By DayakDaily Team
KUCHING, March 28: ‘Tapau’ and ‘alamak’ are among the 12 ‘untranslatable words’ from Malaysia and Singapore added in the latest update to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
According to Free Malaysia Today, the OED justified the addition of these words as lacking a direct translation, but are widely used by English speakers to bridge linguistic gaps.
“Sometimes, they do this with enough frequency that the borrowed word eventually becomes part of the vocabulary of their variety of English—a few examples of such loan words are featured in this quarter’s OED update,” the website read.
‘Tapau’ is a Cantonese word that refers to having food packed up or as takeaway, while ‘alamak’ is an exclamation to express emotions such as shock and dismay, which OED has noted can be difficult to translate directly.
The other words added to the OED’s update are:
- Ketupat
- Mat rempit (a young man who participates in illegal motorcycle street racing and performs dangerous stunts)
- Terror (depending on the context, it can mean ‘terrible, awful’ and ‘admirable, excellent’)
- Fish head curry
- Half-boiled egg
- Kaya
- Kaya toast
- Nasi lemak
- Otak-otak
- Steamboat
— DayakDaily
