‘Excuse me’ the Singapore Style!

When I first came to Singapore I was impressed by how people behave in the streets and public transport. Singaporeans seemed to be very calm, polite and friendly. All bus stations and taxi stands have queue barriers that make people queue in an orderly fashion and everyone seems to follow the rules so I thought: what disciplined and polite people those Singaporeans are! They seem to apologize a lot as well, in the street, in the bus, in MRT (metro/train), in the shopping malls, elevators, etc. The phrase I hear most often during a day is in fact: ‘Excuse me’, or ‘Excus’, ‘Escus’, ‘Skus ah’, ‘Skus ah’, ‘Eskus lah’, in any Singlish version there is! But, there is something that ‘doesn’t belong’ here…

Well, it took me some time to figure this out, but what sounds as a polite and kind Singaporean ‘Excuse me’ has nothing to do with being or feeling ‘sorry’ for anything. I was trying to observe when exactly do they use this phrase and I came to a very surprising conclusion, Singaporeans use it when they need something from you or they want you to do something!

Most common meaning of ‘Excuse me’ is ‘move off my way’. Yes, they disguise this phrase with polite and international ‘Excuse me’ but what they really mean is ‘I am passing and you are on my way’, ‘get off my way’, and sometimes, with the specific tone of voice and volume you could even get, ‘get out of my way!’ type of ‘Excuse me’… It is very common that the stations, shopping malls and trains are really crowded, so you hear many ‘Excuse me’s’ and see many people elbowing their way through the crowds… Funnily enough, if you are not Singaporean and you use ‘Excuse me’ the Singapore style, they look at you as you were the rudest person on earth!

‘Excuse me’ has also been used to stop you and engage in any form of sale of a product or service. Restaurants here always have a person outside to bring customers in, so that’s also quite difficult to refuse about 50 persuasive restaurant staff while walking along the street or quay especially after you have just eaten your dinner elsewhere…Even when you walk with your headset on, they manage to stop you, it is impossible to ignore some of the pushiest and most experienced ones! Of course, they smile and they are nice, but the whole concept of ‘Excuse me’ is lost again as it is very far away from being polite or apologizing for stopping you and taking some of your time, especially if you don’t buy their product. Usually those street or shopping stands’ people are young, sweet and innocent Asian girls or handsome nice-looking men, so if you ‘don’t know’ and stop and listen, most likely you will end up buying their product or service regardless of your current needs…

Sometimes Singaporeans do use ‘Excuse me’ in a proper context, but again, it doesn’t sound apologetic, more of an irritation of you ‘being on the way’... If someone steps on you, hits you with the shopping bag, pokes you with a wet umbrella or bumps into you, you would hear the famous phrase but if you didn’t speak English and interpret the tone of voice only here, you might think that this person not only invaded your personal space but also yelled at you for no reason! Well, sometimes you can learn politeness from impolite…