SinGweesh on Wednesday: Prata

by Gwee Li Sui

OTHER countries may hao lian about their culture or history or freedom, but we in Singapore feel lawa-lawa about our food. So has what we eat gone on to influence how we speak? Aberden? In fact, while foreigners like to call Singapore a melting pot, we’d rather call it rojak. Rojak chum-chums slices of pineapple, cucumber, and you char kway, with crushed kacang and what-have-you to create something sweet, sour, and spicy – all at once! Singapore is rojak. But rojak implies a mess too: so a group project by students may turn out sibei rojak.

Or consider what we drink. To lim kopi is to drink coffee – specifically the kopitiam brew which kay ang mohs always say taste like longkang water. Poot them man. But all Singaporeans further know “lim kopi” as code for being detained and interrogated by the mata or, worse, ISD. Then there’s the choklat-and-malt drink called Milo, which we use creatively to make Milo-peng, Milo dinosaur, Milo Godzilla… all kinds lah. Milo enables the term “stylo-milo”, which means fashionable. Why is Milo stylo-milo? I dunno – maybe it’s just “Milo” rhymes with “stylo”? Or it’s marvellous what Milo can do for you?

Speaking of stylo-milo, we describe hairdos in terms of what we eat too. Some obasan with curly hair is said to have Maggi mee – which isn’t technically Singaporean, but nemmind. Some uncle with an Elvis perm is said to have a kalipok. “Kalipok” is another way of saying “curry puff”, and it appears again in the phrase “chop-chop kalipok” – which you use to hurry someone who’s performing a task. So the army NCO watching kancheong recruits clean their bunks for stand-by screams again and again: “Chop-chop kalipok!!”

Quite incidentally, politics gave us a beloved Singlish phrase based on food. Back in 2006, PM Lee Hsien Loong defended how teruk his Gahmen was to the gila blogger MrBrown by warning: “You put out a funny podcast, you talk about bak chor mee, I will say mee siam mai hum.” Those words would have been quite tok kong if we all understood what PM was saying. See, mee siam – a noodle dish with sweet-sour gravy – has no hum or cockles one. “Mai hum” means “hold the cockles”. So “mee siam mai hum” ended up meaning having made a blunder or a lao kui remark.

Finally, there’s a kind of pancake from South India called roti canai in Malaysia but roti prata in Singapore. The dish is made by flipping dough over a hot plate until it’s thin and cooked. “Prata” has come to signify in Singlish flip-flopping in views or on matters of policies. It works as both a noun and a verb. You can say “Your prata very good!” or “You prata very good!” – without even involving prata! “Prata” can further suggest how something is interpreted to mean its opposite. For example, news that Singapore still ranks low on press freedom can be prata-ed to say that we are freer than Swaziland and North Korea.

“Prata” primarily relates to indecision in action or flexibility with information. There has been a false rumour going round saying that it’s tied to our former People’s President S. R. Nathan, whom some si geenas call the Prata Man. So bo tua bo suay, these people! The claim is not just unkind, but it’s also untrue since “prata” has been in use before Nathan came into office. Besides, it distorts the range of what the word can actually be used for. So please hor, everyone: can dun mee siam mai hum and anyhowly go and prata “prata” OK?

 

Featured Image by Sean Chong.

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