The other day, I listened in as my mother checked that my youngest nephew, the baby of the family, was on the right track of learning the finer points of Chinese-style communication.
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“Do you know Grandma dotes on you?” she asked in Mandarin, and he quickly answered yes. How could he not? She’s the one whose daily joy is cooking dinner for him, who worries about his mosquito bites and who would gladly walk to the ends of the neighbourhood to stock up on his beloved broccoli in the pre-festive season grocery shopping frenzy.
But she had to satisfy herself that he knows he is loved because, well, the training wheels are coming off and nobody might really talk about love from here on. Sooner or later, like the rest of us, he’s going to have to understand all that is not quite said through highly encoded interjections from “aiyah” to “aiiiyaaah”.
For example, a Singlish-speaking parent faced with a tween who has lost their wallet for the nth time could preface a scolding with a snippy “aiyah”, borrowed from Chinese, to signal annoyance, or express a mix of sympathy and reproach with a slower, far more forgiving “Aiyah, you”.
A Cantonese speaker may say a singsong “aiyaah”, hitting a high note of surprise, affectionate disapproval, grudging praise or all three. “Aiyaah” can be uttered when one wishes to be understood as implying: “You have no idea how glad I am of your promotion – wait a minute, that was last month and you’re only telling me now?” or “I adore how you mopped the floor today without having to be asked. Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could do this more often?” A rough Mandarin equivalent, which has been turned into a hip-hop refrain by singer Jay Chou, is “Aiyo, not bad”.
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On a related note, I was most impressed recently when a Mandarin-speaking, stroller-pushing woman, backed into a corner of a crowded mall lift, caught the attention of the other shoppers, mostly Singlish speakers, without so much as a word. She made an apologetic, panicky sound – “Aiyaya, aiyaya” – and we, understanding perfectly, parted before her like the Red Sea as she made a swift exit.
