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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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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.