Our mother tongues are actually our dialects Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka etc. Why should we abandon our cultural heritage for the sake of money making?

I am not aganist learning Mandarin but it should not be at the expense of our cultural roots. It s like asking the French to abandon French and speak English for the sake of doing business.

By all means learn languages that help us to strive economically. Speak English to all our fellow Singaporeans; speak Mandarin to China Chinese and use dialect at home. This is my suggestion to preserve our roots and strive in a global village. Btw, you still stand an advantage in business if you speak Hainan in Hainan island and Cantonese in Canton

dialects will always thrive because dialects are really chinese and have been in use for more than a thousand years. ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ｐｒｏｇｒａｍｍｅｄ　ｉｎｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　ｍｉｎｄ．
they may evolve but they will never be extinct. mandarin is not 100%　ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ．　ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ａ　ｂｅｉｊｉｎｇ　ｄｉａｌｅｃｔ　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｉｓ　ｈｅａｖｉｌｙ　ｉｎｆｌｕｅｎｃｅｄ　ｂｙ　ｍｏｎｇｏｌ，　ｍａｎｃｈｕ　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｌａｎｇｕｇｅｓ　ｏｆ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ　ａｌｔａｌｔａｉｃ　ｏｒ　ｔｕｎｇｕｓｉｃ　ｔｒｉｂｅｓ　ｗｈｏ　ｒｕｌｅｄ　ｎｏｒｔｈｅｒｎ　ｃｈｉｎａ　ｆｒｏｍ　ｔｉｍｅ　ｔｏ　ｔｉｍｅ．

i find it unfair that we are the ones who have to lose out.
yes, this speak mandarin policy did help improve marginally our standards of speaking english and chinese. but it has made us lose our roots.

i hate it that i have to hear adults speaking in dialects and i am only able to pick smidgets of their conversation.

i am a hakka yet i do not speak a word of hakka.

my parents are able to speak hakka cantonese hokkien and bits of malay and teochew if i am not wrong.

i have to ask them what this person is speaking or have to try dissect what they are saying.

eg. in the recent movie fann wong and mark lee starred, ah long pte ltd. they spoke cantonese in some parts of the movie. and when the audience laughed at some funny parts of what they were sayng, i had to read the subtitles to understand. and even reading the subtitles did not make me understand that “private joke”.

i wonder if down the years, we even have to pay to learn such dialects, like how we need to pay to learn french or japanese or all those foreign languages? i even admire how young chinese malaysians are able to speak all these languages fluently.

i personally think that this policy has gone over its purpose. if they do want to carry out this policy, carry it out in schools. dont ban shows and voice sub taiwanese hokkien dramas, or hongkong cantonese dramas. it loses all the flavour.

stop controlling us and please let us retain some bit of our cultural roots.

:D

Hi KSS (86 & 87)- We just need A Few Good Men to stand up in Parliament and make it a formal stand ie Bring Back Dialects in Singpore for Singaporean born Chinese (the independence of Modern Singapore was a result of one man ie Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his few old guards) and I am confident that we can do it and a simple one is screening of Taiwan hokkien tv and Hongkong cantonese tv serials (also Hakka tv serials).

Mandarin speaking world is just a small number and let us not fool ourselves or being misinform that the Mandarin world is a very very big world-to me is nonsense.

Regards
Andrew Chuah

今天在飞机里面阅读了黄春花先生在联合早报的发表文章，我认为他以前所遇到的障碍是准确的。我想我们都是很清楚这种偏见看法的来源。 我认为那个时代的教育政策强调英文也是正确的，因为国人一般的英文基础比别人好，我们这个小国家就意外产生一个生存的空间，如果详细回顾过去我们不能否认国家的生存机会确实渺小的。

如今世界和以前是不一样了。中国的经济和政治权威逐日加强，意味着汉语的使用越来越广泛。虽然我们的教育政策有同步的进度，关键是我们的下一代几乎很像西方人一样，我认为我们的国人和如今住在澳洲的华人大同小异。只要我们的教育制度还是强调应用英文，怎么样去鼓励华人讲华语的策略总不会有很好的收获，根据我的个人观察我认为我们未来也不会取得可观性的突破。我们不可以指定精英的成果来做比较因为在新加坡的一班人口里面还是多数不会讲中文，如果说会讲的，水平的确令人失望，因为好像政府花了很多功夫和金钱还不能纠正这个问题。

若是我们不迅速纠正恐怕我们现在的优势会逐渐削弱。我时常在上海就碰到好多住在大陆的洋人讲的普通话和当地人没有很大的相差。虽然现在老外讲中文还算是少数但是明显是有增强的现象。中国（包括台湾香港东南亚的华人社群）的经济和政治的权威是世界每个人都能看见的，所以中文将成为很多人选择的关键外语课程，意味着未来越来越多人会讲中文，像很多中国人拼命地在学英文一样，在这种发展我们国家的双语优势不可能比人家更强的。说句老实话很多新加坡华人确实不会讲华文也不愿意学习掌握中文。如果你提出这个问题，很多人用一种狭窄的回应。。。“有没有看见过小龙女带给我们的社会问题，我真恨死这些中国人，所以我不学中文啦”。

To be honest, dialect skills all over Asia’s Chinese societies including China and Taiwan are on the decline. This is because of the emphasis of using Huayu or Putonghua. is gaining popularity. As such, this is really not a Singapore unique problem.

I think as rightly pointed out by you, the Cantonese dialect is still pretty strong in HK. If you asked me that this will continue in the same way in the next 20 years in HK, I really am not confident that this will be so.

We are all fighting the tide of Putonghua dominating all other Chinese dialects. I really think that at the end of it Putonghua will become the lingua franca for the Chnese speaking community.

The proficiency of English in decline in Singapore is not due to our education policy on Chinese. In fact, Chinese with all the emphasis is declining faster than English, just like Malay and Tamil in Singapore.

Our English if it is declining is more due to the usage of Singlish and also all those horrible acronyms used in SMS. If we continued this way, then we are going to create a future generation of people who cannot speak grammatically correct English as well cannot write English at all. Don’t you think so?

Hi, KSS (81)

I noted your reply and I just came back from China and as usual, I used English and not Mandarin and I filled up the China Immigration forms-Arrival & Departure in English.

Let us take a look at Singapore’s English since the introduction of Speak Mandarin Campaign and I am sure, our English level has dropped very drastically till we now have Singlish-Broken English and let me ask you have we really gone forward and ahead, or backward. Malaysia just announced the reversal of teaching Science and Mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia for political gains especially both ruling BN-UMNO and Pakatan Rakyat, to gain votes from the rural Malays and the hardcore Mandarin and Tamil groups who are controlling the Chinese schools,but the majority of the Malaysians including former PM Dr Mahathir are openly against this decision and all these people can see is Malaysia is going backward (the same for Singapore since the introduction of Speak Mandarin Campaign).

Modern Singapore and as Singaporean born Chinese, we must go all out to speak our Dialects which holds our true cultural and traditions, and not Mandarin, and let us be like the Hongkis who dumped Mandarin and all out in promoting the use of English as a way going forward.

I am just an Ordinary Singaporean born Chinese who puts our Modern Singapore very dearly in my heart and is our only place we call our home.

Regards
Andrew Chuah

With all the above post saying how crappy our mandarin has become, and dailects not being used, I dread the day when I hear this in the morning:

“Sir, may I take you order please. Thank you sir. May I repeat your order sir. That would be a cup of coffee black.”

In which I may reply in Queen’s English:

“Wah lau eh, lim peh lim kopi pun ai kong amgmo wei ah”

Spoken like a politician. If Tharman were to agree that all the new Indians FT should learn Tamil, all the non-Tamil Indian FT would probably leave for India or another country!

Dialects are the roots of Singaporean ethnic Chinese. So to prevent and suppress the use of dialects is the same as to suppress the growth and proliferation of what our dialect roots would have been able to pass on to us from our forefathers.

On the learning of Mandarin the govt had gone to extreme lengths to make Singaporean ethnic Chinese learn it at the expense of their respective dialects. After almost half a century what have the govt through its MOE to show for all the sufferings exacted on older Singaporean Chinese, the virtual castration of our ethnic cultures but generations of Singaporeans ethnic Chinese students the great majority of whom would not be able to speak (let alone read) Mandarin competently enough even if their lives depends on it. On top of that, the learning of English – the language of schooling, work, govt, and pretty everything else here – becomes a victim of the dual langauge emphasis and ended up good in neither.

Perhaps the biggest disservice the govt is doing to Singaporean Chinese is that despite its apparent emphasis on the learning of Mandarin, after half a century it has still not found an effective way to teach Mandarin effectively in schools. Year in year out at least 75%-80% of Singaporean ethnic Chinese students agonised over its learning. It is nothing short of sadistic for govt to make it mandatory to pass Chinese in order to proceed further in their aspiration for higher education.

What’s the point of keeping our dialect culture when the purpose is to be able to use some “bad words” in our conversation. Don’t you think it is really awful to greet our friends “by talking about our mothers first” in Hokien and Teochew. I think it’s best we keep this habit away from our children.

If someone works in China and refuses to use Mandarin and choose English instead, don’t you think that this is rather foolish. I can understand it if you were in the USA.

If you were a Chinese and you don’t want to write your name in Chinese, then what cultural heritage are you talking about. Don’t you know that whether you write your name in Hokien or Mandarin, they will look the same in Chinese. If we don’t know that Hokien and Mandarin are in fact Chinese languages, then this is really a cultural issue.

Speaking a language is all about communicating effectively. It’s better to ensure that we speak well in order to ensure that people who listen to us understand us correctly. If someone can master many dialects and languages effectively, then he or she is in fact very talented. Unfortunately many of us don’t fall into this category. In Singapore, many of us have the ability to communicate in at least two languages/dialects. It’s good that we teach our children to choose them correctly and ensure they are able to speak them effectively.

Dialects bring along many valuable tangible benefits – esp. irreplacable cultural types which make life more enriching and colourful whereas the grandiose speak Mandarin campaign breeds a dialect foreign younger generation that cannot even communoicate with their grandparents and
their identity cards would identify them either as teochew, hokien, hakka etc
etc – this indeed is farcical .

The younger generation are supposed to be a more brighter breed then mine – and if my generation can speak English and Mandarin – some even fairly well – I do not understang why they are not able to do so.

please don’t tell me Hongkis are stupid and morons

And please don’t describe Hong Kong people as Hongkis. That is downright rude. Do you like people to call you a Chink?

Hi KSSS (75)-We must never let our dialects die at all costs and as Singapore born Chinese, we must continue using our dialects and do away with Mandarin-how far can this Mandarin takes us (the Mandarin speaking world is a small one compare to the English speaking world which is huge and vast). Further, how many Singaporeans can really go to China to work, do business-trade or open factories,maximum 5% and minumum 2% or less.

Hongkong has abandoned Mandarin since this year and is all out promoting usage of English throughout Hongkong and please don’t tell me Hongkis are stupid and morons, don’t know what they are doing-my answer is not. Since our government Speak Mandarin Campaign, our English standard has dropped alot….sad. I am just an ordinary Singapore born Chinese-Hokkien and I have refused to speak and write Mandarin and when I am in China, I use English (even I refuse to write my name in Chinese-to me English is the most important language and my dialect is Hokkien and I can speak Candonese as well)

Regards
Andrew Chuah

Interestingly the more educated younger generation becomes less apt in learning languages than the illiterate older generation.

Osamakjiahart