It's all to do with the syllable.

Have you ever wondered why Bukit Timah Expressway is abbreviated to BKE and not BTE? The Land Transport Authority gives the following explanation: 

Interestingly, the acronym for expressways is derived from the first letter of the first two syllables followed by the first letter of the last word.

         You may click here to access the official webpage.

But nobody who has given the matter a thought has any need for an explanation. It's obvious to all of us. What is not so obvious is WHY they came up with such a strange system in the first place. 

Why would anyone attach so much importance to the syllable and ignore the whole word?

Singapore's first two motorways are the East Coast Parkway (ECP) and the Pan Island Expressway (PIE) and they are properly abbreviated only because the first syllable of each is a standalone word. Subsequent abbreviations may look unusual to a stranger, for example, SLE for Seletar Expressway. Why is there this obsession with the syllable? There is only one explanation. Whoever decided on the abbreviation must have been very much influenced by the Chinese language. In the Chinese language, every syllable is expressed by a complete character. Although what constitutes a 'word' may be disputed and it's more complex in the Chinese language, you may say that in Chinese, every syllable forms a whole word and it's represented by a character that is separated from other characters by a space in the same way that each word in an English text is separated from other words by a space. It makes perfect sense for someone who is thinking in Chinese to abbreviate Bukit Timah Expressway as BKE because to him, the name Bukit Timah is simply Bu Kit Ti Mah or BKTM. He gives equal value to the K as he does the T.

Let's look at the abbreviation of Ayer Rajah Expressway to AYE. In Malay, the second syllable of 'ayer' which means 'water' is not fully enunciated as a separate syllable. 'Ayer' is the old spelling. The current spelling is 'air' which more clearly captures the elision. Whoever came up with AY as the abbreviation of 'Ayer Rajah' must have been influenced by the Chinese name 亞逸拉惹 where each character is a firmly enunciated word and the second character 逸 is pronounced 'Yi' in the emphatic fourth tone. Although the Chinese language employs an entirely different system, for the easy comprehension of English speakers, one may loosely say that the stress is on the 'Yi'.

That's how the Chinese language has influenced the way we name our roads.

Let's look at another language in our region that has some influence on the way we speak English and it's all to do with the syllable. In this case, a fresh syllable is created where none exists in English.

Recently I overheard a conversation in English between two young men. What I found fascinating was this sentence which the Malay man said to his Chinese friend:

It's this way, ber [pronounced /bəː/]

The Malay language, like all Malayo-Polynesian languages, is averse to having consonant clusters in one syllable and 'brother' becomes trisyllabic and is commonly pronounced /bərɑːdə/. Here, the first syllable of brother is ber [pronounced /bəː/]. I will, for easy reading, spell it 'ber'.

In some parts of the world, 'brother' is reduced to 'bro' (pronounced /brəʊ/) in informal speech and it's used to refer to a close friend, the same way 'ber' is used by the Malay man. I know of no research on this but if we may rely solely on what I've heard, and I do have a keen hearing for other people's conversations especially when they say something that is linguistically interesting, I would say that 'ber' has been in use far longer in this part of the world than 'bro' which has only made a rather recent incursion into our language or more accurately the language of those who strive to appear hip and cool. 'Bro' really has no historical significance for us. While it may be perfectly natural for people in some other parts of the world to use 'bro' when addressing a friend, the abbreviation sounds unsettlingly pretentious to my ears when it is uttered in this part of the world. It's getting increasingly common and I find myself compelled to use it when I text a reply to someone who uses it liberally and my holding back may appear aloof and unfriendly but I cannot get myself to say /brəʊ/ out loud. The same goes for 'dude' but that's a different story.

As a straightforward graphical abbreviation 'bro' is unexceptionable but its first recorded use in the sense of 'a close friend' and pronounced /brəʊ/ is very recent - in 1969 - and only in Caribbean and Afro-American speech. It must have taken quite a few decades for such use to appear in films and for people in this part of the world to incorporate the abbreviated form in their speech.

When you next feel the urge to say 'bro' to a friend, try 'ber' instead. 'Ber' has the advantage of an older and more established usage here and it's a home-grown abbreviation. When you are giving directions to a friend on the road, do say, 'Turn left and take the AYE, ber!' 

With that simple sentence, the beauty of our rich linguistic diversity is succinctly expressed.