THE COST OF LEAVING WORDS OUT
While tradwives are a talking point in Western media, across East Asia, governments grapple with falling birth rates and family policy. In Singapore, baby bonuses and work-life harmony schemes intersect with societal expectations that women can succeed in their careers and caregiving.
Yet it is tradwives that make it into the dictionary, casting Western anxieties as universal. Our terms of debate rarely enter the record of “proper” English.
Nonetheless, there are visible signs of progress. This year, Oxford English Dictionary added words used in Singapore and Malaysia, such as “alamak” (an exclamation of shock or dismay) and “tapau” (to take food or drink away from where it was prepared).
It also added Filipino words, including “gigil” (the urge to squeeze something cute), and terms from Nigerian Pidgin, such as “japa” (the phenomenon of young Nigerians migrating for better opportunities abroad). This reflects how local varieties of English are shaping the global imagination – Singlish through TikTok clips, Nigerian Pidgin through Afrobeats lyrics, Filipino slang through diaspora networks.
While dictionaries are taking steps towards representing a more diverse Anglophone world population, they still determine which Englishes are global, and which are mere local colour.
What is left out risks being erased twice: First from the official record of the present, and later from the cultural memory of the past.
Dictionaries may look like tidy reference books, but they are also historical records that carry prestige. That is why the thrill of a new addition should not be about whether slang “counts” as proper English, but about what we are choosing to preserve – and what we are letting slip away. Each entry fixes not just usage for today, but memory for tomorrow.
Ultimately, a dictionary is not just a book of words, but a book of decisions.
Dr Daniel Chan is Assistant Dean (Office of Programmes) at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and Senior Lecturer of French at the Centre for Language Studies, National University of Singapore.
