Manglish & Singlish Translator
Convert Standard English to Manglish or Singlish, the colloquial varieties of English in Malaysia and Singapore, and back: makan, kiasu, paiseh, lah, lor, and "or not" on yes/no questions. Rule-based, in your browser.
Manglish & Singlish Translator
How to Use the Manglish & Singlish Translator
Pick a direction
Default is Standard English → Manglish. The dropdown offers four directions: Standard English to Manglish or to Singlish, and each of them back to Standard English.
Adjust particle intensity
The slider sets how many sentence ends get a particle. None gives vocabulary only; Heavy adds one to 85% of eligible sentence ends. Default is Authentic, at 55%. Wh-questions never get one.
Type or paste your text
Up to 5,000 characters. Live translation as you type (debounced ~220 ms). The output highlights every changed word and added particle — hover over any highlight to see the original.
Spot the differences
Coral highlights mark vocabulary substitutions (e.g. "eat" → makan). Amber highlights mark added particles. The stats line shows the total change count. Same input may produce slightly different output on consecutive runs, because particle choice is random.
Manglish and Singlish: shared words, separate labels, and one account of the particles
Manglish and Singlish are the colloquial varieties of English in Malaysia and Singapore. The standard descriptive account of the Singapore variety is Singapore English: A Grammatical Description (Lisa Lim, ed., John Benjamins, 2004). For Malaysia, Stefanie Pillai’s introduction on the OED site treats “Malaysian English” as the umbrella term for all the English used in the country, with Manglish a name sometimes given to its local colloquial form.
The Oxford English Dictionary has recorded the vocabulary under the labels Singapore English and Malaysian English, mostly in two sets. Lah (1997) and kiasu (March 2007) came first. The March 2016 update added Singapore English words including ang moh, blur, hawker centre, HDB, lepak, shiok, sabo and wah, and September 2016 added aiyah, aiyoh, atas, kopitiam and mamak. March 2025 added alamak, tapau and mat rempit; March 2026 added agak-agak, boleh, jialat, kaypoh and BTO and revised lah, and Mat Salleh was first published the same year. The regional tags also show where the two part: boleh is tagged Malaysian English only, and jialat, shiok and HDB Singapore English only. Those tags miss some entries, kiasu and makan among them, so they are a floor rather than a full list.
Singapore’s Speak Good English Movement was launched by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on 29 April 2000 at the ITE headquarters in Dover Drive. Its 2010 fact sheet gives the objective “to encourage all Singaporeans to speak Standard English”, and defines Standard English as English that “conforms to the rules (grammar and pronunciation) of the language and can be understood by English speakers anywhere.”
“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.”
— Lisa Lim, on Singapore English. Mergers and acquisitions: on the ages and origins of Singapore English particles. World Englishes 2007;26(4):446–473
Three layers, and what the tool does with each
Vocabulary. Many of the words are Malay words with entries in Kamus Dewan: makan, lepak, jaga, tahan, malas, gostan and boleh, and alamak, which the OED also records as borrowed from Malay. The OED gives shiok as a borrowing from Malay, jialat as from Hokkien, and tapau as partly Malay and partly Chinese. Some carry labels: the OED marks kiasu “disparaging”. Words that label people by ethnicity, such as ang moh and Mat Salleh, are left out of the word list in both directions, because a word list cannot tell when one is neutral.
Particles. For Singapore English, Lim (2007) places lah, ah and what in an early layer and lor, hor, leh, meh and ma in a later Cantonese one. Going to Standard English the tool removes a sentence-final lah, lor, loh, leh, meh, mah, hor, ah, sia, sial or wat, repeating until none is left, so a stack like “ok lah lor” is cleared. It never removes “one”, which is also an ordinary English word. Going the other way it adds particles only at the slider’s rate, Singlish from Lim’s list and Manglish from lah and Pillai’s yes/no tags.
Grammar. Two constructions are handled by rule. Yes/no questions take a tag, following Pillai’s description of Malaysian English: “Do you want coffee?” becomes “You want coffee or not?”, while “What do you want?” is left as it is. Completive “already” goes to the end of its clause, after Pillai’s “I ate already”. The kena passive appears where the word list has the phrase (“got scolded” becomes “kena scold”). Reduplication, which has its own chapter in Lim (ed.) 2004, appears only as fixed phrases (“have a look” becomes “see see”). The tool applies both rules to Singlish too; we have not opened a Singapore source for either.
What makes this tool honest about its limits
This is a rule-based tool with a finite word list: 124 forward rules, matched longest phrase first and on whole words only, plus a particle table with rates of 25%, 55% and 85% at the three slider levels. Anything in the list is converted every time; anything outside it passes through unchanged, and the counter under the output reports how much changed. No accuracy percentage is claimed, because none has been measured. What it cannot do: code-switched input, variation within either country or between generations, or anything that needs a sentence to be understood rather than matched.
Lah, kena and "or not": what the OED and the grammars record
The reference grammar is Lim (ed.) 2004. Singapore English: A Grammatical Description (John Benjamins, Varieties of English Around the World G33) draws primarily on the Grammar of Spoken Singapore English Corpus. Its chapters include Vivienne Fong on the verbal cluster and Lionel Wee on reduplication and discourse particles.
Two layers of particles, in one scholar’s account. For Singapore English, Lisa Lim (World Englishes 2007;26(4):446–473) writes: "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." It is her argument about Singapore, not a finding about Malaysia.
"Or not" goes on yes/no questions. Stefanie Pillai’s introduction to Malaysian English on the OED site says that in yes/no questions Malaysian speakers tend to use tags like ah, or not, can or not and is it, and her wh-question example carries none: "When you going home?" The translator follows those examples: it tags yes/no questions and leaves what, when, where, why, who and how questions untagged.
Kena is a passive. Bao and Wee (World Englishes 1999;18(1)) find that "the Malay-derived kena passive is more widely used among Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin", while the Chinese-derived give passive is much rarer. In Malay, Kamus Dewan gives kena marah as equivalent to dimarahi, "was scolded".
Lah reached the OED in 1997, kiasu in 2007. The OED entry for lah says an earlier version appeared in its Additions Series, Volume 3 (1997). It was revised in March 2026, is labelled Malaysian English and Singapore English, and now quotes a 1951 Singapore Standard as its earliest evidence. Kiasu was first published in March 2007 and carries the label "disparaging".
March and September 2016 added a set of Singapore English words. The March 2016 update listed 19 new Singapore English items, among them ang moh, blur, char siu, chilli crab, hawker centre, HDB, lepak, shiok, sabo, sotong, teh tarik, wah and wet market, and noted that lepak and teh tarik are characteristic of both Singapore and Malaysian English. The September 2016 list added aiyah, aiyoh, atas, kopitiam and mamak, among others. Several are standard local terms rather than colloquial ones.
A second set in 2025 and 2026. March 2025 added alamak (earliest evidence 1952), tapau and mat rempit; March 2026 added agak-agak, boleh, jialat, kaypoh, BTO and play play, and Mat Salleh was first published the same year. Five of those words (alamak, tapau, kaypoh, jialat, boleh) are in this translator’s word list.
What the dictionaries say about origins. The OED gives shiok as "a borrowing from Malay" (Malay syok), alamak as borrowed from Malay, jialat as from Hokkien chia̍h-la̍t, ang moh as a borrowing from Chinese (âng mo·), and tapau as partly Malay and partly Chinese, with the Cantonese dá bāau behind it. Lobang and kaki, both in the Singlish-only list, are also Malay words: Kamus Dewan records lubang, colloquially "peluang" (opportunity), and kaki, "leg".
What the translator holds. 124 forward rules: 81 shared by both varieties, 17 Manglish-only, 16 Singlish-only, and 10 yes/no questions rewritten with "or not". Matching is longest phrase first and whole words only, and ordinary words with other senses ("to go", "remote", "rush") are kept out, so "go home", "remote control" and "rush hour" pass through untouched. The reverse directions also recognise 7 extra forms, such as "jia lat" and "eat already".
Particles are added by rate, not judgement. At Subtle, Authentic and Heavy, 25%, 55% and 85% of eligible sentence ends get a particle. Singlish draws from Lim’s list plus "or not" (lah, lor, leh, mah, hor, meh, ah, or not); Manglish only from lah and Pillai’s yes/no tags (lah, ah, or not). A wh-question, a question already tagged and a sentence already ending in a particle get nothing, and "one" and "sial" are never added.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Both are colloquial varieties of English: Manglish in Malaysia, Singlish in Singapore. Stefanie Pillai’s introduction on the OED site notes that "Malaysian English" is an umbrella term for all the English used in Malaysia, and that Manglish is a name sometimes given to its local colloquial form. The OED’s regional labels show where the vocabulary of Singapore English and Malaysian English overlaps and where it does not: boleh is tagged Malaysian English only; jialat, shiok and HDB Singapore English only; and the OED describes lah, lepak and teh tarik as belonging to both. The tags are a lower bound (kiasu and makan carry neither). This page makes no claim about which variety uses particles more, because no source we opened measures it.
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There used to be two, and they could never change a word. They routed through Standard English and fired only where one English word had different Manglish and Singlish renderings, and the word list has no such pair. The sources we opened record where vocabulary is labelled for one country or the other, not word-for-word equivalents between the two, so the modes were removed rather than kept as a button that returns your text unchanged.
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It sets the share of sentence ends that get a particle: none at level 0, 25% at Subtle, 55% at Authentic and 85% at Heavy. The pool depends on the sentence: statements take lah, lor, leh or mah; yes/no questions ah, meh, hor, leh or "or not"; exclamations lah. Manglish output is limited to lah, ah, or not; Singlish can use lah, lor, leh, mah, hor, meh, ah, or not. A wh-question never gets one, a question the tool has already tagged is not tagged twice, and a sentence that already ends in a particle is left alone. Because the draw is random, the same input can give slightly different output each time.
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Because the word list is finite: 124 forward rules (81 shared, 17 Manglish-only, 16 Singlish-only, 10 yes/no questions). Anything else passes through, and the counter under the output says how many changes were made. Some ordinary English words are deliberately left out because each has a common sense the variety word does not share: "to go" (as in "go home"), "remote", "rush", "relax", "opportunity", and "takeaway" as a noun. Words that label people by ethnicity, such as ang moh and Mat Salleh, are not in the list in either direction: a word list cannot tell when one is neutral.
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Not in a linguistic sense. Lim (ed.) 2004 describes the grammar of spoken Singapore English, with chapters on the verbal cluster and on particles, and Bao and Wee (1999) describe the kena passive as used by Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin. The OED records words from both varieties under the labels Singapore English and Malaysian English. Singapore’s Speak Good English Movement was launched by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on 29 April 2000. In the launch speech he said "My concern is that if we continue to speak Singlish, it will over time become Singapore’s common language", and also that "we should not disparage people who can only speak Singlish".
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Pillai gives "I ate already. (I have eaten.)" as a Malaysian English example, and the tool follows it for both varieties: "have eaten" becomes "ate already", with "already" moved to the end of its clause, so "I have eaten dinner" becomes "I ate dinner already". Going back, the tool also accepts the base-verb form, so "I eat already" returns as "I have eaten". We have not opened a Singapore source for this pattern, and the tool does not parse tense beyond the phrases in its list.
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Not well. Text that mixes English with Malay or Hokkien in one sentence is the everyday case and the hardest for a word list. Going out, the tool assumes mostly-English input; going back, it recognises only the particles and phrases in its list, so "Eh, makan already or not?" is only partly converted.
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For Singapore English, Lim (2007) suggests that lah, ah and what came first, from Bazaar Malay and Hokkien, and that lor, hor, leh, meh and ma came later from Cantonese, with their tones. The OED labels lah Malaysian English and Singapore English, with quotations from 1951. We have not opened a primary source that defines each particle’s meaning, so the tool does not claim one: it adds particles by rate and sentence type, and highlights every one it added.
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Yes. Bao and Wee (1999) describe the kena passive ("I kena scold") as Malay-derived and more widely used among Singaporeans than the Chinese-derived give passive. In Malay, Kamus Dewan gives kena marah as equivalent to dimarahi, "was scolded". The word list maps "got scolded", "was scolded", "got fined" and "was fined" to kena forms.
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It is exact on what it holds and silent on what it does not. Every phrase in the 124-rule list is converted every time, particles are added at the slider’s rate, and everything else passes through. No accuracy percentage is claimed because none has been measured; the change counter shows how much of your text the tool recognised. A test suite pins the rules, including that "Can I have one?" keeps its "one" and that "What do you want?" is never tagged "or not". It is a learning aid for short conversational text, not a publication-grade translator.
Method & sources
How it computes
Rule-based and in-browser: a curated word list (phrases shared by both varieties, Manglish-only and Singlish-only phrases, and yes/no questions rewritten with "or not"), matched longest phrase first on whole words, then a sentence-final particle added to 25%, 55% or 85% of eligible sentence ends. Wh-questions and already-tagged sentences get none. Going back, listed particles are stripped (never "one") and the list is applied in reverse. There is no Manglish-Singlish mode.
What this tool implements
- Descriptive, not prescriptive: the grammar of spoken Singapore English per Lim (ed.) 2004, and the kena passive per Bao & Wee 1999 ("more widely used among Singaporeans regardless of ethnic origin").
- Each variety draws only the particles a source records for it: Singlish from the set Lim 2007 suggests Singapore English borrowed (lah, ah, lor, hor, leh, meh, ma[h]) plus "or not"; Manglish from lah (OED: Malaysian English and Singapore English) and the yes/no tags ah and "or not" (Pillai, OED). The page says that the "or not" and "already" rules are applied to Singlish without a Singapore source.
- "Or not" is added only to yes/no questions, following Pillai's description of Malaysian English and her untagged wh-question example; completive "already" is placed at the end of its clause, after her "I ate already".
- Dated facts come from primary pages: OED entry histories (lah: earlier version 1997, revised March 2026; kiasu: first published March 2007, labelled "disparaging") and update notes (March 2016, September 2016, March 2025, March 2026); the Speak Good English Movement launch speech of 29 April 2000 and the SGEM 2010 fact sheet, quoted verbatim. OED regional tags are presented as a lower bound, since kiasu and makan carry neither.
- Output blocklist: no forward output contains sial (Kamus Dewan: a term of abuse) or a word that labels people by ethnicity, and ordinary English words with other senses (to go, remote, rush, relax, opportunity, takeaway, competitive) are not keys. Every rule is pinned by an automated test suite.
- Until 2026-10-01 the page offered Manglish-to-Singlish and Singlish-to-Manglish modes that could never change a word, stripped "one" as a particle, tagged wh-questions with "or not", advertised a paid version that was never built, and said kiasu had been in the online OED since 2000. All corrected.
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary. lah, int. Revised March 2026; earlier version in OED Additions Series, Volume 3 (1997). https://www.oed.com/dictionary/lah_int
- Oxford English Dictionary. kiasu, n. & adj. First published March 2007. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/kiasu_n
- Oxford English Dictionary. New Singapore English words, March 2016 update (archived copy, 2018). https://web.archive.org/web/20180129142312/http://public.oed.com/…
- Oxford English Dictionary. New words list, September 2016 (archived copy, 2018). https://web.archive.org/web/20180113054544/http://public.oed.com/…
- Oxford English Dictionary. New words from around the world, March 2025 update. https://www.oed.com/discover/new-words-from-around-the-world-oed-…
- Oxford English Dictionary. New words from around the world, March 2026 update. https://www.oed.com/discover/new-words-from-around-the-world-in-t…
- Pillai S. Introduction to Malaysian English. Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.oed.com/discover/introduction-to-malaysian-english/
- Lim L, ed. Singapore English: A Grammatical Description. Varieties of English Around the World G33. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; 2004. https://benjamins.com/catalog/veaw.g33
What can make this go out of date
- None at runtime: dict.json ships with the page and nothing is fetched from a third party.
- The OED adds Singapore English and Malaysian English words in its regular updates; the page names the updates through March 2026.
Abridged — the full review record for this tool runs longer than the list above.
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