Learning one language helps in learning another language, expecially when they are related like Chinese and dialects. Who’s being stupid and stubborn?

who gives him to right to be so arrogant? He is just a civil servant. He has no right to call other people stupid!

or was it LKY who wrote the statement himself?

how arrogant! don’t forget you are paid by the people of Singapore to do a job!

i lam a singaporean living in usa for almost 5 years. the amerians and other nationalities in usa LOVE to know other chinese dialects.

Mr Chee, not sure whether you have been travelling or living in other countries. I disagree with your comment.

I work in healthcare. For the local elderly chinese patients, having staff that can speak in dialects (not just mandarin chinese) facilitates communications. Similarly, having staff who can speak malay with the local elderly paitents (many of whom speaks pasar malay) helps. It also makes a big difference to the patients’ perception of service received. From my observation, their faces really lights-up when they find out that you’re a local.

As much as I respect and appreciate the work done by many of the foreign healthcare staff here, the elderly patients often find it frustrating to be served by people whom they cannot communicate to and who cannot understand them. There is also some amount of cultural component that foreign nurses don’t quite get. E.g. Elderly do not like to shower at night for fear of rheumatism. Elderly like to drink boiled water that has been cooled down.

So yes, being able to speak dialects and/or malay is practical in some situations.

Mr Chee, I think your comment is uncalled for and presumptuous.

Presumptuous because you presumed that learning of dialects will be at the expense of Mandarin and English.

Don’t you know many people can learn master many languages at the same time?

Your uncalled for comment only reflect your own stupidity.

Here comes another of his rubbish to divert the attention of the public from the hot topic of the coming snap GE while his team were busy preparing for their roles and stragedy. Just like the recent past issue of the PAP TCs losing money on toxic investments, he came out with another of his stupid comments on those graduate parents issues. He never change, for sure.

Notice that recently there have been many ministers making uncalled comments. Perhaps some ‘retrenchment’ is necessary.

Chee Hong Tat’s reason for being against advocating learning of dialects because it would be at odd with government policy. The logical structure behind his argument is that Government is always right, just like Boxer’s in Animal Farm and Boxer continued to praise his Great Leader even after the Pigs sent Boxer to the Butcher’s. I think the Butcher is located in JB.

Pure arrogance. This is how our top civil servants behave?! Disgusting.

i think to learn dialects will not affect english or mandarin.

nowadays 3 students got all As for 13 subjects.

so dialect they should be able to learn also.

no point to get many As if the root also do not know.

The trouble in Singapore is that all the life-changing decisions are invariably based on the dominance of one man’s single ideas, opinions, judgments, taste, and experiences. This man claims he knows everything better than anybody else. By his sheer obsessive sense of righteousness and dogmatic views, he does not entertain opposite and divergent views. Today, we have seen many errors of commission, and errors of omission due to this one-sided lop-sided situation, whether in high finance, our reseves, our investments, our education, our roots, and our political culture among many other aspects of life. It is time to say – enough is enough!

First Chinese community leaders should commission a team of independent and neutral experts on the Chinese language and culture to relook at the whole issue, not just depend on one man’s opinion, free of executive branch interference and control, implicit or expressed. Then let parents, citizens decide on whether to accept the findings. The govt shld then take the cue from there, not before or during. Let the chips fall where they are.

I remember some years back ,mm said that a normal person is capable of learning/speaking about 6 languages.
I am surprise on Mr Chee’s remark.
Being able to speak more languages and dialects is one’s capability and it should not be discourage.Personally I do not speak perfect English and Mandarin.But my ability to speak some other dialects and languages benefits me when I am dealing with my colleagues who don’t speak English.,and during travel in the rural area in Taiwan and Korea where most don’t speak English.I don’t feel the learning of other languages and dialects will be at the expense of English and Mandarin.
Personally I can only think of one reason when someone is not supportive of dialects but I will not reveal here.I speak dialect at home.We are proud and have a reason to do so.
Before my dad passed away,whenever we sent him to CGH for appointment ,he was always smiling ,and looking forward to ,when he knows that the doctor that he is seeing is the HOKKIEN SPEAKING LOR KOON.

we cannot learn more than two languages well?

perhaps Chee Hong Tat can check with his boss LKY — In WW2, he picked up Japanese so fast that he was enrolled as an “interpreter” soon after.

by forcing Singaporeans to give up dialects, we have suffered the following consequences:

– we and our children have lost the chance to learn from the older generation’s life wisdom;

– at least three generations cannot communicate with each other properly;

– we have lost our colorful cultural inheritage;

– we lost our advantage of communicating well with people from Hong Kong and Taiwan

I always thought the Speak Mandarin campaign can be revoked once LKY is gone. I really hope the day arrives sooner as there is little time remain to rectify the issue.

Stupid?? I don’t think so. You look stupid if you don’t even know how to speak
your own dialect.

I wonder if Chee Hong Tat would turn back, look at the face of his boss and ask:

who is the one investing our hard-earned money into dying banks when everyone else is running away?

who is more stupid?

2 languages are enough for you lesser mortals to work.

As for the tone of the response, I am pretty sure that the text came from the man himself and due to groupthink/fear, the PS did not (dare to) exercise whatever little discretion he could have summoned to whittle down the tone of the reply appropriately.

It is frightening to observe this common foot in mouth disease in our senior civil servants. What have we got after paying them so much? To belittle, insult us and short of asking us to spit on our ancestors grave. To move our parents to low end nursing homes in foreign land. No wonder the Merlion was struck by lightning, retribution awaits us. That’s what my parents told me when I was disobedient when I was young and if I do not look after them when they are old.

I do not agree fully with this statement.

If a student who studies dialect would his english suffer?

if a student is capable , he can.
if a student is incapable to master both languages , he cannot.
thus, its clear that when a person is unable to achieve its not the languages he learns but his intellectual ability.

there are many who mastered many languages.
its like any sports. some are good at one sport and lousy in another.
some are good in writing feel good while others are not good at it as they can only write about honest unadulterated unbiased blunt and truthful opinions .

Chee Hong Tat, he probably has handicap in learning more than two languages/dialects and mistakenly assumed that others are like him.

A frog in a well can always claim to be the king in whatever.

You guys make him appears like a toad, this is not fair, leave him alone.

You got nothing to lose for ignoring him, a man with no sense of belonging.

Actually, what is a Principal Private Secretary? Does the designation imply a hierarchy of private secretaries?

Maybe this way of talking maybe more pallatable…It would not be clever for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate ………………How?

If capability is not a hindrance- then everyone should be at liberty to speak/ or learn as many dialects as and whenever possible and be doing it individually -to further stop its gradual/ imminent demise brought about by the grandiose ‘ Speak Mandarin Campaign ‘

Similarly, learning Mandarin encompasses prefered abilities to read both the multi strokes and simplify versions of chinese characters so as not to be caught in situations of not being able to read either one version of them – and its lamenatable that nowadays most students are not able to read both and this deprived them of opportunities of acquiring any available knowledge that can probably be found in either print.

How did this conclusion that advocating the usage of dialects which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin come about and be arbitrarily branded as stupid.

CHEE HONG TAT

Job Title: Principal Private Secretary to Minister Mentor

DID: [1] 68356250
Email: [2] chee_hong_tat@pmo.gov.sg

Unit: [3] PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE (PMO)
Organisation: [5] PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE (PMO)

Description: To co-ordinate the activities of Ministries and the general policies of the Government and to provide overall policy direction; to eradicate corruption and maintain readiness for elections; to guide and co-ordinate whole-of-government efforts in the implementation of national population policies and programmes; to implement national research, innovation and enterprise strategies; to strive for robust security, a networked government and a resilient Singapore; to ensure the efficient and effective management and development of public service officers through sound and progressive personnel policies in service conditions, career growth and staff training; to build capacity and capability in the Service, promote quality service and productivity; to provide secretariat support to the Public Service Commission (PSC); and to promote sustained non-inflationary economic growth, as well as foster a sound and progressive financial centre.

Comparing ourselves with China, Taiwan and HK, I can conclude the following:

1. Early family grounding in dialects strengthen, not hamper, the learning of Mandarin in later years.

The Chinese in China, Taiwan and HK never had to give up their dialects and still they spoke and write Mandarin better than Singaporeans. But they have trouble mastering English. This brings me to point 2.

2. The real battle for the brain’s capacity is not between dialects and Mandarin, but between having to learn Mandarin at the same time mastering English.

Even for a foreigner (white) , learning to speak in the Chinese language is not difficult. Neither is it hard to pick up dialects. We have seen many Indians, Westerners, Malays who are very fluent in dialects. The Chinese language is written in ideagrams,which makes it very difficult to learn. It’s like hieroglyphics, and if not for China with over a billion population, the language could have been defunct and dead by now. It is difficult because you can’t see how it should be pronounced it by looking at the character, you can’t get its meaning just by looking at it, so you have to learn each character by rote! This is the rub – unlike English,which is built up with 26 letters of the alphabet, there is no way to recall the written word even if you remember the pronunciation and vice versa. Because of the rote learning, it taxes a lot on your brain capacity to remember.

However, the dialects and Mandarin have the same characters (well, except for some colloquials), only the phonetics are different. So early learning albeit in dialects can build a strong base in Chinese vocabulary. It is much easier to switch from dialects to Mandarin since only the sound is involved, not so hard to remember.

So to be both good in English and Chinese (per se, which is really what this is all about) is difficult. That is why the younger set in China, Taiwan,and HK speak better Manadrin and lousier English; but the Singaporeans speak both equally badly!

Please do not be too hard on Mr Chee. He is just a secretary conveying the message from his boss.

The real question is: why does MM think that it is stupid to advocate learning dialects now? Because, if more and more people want to learn dialects, it will undo all his efforts to suppress dialects over the years and there’ll be suggestions that he had made a bad mistake in language policy. Such an admission of error is unthinkable for a politician because it will destroy his credibility.

So, it does not matter whether learning dialects really hampers the learning of English or Mandarin or not. In my opinion, it doesn’t. But the crux of the matter is – is MM going to let himself be discredited?

If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we can say that he did it to enhance the economic prospects of the country. So, his intention may be good. But, is he mistaken? If you analyze all of PAP’s major decisions over the years, you will realize that they were mostly based on the personal experiences of MM.

It is now our duty as citizens to question such a basis for political decision-making. In my humble opinion, MM’s life experience is too limited to dominate the direction of our country’s progress.

chee, you really believe what you have written? what a sad case.

To: What is Principal Private Secretary?

Thanks. I should have done a little research myself.

That’s quite the job description though, don’t you think? He’s the saviour we have all been looking for.

guess you have just graduated? from overseas ?

have you met Hong Kongers ? Taiwanese ? Mainland Chinese ? if you had you would not use the word “stupid” to pass judgement on an issue so close to the heart as the mother tongue of dialect ? without you mother tongue – you are considered a barbarian with no roots nor culture – do you know what the british said of us losing our mother tongue, culture and name – ” they are vey well colonised”

so please do not write about dialects without consulting your grandparents.

The strong objection for S’pooreans to speak/understand dialects from LKY is politically motivated. Opposition party candidates who speak Hokkian or teochew well are always well supported by voters. Low TK ang Ong Eng Guan Lee Siew Choo were good example. LKY fears his LSL and PAP candidates do not speak good dialects will put them in a dangerous situation compare to dialect speaking opposition candidates during GE. For the last 40+ years he has been using speaking Mandarin campaign to achieve his political objective. If he loves Mandarin so much,WHY WHY he closed down NaTah (the fomer Nanyang university) in the Late 1970s. Why he sent his children to western university instead of Beijing university. How often he visited China in the 60s and 70s when China was poor and weak. Now that China is strong and wealthy,he leans towards China, he may even send his grand children to china university in the near future as he is always famous for leaning towards to strong & wealthy country. In the 2nd world war, he was a Japanese interpreter, in the late 60s, he leaned towards the British, in the Mid 70s, he leaned towards the US , in the late 80s till now, he always praised the Chinese Govnm ,and must visit and paid respect to top chinese leaders more than 2-3 times every year.

The job description is for the PMO and not specifically for the PPS position – I think. That’s way too much power/prestige/expectation for a secretary…

It’s so sad should our dialect just die off. My Hokkien is really bad, I can only understand a little but when it comes to speaking, I stutter. Nevertheless, I am still glad I can communicate to my grandpa in simple terms. I don’t see how our future generations could relate to our heritage should we just let it go. I’ve been half-joking to my parents, asking them to speak to my kids in hokkien (in future). I appreciate dialect a lot. It is such a intriquing language and I feel so at home Looking at Taiwan, their younsters grasp the langauge so well! Not to mention their standard of mandarin whihch is way way better than ours.

This thread, though an excellent read, seems to be revolving around just a particular sector in the larger sphere of the issue of Dialects. We all agree that it is really viable for us to learn dialects. It is definitely humanly possible, and it brings about a whole array of social and cultural benefits. Now, let’s try to envision the broader picture. Could there be any economic or financial concerns against the learning of dialects? The political stubbornness (in light of the old policy) aside, is there any tangible, immediate, adverse effect arising out of promoting and proliferating dialects on a large scale now?

chee hong tat…isn’t that in dialect? why he never use his pinyinized mandarin name, huh?

Chee Hong Tat ah,
kong si mi?
kong hokien si gong lang?
wa si hokkien lang leh.
buay sai kong hokkien
ang chua kong leh?

I am sure some of us here will remember some decades ago, due to this the Mandarin campaign, parents were told to register their kids name in PinYin and their kids end up with different surnames as their father.

After resistance from the public, dialects names were permitted with pinyin names in brackets. Those with foresight stuck to their dailect surnames for their kids.

So now we have very interesting names, half dialect, half pinyin for an entire generation.

A social engineering experiment gone wrong.

choling angel 15 August 2009

Everyone have their good speaking

Since alot older people are speak in mandarin more then english , they find out more easy way ,as i was thinking as a chinese why don’t speak in mandarin , and now a day many older can’t speak in english at all , and some older age people are not study could not speak english so we must understand them should not look drown of them, try a kindness speak to them in mandarin, try to understand.

i believe everyone have they good way to speak and write, we should said they have their good ideal and the mind.

Topice of stupid and dialects said by MM Lee, actually mr chee are smart not stupid of dialects , is not how to be private secretary.

almost alot people like to speak in their way, the important thing is the dialects speak and understanding as well.

my children could speak many dialects, is becuase they are younger could learn and understand as faster that the older in the the mind.

calling others “Stupid” is a destructive, is this principle private secretary of MM Lee’s Chee a matured man ?

He must be one who does not know dialects

Yes, the dialect groups are dying under the Chin Shi wang Style of pap MOE policy

It is really STUPID to think that dialects can’t pass on values… I learned lots of proverbs, traditional values from my grandma, who never had a chance to learn mandarin.

Singapore port lost to Johor port when Ever Greem moved their hub away from our port, partly because Malaysian govt used MCA minister who spoke Min Nan Hua ( hokkien ) to recieve the Ever Green bosses, whu couldn’t the english and mandarin speaking PSA official win the deals ?

Dialects, is part of the people’s cultures, is close to hearts ,

So Mr Chee HT, please speak with heart, a brain with no heart is a programmed robot.

About the topice of MM Lee who said the stupid and dialects ,
sorry to said stupid the word: appeal

i suggent why don’t mentiond the comment in ERP for paying cash card and how people thinking and feel about paying the ERP spending daily . and hear those people speak in their dialects .

dialects is not just part of our culture. it is our entire heritage.

all the dialects of southern china like cantonese, hokkien ,hakka and teochew which you can find in Singapore are descended from Middle Chinese, the official spoken chinese tongue from medieval times, Tang Dynasty era. the rich poems of Li Bai or Su DongPo are written in Middle Chinese and not mandarin.

Confucius and qin shih huang or even your ROTK characters like zhuge liang or guan yu never spoke in mandarin like what you see in the movies. their spoken language known as Old Chinese was even more ancient and hokkien is probably the closest to Old Chinese (which was probably closer to a Tibetan language)

Mandarin in contrast is a northern dialect from the beijing area. It only came into prominence after 1644 when the manchus, a northern Tungusic tribe ruled china from beijing and found th beijing dialect much easier to handle than the southern sinitic chinese language. it became the national language only in 1911 because Sun yat sen had to compromised with warlords from the north.

consider this classic poem from the southern tang dynasty around 1000 AD:

春花秋月何时了， 往事知多少。
Mandarin: liao(3) shao(3)
Cantonese: liew siew
小楼昨夜又东风，故国不堪回首月明中。
Mandarin: feng(1) zhong(1)
Cantonese: fong zong
雕栏玉砌应犹在，只是朱颜改。
Mandarin: zai(4) gai(3)
Cantonese: zjoi goi
问君能有几多愁，恰似一江春水向东流。
Mandarin: chou(2) liu(2)
Cantonese: shau lau

if you read this in mandarin, not all the verses will rhyme. but if you read in cantonese, every verse rhymes

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