Katong Shophouse
Sometimes it's hard to get the right angle for a picture - this one was taken from the upper deck of a double-decker bus.
English words that are borrowed from Malay
I really like studying etymology and the origins of words, and I'm interested in the fairly omnivorous nature of English, which has a huge "borrowed" vocabulary. (Random fact: "bugger" is related to "Bulgaria".) So I thought every now and then I'd put up random lists of words English borrows from various languages - well, besides French, German, and Spanish, or I'll exhaust myself from typing. I thought I'd start with Malay, national language of Singapore. Wikipedia already has a partial list , but I thought I'd come up with a list that also included a few other loan words. The obvious ones are words for things that are indigenous to the region - plants (durian, rambutan, bamboo, sago, camphor ), animals (orang-utan, pangolin, cassowary), and cloth ( gingham , sarong). But there's a whole bunch that're less obvious, even to native English speakers from this region: amok . If you asked me to name one English loan word that
Comments
(Hey - I'm on LJ too)
And on LJ, are you?
god i miss the food in singapore.
i think i recognize the place and thus the routes.
faith - yes, katong - east coast road
elyrie - well, it's for lease, so one hopes whoever is next will spruce it up
adinahaes - the 12 :)