

[Dili]

I dont think its exactly lazy pronunciation. This kind of English happens when East Asian accents of Mandarin and Cantonese rub off on English. Its closer to a dialect than laziness isnt it?

[catterpillarboy]

I love how English evolves...I watching the CGI Beowulf the other night and they had Crispin Glover's Grendel speaking in Olde English and I was surprised that despite the initial impression that he was speaking another language that I understood the gist of what the character was saying without needing subtitles or anyone explaining to me what he was saying...

However, I fear that eventually English will split into several camps:
Gangsta Rap English: Kinda like ebonics but no one remembers that anymore. This is where you must spell everything phonetically and use 'z' for your pluralz. Before the photos, Edison Chen was much mocked for blogging in this language
(seriously speaking didn't Benjamin Franking propose this a couple of hundred years ago- like simplifying tongue to tong?)
American South English: Y'all know whut I'm sayin'?
(See King of the Hill for better examples or better yet- Huck Finn)
The Queen's English: How did the U on Colour disappear in different places of the world anyway?
Fusion (like Spanglish or what I grew up with Taglish)
and those who like to put 'la' at the end of their sentences, I almost forgot aboyut those...la

By the way I dare someone out there to write an entire story in the Englasian dialect...

[S Asia Academe]

this is really interesting: i think that since we now have a non-prescriptive attitude to languages, ie, no one except Lee Kuan Yew and his lickspittles now thinks there are correct version of English and wrong versions of English, each of the Englishes that catterpillarboy mentions above could be seen as an entirely valid form of English. I like the idea of a story in Englasian. I think you may be the person to do it, Catterpillarboy.

[Darwin]

Well if everyone has lazy pronounciation then everyone will speak the same way and hence they can all understand each other right?

I saw the gender discussion, made me laugh :)

[mochachocolata-rita]

i got one from singapore's McDonald's. Between the ever so friendly and smiley senior citizen server, my sister and me. After we established that we wanted 2 breakfast value meals, with two coffee.

grandma: (with a big big smile. HUGE) mic conomic?
me: economy? ECONOMIC? (eyes to my sister's saying HELPPP!!! ps. we are indonesian, english isn't our first language either. but we know if anything, we must want economy, not first class, we want anything that can save us a few more dollars)
grandma: (still with super big smile) mic conomic?
my sis: economic! economy? (we were even more puzzled)..after a few more minutes of miconomic...
grandma: (trying to slow things down) micccc....conomic?
me: (lightbulb above my head, suddenly enlightened) Ahhhh!!! YES! WITH MILK. YES MILK YES MILK
grandma: (with even bigger smile) OK, MILK!

kudos to grandma, who tolerated the whole miscommunication with a big smile :)

[Malek Mroueh]

As a speaker of Queens English, I say tosh to the comments about lazy English.

I sometimes feel that Asian English predominantly uses Chinese grammar with English words (e.g. Can or not? is exact translation of the Chinese sentence)

Then it’s a case of pronunciation - have you tried to understand any one of the hundreds of rough dialects in the UK. I think the Asian English has just as much right to exist as any other dialect. I sent it to native English speaking friends from Africa, Europe and the Middle East and they all understood it and caught the funny side of it.

Finally, if Nury can use Englasian to give us hilarious articles like this... then who's to argue!

Keep it up old boy! ;-)

[Alice Li]

My cheeks hurt from laughing. I can speak both Chinese and English, but I only understood about half of it. That was hilarious.

[xtube]

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[Rika]

Hehe, nice one!
I (German) am working in an office (England) together with people from China, Vietnam, Iran, Irak, Greece, France, Nepal, India, Korea, Italy, Hong Kong, Hungary, Poland and 2 English – Learning from them I’m now wondering what sort of language I might be speaking?!?

I know that at home I speak perfect Denglish (the ‘D’ comes from Deutsch=German). Meaning the first word that pops into mind either English or German is used and who needs grammar anyway.

And for the column: It’s not lazy pronunciation – especially by the Chinese people. As we Westerners just don’t HEAR the subtle differences in the weird noise that any of the Chinese language is for us, so they just don’t HEAR that the words in Western languages have endings. I practiced German with a very willing and talented Chinese girl when I realised that it is not the speaking but the listening that causes the problem. She only learned it on starting a quest of training her ears. Like humans wanting to hear what a bat can.

BTW: What about body language? I’m always confused when Indians are shaking their heads and then looking at me as if I were a bit bonkers when telling them the same thing over and over again.

[Paul L]

You could do a whole column on the indian head wobble and probably have done

[Karen]

I laughed so hard I cried... I miss Hong Kong! And this is so not a matter of lazy pronunciation - just different! As an American who grew up in Hong Kong, but who has forgotten quite a lot of Cantonese, i can attest to the fact that when I speak grammatically correct English with a Hong Kong accent I can be understood by anyone, but when I speak with an American accent I may as well be speaking Ancient Greek as far as my fruit lady is concerned.

[Arnold]

Actually, my friends and I all call it Chinglish.

[Chamin]

My favorite piece of Singlish in Singapore:

"Cano-oso can"
(Cannot also can, which translates as "it may or may not be possible")

[peter]

It is so funny for listerning hong kong people's English(I am a Hong KONG people).We are studing english when in child.The Step are Writting,reading,listening and speaking.There are very strange.We are learning a lot of words.Everyweek will have Dictation.Every students are hard to remember how to spell everyword.It is unhappy experience.
Furthermore, CANTONESE will speaking every word differe from English have weak and strong.So when who mother-tauge is english using Casual speak will strange for us.In other hand we will mix CANTONESE in ENGLISH like "ADD OIL" MEANING CHEER UP, "LA LA Sang" meaning hurry up etc.

[Louise]

I once went to this spa in China (thankfully with my Chinese colleagues), and though the spa staff didn't understand a word I said, they were apologetic enough. In Hong Kong it's a different scene altogether; you just want to scream and leave cos some are really rude. Some people don't even know basic English.

I have a few proposals on how Hong Kong people can learn English:

They (Gov't, LCSD, whoever) should stop putting Chinese subtitles on English movies. i once watched Finding Nemo in English with subtitles, and the kids were laughing a little later than I did. I guess they were busy reading the subtitles rather than watching and understanding what's going on.

If a teenager works in a fast food chain, teach him/her English, at least WHAT'S ON THE MENU.

PUT SOME ENGLIGH NAMES ON THE MENU! even expensive dimsum places don't have this. don't they want our business? Look at openrice.com. I have to use Google translate everytime.