Sunday, June 26, 2005

So what's an "ang moh?"

Every now and then, I get questions from my sisters and their daughters about what Singapore (SG) is like. One particularly cute question, from one of my neices, was "What is the official language of Singapore?" They had looked up the "answer" on Google, and came up with "Singlish." Of course, this is only our patois, lah! The official languages are actually English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil (a language from southern India). Ang Moh ("ahng moe", with a soft a) is Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) for "Caucasian." It literally translates into "red hair," which of course I don't have. Anyway, my blog's title then means "Caucasian in Singapore," and we all know how very few of us there are here. :)

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