It’s always gratifying to see your country in a book, especially since Singapore is so small! But it also makes sense that in a book about how English as a language is changing, Singlish (Singapore English) appears as a case study (although, sadly, Abley missed the chance to talk about Phua Chu Kang, a local sitcom that once was called out for its use of Singlish).

Singlish is basically a mixture of English, various Chinese dialects, Malay, and Tamil that’s made to be as compact as possible. Here are two word (or word + particle) combinations that all have different meanings but are also somewhat untranslatable into proper English:

• Can lah
• Can meh
• Can leh
• Can hor
• Can ah

The Prodigal Tongue explores the evolution of the English language in various domains, looking at how words are created, how English is spoken in various countries, and how it’s being changed by the internet. A short summary of this book might be: English is changed as it comes into contact with other languages and cultures while also changing other languages and cultures.

As Abley points out in the first chapter, English has always been changing. One example he raises is how the word “comfort” originally referred to strengthening and supporting. As a result, the case studies of how English is changing are more like a snapshot of what things were like when the book was written rather than an explanation of the present and a prediction of the future. As someone living in 2022, a lot of what the book, which was published in 2008, was talking about sounded really dated to me, especially in the chapter on modern Japanese slang because that was quite different from the ways my classmates spoke.

In a way, The Prodigal Tongue feels like a predecessor to Gretchen Mcculloch’s book Because Internet, which focused on the way the internet was affecting language. If you’re interested in modern English language history, The Prodigal Tongue may be something that you’re interested in! I don’t think a lot of the explanations of “modern slang” are relevant today, but it’s interesting to see how things have been changing in the last few decades.