![]() ![]() ![]() It’s glorious! But when I've spoken Singlish outside of Asia…oh my gosh. When you run out of words in English, you just pluck one out of any of the aforementioned languages and keep plowing ahead. In Singapore, we speak Singlish-English that’s heavily mixed with Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Malay, and Tamil-and it’s the language I’m most comfortable speaking. But this conflicted relationship is something I’m sure many people from immigrant families can relate to. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with languages, which is ironic because I’m a writer. So I find myself always speaking in present tense, which gets a bit confusing…and embarrassing. Plus, the other two languages that I speak (very badly, I might add), Indonesian and Mandarin, don’t have tenses. ![]() I did learn English when I moved to Singapore at the age of 7, but since I moved back to Indonesia seven years ago, I feel my grasp of the language slipping. I have a confession to make: I prefer writing in present tense because I don’t really know my tenses. ![]()
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