COMMENT | We have long diluted the Queen’s English with local expressions. We habitually reduce complexities to a “-lah” and “-meh” one-liner. “Like this one, meh? Die lah like this.” That’s our quirky English – mangled and mashed, compressed and conjoined.

Our equivalent is ‘Singlish’. It was elevated to social acceptability with Under One Roof in the mid-90s, and to a lesser extent, Phua Chu Kang. The sitcoms were so popular that it worried the government ‘Singlish’ would subvert Singapore’s image as an urbane English-speaking city.

Right or wrong, Singlish or Manglish?...