Chuckles — Don’t Say Kanina or Sige Na in Singapore
When thespian Joel Trinidad answered an innocuous question with the Filipino word “kanina,” he was reminded of how he had to temporarily remove the word from his vocabulary during his acting stints in Singapore, the most recent one being Avenue Q at Esplanade Theater.
The reason? The word kanina can be loosely translated to “f#%k your mother” when you’re in the conservative country, so when you’re speaking in Taglish, you might get strange looks when you casually say, “Yeah, we saw him kanina,” or “Kanina pa.”