Singlish and Manglish words in the Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary tags at least 38 of its entries as Singapore English and at least 33 as Malaysian English, and 24 carry both tags. We read the publication line on every one of them: 21 of the 38 Singapore entries were first published in a single year, 2016, and 11 more in 2025 and 2026. The tags miss some words, kiasu and makan among them, so every count here is a floor.

Those labels, Singapore English and Malaysian English, are the dictionary's; Singlish and Manglish are the colloquial end of each. An OED entry records that a word is used in English and how, with dated quotations. It does not make Singlish or Manglish a language, and the tagged entries include plain local terms such as HDB and sundry shop as well as slang. What the discourse particles mean is harder to source: none of the primary sources we could open defines lor, leh, meh or hor.

Borrowed from Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese

The OED gives each entry an etymology, and the ones we read show the mix. Shiok, first published in 2016, is "a borrowing from Malay", from syok. Alamak, added in March 2025, is "Borrowed from Malay", with evidence from 1952. Tapau, added the same month, is "Partly a borrowing from Malay. Partly a borrowing from Chinese", with Cantonese dá bāau behind it, and Malaysia's own dictionary, Kamus Dewan, records tapau as colloquial and of Chinese origin. Jialat, added in 2026, comes "from Hokkien chia̍h-la̍t". Ang moh, a term for a white person, is "a borrowing from Chinese".

Kamus Dewan also records lubang, whose first sense is a hole, with a colloquial sense of "peluang", an opportunity. The sources we opened cover Malay, Hokkien and Cantonese; words from Tamil and other languages are part of both varieties and outside this guide.

Split between an early set of particles and a later one

The particles are the small words at the end of a sentence, lah the best known. The linguist Lisa Lim, in a 2007 paper in World Englishes, gave one account of where they came from in Singapore English. Her abstract reads: "I suggest that in an early era Bazaar Malay and Hokkien contributed the particles lah, ah and what, and Cantonese in a later age provided lor, hor, leh, meh and ma, inclusive of tone." Bazaar Malay was the trade language of the region's markets.

It is one scholar's argument, about Singapore English, and about where the particles were borrowed from, not about how Hong Kong Cantonese uses them today. Other accounts in circulation give some particles different sources, and we did not open a primary source that settles the question or defines what each particle means.

Kept for questions that take a yes or a no

The OED publishes an introduction to Malaysian English by Stefanie Pillai of the University of Malaya. She writes that the term "is actually an umbrella term for all the varieties of English used in Malaysia", of which Manglish is the local, colloquial form, and that "In yes/no questions, Malaysian speakers tend not to use the questions form, and instead use tags like: ah, or not, can or not, and is it." Her examples include "You want rice or not?" and "Come with me can or not?", while her wh-questions, such as "When you going home?", carry no tag. She gives "I ate already" for "I have eaten".

For Singapore, a 1999 study by Zhiming Bao and Lionel Wee found the passive with kena, from Malay, "more widely used among Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin", and the passive with give, from Chinese, "much rarer". Until 1 October 2026, our Manglish and Singlish translator added "or not" to between 13.6% and 21.4% of the what- and when-questions it turned into Manglish, depending on the setting. It now keeps the tag to yes/no questions.