Just some common phrases I hear being bandied about in Singapore every now & then. 

Here they are in no particular order:

1. Cer-fi-ti-cate. (Just a simple mix-up between the two middle syllabi.)

2. That’s mean that. (Placing the “s” at the end of the wrong word. This tends to be a common syndrome.)

3. Nows-ah-day. (As explained in No. 2 above.)

4. Not say I want to say you, but… (I think this is a direct Chinese translation of “bu shi shuo wo yao jiang ni, dan shi…” I believe a lot of our English phrases actually come from direct Chinese translation, which may not always be grammatically correct.)

5. Au-thon-ti-cate. (A 100% army term. Everybody in the army uses “authonticate” this, “authonticate” that. Huh?!? What’s with this hybrid word? I suppose they mean “authenticate”.)

6. Scuuuse! (The modern day descendant of “Excuse Me”.)

7. -”side” (Notice how a lot of people like to use the suffix -”side” in a lot of things? Examples: I work in the finance-”side”. His business is involved with the IT-”side”. You like that ah, then my-”side” very hard to do things.)

8. Double confirm. (Why the need to “double” confirm? Confirm already means to validate once over. Doesn’t “double confirm” actually mean validating two times?)

9. There. (I love this word. I like to use it every now & then. It kinda encapsulates what I wanna express ever so succinctly, and sometimes it’s hard to find a suitable alternative to this. It means that something or someone is at that particularly high level. An example: Wow, this guy is really “there” man.)

10. Cannot make it. (This is a great phrase. So useful. Comes in handy in so many situations. I think it’s great that we have wonderful phrases such as this at our disposal, cos what better way to describe something inferior other than “cannot make it”? Great stuff.)