Commonly found variants; note these may range from acceptable alternatives to
non-standard forms or incorrect spellings*.
* Singlish is a largely spoken creole, and as such descriptivism (recording forms that reflect actual pronunciation in spoken language, or as appearing in the linguistic corpus) is more pertinent than strict prescriptivism. Nevertheless, the use of more standard forms (or for words originating in languages with Latin script, such as Malay, accurate to the original spelling) is recommended and encouraged.
* Singlish is a largely spoken creole, and as such descriptivism (recording forms that reflect actual pronunciation in spoken language, or as appearing in the linguistic corpus) is more pertinent than strict prescriptivism. Nevertheless, the use of more standard forms (or for words originating in languages with Latin script, such as Malay, accurate to the original spelling) is recommended and encouraged.
also can:
pai seh piece pai sey piece phai se piece pai se piece ps piece
* The diacritic ◌̃ represents a nasalized vowel.
[ SSS:
paĩseh piece ]
paiseh piece
简
繁
Detailed etymology
definitions
noun
- the final piece of food left over in a shared dish, which the people at the table are all too good-mannered, courteous, or shy to take (lest they appear greedy, overeat, deprive an eating companion who really wanted it of it, or any other number of reasons). This leads to them all sitting awkwardly and staring at the piece for a long time, while each half-wanting to eat the piece but also being half-hesitant to do so. A surprisingly common phenomenon when meals involve sharing food between a number of people.
Alamak, this is why we 5 people can never go dim sum, always cannot split the number of food evenly sia. Can someone finish the paiseh piece so we can pay up?
usage notes
* The nasal vowel is almost always unmarked by speakers, though it is very important to the pronunciation of the term. In a dipthong or tripthong, the recommended convention is to mark the final vowel, unless it is spelled using a repeated letter, in which case the first-occurring repeated letter is marked.