Main Stories, Our Columnists, Top Story - Written on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 17:58 - 153 Comments
Is Hokkien My ‘Mother Tongue’?
Alfian Sa’at
A long time ago, a Chinese man saw some Malays eating a fruit. It had a spiky shell, but its insides were filled with large seeds covered by yellow, buttery flesh. He had never seen (nor smelt!) a fruit like it before, in his native village in Fujian. He asked them what the fruit was called.
‘Durian’, they replied. This was from the Malay word for duri, which means ‘thorn’. And so the Chinese man went back and told his friends about this new fruit. As the word spread, it became incorporated into the Hokkien vocabulary as loo lian.
Then one day, a new fruit made its appearance, native to South America, possibly brought in by colonial travelers. It was also green, with a spiky exterior. In English, it was known as ‘soursop’.
The Malays had a tendency to append the word belanda (meaning ‘Dutch’) to anything foreign that they had never seen before. Examples include the Dutch goat (kambing belanda, or sheep), the Dutch chicken (ayam belanda, or turkey) and the Dutch cat (kucing belanda, or rabbit). So they called the fruit durian belanda.
The Hokkiens, on the other hand, called it ang mo loo lian. Ang mo (roughly meaning ‘Western’) was also used for other edibles, like ang mo kio (tomato) and ang mo chai thou (carrot). Thus the word ang mo loo lian now carries traces of Hokkien contact with both Malays and Westerners.
The study of loan words has always fascinated me, because they give clues to the kinds of social interactions that occurred in the past. At the beginning of this article, I sketched a scenario of how a single word from one language entered another. But the process is definitely much more complex, and would involve long-term, sustained contact. The chain of transmission might even involve an intermediary, such as the Straits Chinese (or Peranakans), whose Baba patois contains both Malay and Hokkien words.
I have often felt a sense of loss at the fact that the lingua franca among Singaporean Chinese is no longer the Southern Chinese languages (such as Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese), but Mandarin. A little bit of research revealed to me the words that were borrowed from Hokkien into Malay. These include: (note that ‘c’ in Malay has the ‘ch’ sound): beca (trishaw), bihun (vermicelli), cat (paint), cincai (anyhow), gua (I/me), guli (marbles), kentang (potato), kamceng (close), kuih(cake), kongsi (share), kuaci (melon seeds), teko (teapot), taugeh (bean sprout), tahu (beancurd) and tauke (boss).
This process of linguistic exchange was two-way, as demonstrated by these Malay words that have penetrated Hokkien: agak (guess or moderate), botak (bald), champur (mix), gadoh (fight), gaji (wages), jamban (toilet), kachiau (disturb), longkau (drain), loti (bread), otang (owe/debt), pumchet (puncture), pantang (superstitious/taboo), pakat (conspire), pasar (market), pitchia (break), salah (wrong), sapbun (soap), sinang (easy), senget (crooked), sukak (like), timun (cucumber),tiam (quiet) and torlong (help).
There are even some Cantonese words that are now part of Malay parlance, such as pokai (broke or penniless), as well as samseng (gangster). Interestingly, it has been postulated that the word sam seng (three star) was derived from the fact that recruits from the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) used to wear caps emblazoned with three stars, each one representing one of the main races in Malaya: the Malays, Chinese and Indians.
In the army, one of the things that we were told by a sergeant was that ‘over here, Hokkien is your mother tongue’. But this was based on stereotypes: that Hokkien was a gendered, macho language (with the most pungent swear words) and the primal expression of working-class angst (as exemplified by the tattooed Hokkien-peng squatting and glowering in the yellow smoking box).
But considering how Hokkien words have entered the Malay language, I have realized that there is a larger truth to that statement. It’s like tracing a family tree and then discovering that I had a Hokkien great-great-great-great grandmother. As a matter of fact, since almost two-thirds of the Malay lexicon consists of borrowings, I definitely had Arabic and Indian (linguistic) ancestors too.
Malays have a saying, bahasa jiwa bangsa, which means, ‘language is the soul of a race’. But I’ve always noted a tension in the phrase. We tend to think of ‘race’ as something that is often bounded and rigid, defining it in terms of bloodline descents. But ‘language’ does not have such impermeable borders. Words of various origins pass through open checkpoints, undergo shifts in meaning, and become naturalized over time.
Thus, as much as we’d like to be essentialist about our ‘race’, we cannot escape from the hybridities already extant in our language. There is humility in the idea that no language is perfect on its own, and will borrow words to make up for its lack. If I’m feeling schmaltzy I’d even imagine this as a scene from the movie Jerry Maguire, where Tom Cruise utters to Renée Zellwegger the words, ‘You complete me.’ I also imagine her replying, ‘Shut up…just shut up. You had me at hoh boh.’
In Royston Tan’s getai musical, ‘881’, the main song started with ‘jit lang jit pua, kamcheng buay sua’ (one half for each [friend], relationships will not dissipate). The following line was ‘jit lang jit su ku, kamcheng jia eh ku’ (a quarter for each, relationships will endure). I had always wondered why Hokkien often resonated with me much more than Mandarin. And my guess is that this has to do with my recognition of some words, like kamcheng and su ku (which means ‘quarter’ in Malay).
Similarly, the well-loved comedians Wang Sa and Ye Fong not only switched among the different languages with ease, they expected audiences to do so as well. Malay idioms and phrases were common. Their trademark remark, whenever a situation was deemed to have gone out of hand, was: ‘Ah di ah, aga aga jiu hor ar’: ‘Hey [brother], you would do well to act in moderation (aga aga)’.
My Hokkien friends who travel overseas would often relate to me the sense of dislocation they feel when speaking to other Hokkien-speakers. A friend who went to Taiwan, for example, was surprised to note that they did not understand what loti meant. Another friend shared a story about the nuances of the word pokai in Hong Kong. At the end of the month, he moaned out loud at the office kam chi pokai le (‘I’m broke this time’) and all eyes turned on him. Pokai meant ‘broke’ in Singapore, but the reason why his colleagues reacted was because pokai (literally, ‘cast out on the streets’) in Hong Kong meant something worse, like being destitute on the streets, or being beaten up.
Because we are inundated by messages that often emphasise cultural purism, it is easy to interpret these instances as cases where the Chinese from this part of the world have been ‘contaminated’ by other cultures. I happen to take the opposite view: the Nanyang Chinese has evolved an identity of their own, incorporating elements of the other cultures that surround them. That this has been possible is a testament to their openness, curiosity and lack of insularity—a far cry from the global stereotype of cliquish and ethnocentric Chinese immigrants.
Much ink (and tears) has been spilled on how the Speak Mandarin Campaign has resulted in what some have called the ‘cultural lobotomy’ of the Chinese community. In many ways, I find great sympathy with the late Kuo Pao Kun’s observation that Chinese Singaporeans are ‘cultural orphans’. After all, they were forcibly snatched from their biological Southern Chinese bosoms and placed in the laps of Mandarin-speaking foster mothers.
A familiar lament is that the declining use of the Southern Chinese languages has resulted in the estrangement between generations of Chinese Singaporeans. But I’d also argue that it has also led to some kind of estrangement among the various races. I don’t know if I should worry about the fact that these days, the traffic of loan words has almost ceased between Malay and Mandarin. It is perhaps premature to theorise that this is a symptom of lesser interaction between these races, as compared to the past—after all, there is English to mediate our communication with one another.
But the fact remains that I don’t know of a single Malay word that has Mandarin origins. Which is why I feel it’s all the more urgent to preserve the variety of Southern Chinese languages spoken here (I refuse to call them ‘dialects’). They are reminders of the mingling and blending that has occurred here in Singapore; the very metabolism of what we understand not simply as ‘multiracialism’ but a deeper, more engaged ‘interculturalism’.
Somehow, our forefathers, of various races, knew how to pakat against common enemies, were able to kongsi their resources, and in the process of all that champur became kamcheng with one another. The product of their alliances, friendships and inter-marriages is reflected in the language they have passed on to us. To lose this legacy is to sever a vital connection not only to the historical origins of the Nanyang Chinese, but also to Singapore’s dynamic multicultural past.
(My profuse thanks to Lai Chee Kien for input into this article)
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153 Comments
Wow Affian you are sure a widely read author.
Good piece of work there.
You should attempt to write a book! No kidding – you are that good.
uncle gilbert ah.. mr alfian IS a published author-poet-playwright.
Navel gazing song boh?
Number 4): I don’t know how to write your very interesting ideogram!
Of course navel-gazing lah, the cultural umbilical cords all snipped by Dr Lee. : P
Nice article. It’s ironic that the villainous ‘Mandarin’, is itself (well, at least the English term ‘Mandarin’) the product of multiple Indian, Malay and European translations:
Wikipedia: “The English term comes from the Portuguese mandarim or Dutch mandarijn, from Indonesian/Malay məntəri, from Hindi mantri, from Sanskrit mantrin (meaning councilor or minister[1]); it is a translation of the Chinese term Guānhuà (simplified Chinese: 官话; traditional Chinese: 官話), which literally means the language of the mandarins (imperial magistrates).”
I speak teochew at home. But i was brainwashed in my early years into thinking that mandarin is my mother tongue. This is wrong of the PAP regime to mislead us. since chinese singaporeans come from different parts of greater Asia, we have our own language, i.e. in my case it is teochew. why should the northerner language replace mine?
My mum always remind me of the racial riots that she encountered and how she and her family had to hide in the house whenever, during those days. due to our country’s history, we should be sensitive and use english. but remember that our mother tongue is from our mother, who could be a cantonese, hokkien or teochew, to name a few.
So the take home message is: Teochew is my mother tongue. Mandarin is a foreign language to me! But I will use English for communication so that our Malay and Indian singaporeans can understand. I will not use Mandarin just because the government says so.
The brand of Mandarin spoken here in SG is not ‘down’ enough, tak kena with BM lah. Hokkien is more ‘down’.
One a related note, kau-yin (get married) as spoken in BI is borrowed from Teochew, not quite a ‘down’ a language but also quite gentle :-)
Thanks to someone’s white supremacist visions, first want us to be Western Engrish then want us to be Asian manglish. No wonder now we garbra garbage lar. Cultural orphans too eloquent a phrase to describe us lar. More like kaopeh orphans who haven’t yet learn how to speak. :)
Its 1 thing to say English is important (true) and
altogether another thing to say we should not learn Mandarin or our dialect.
We should learn english and put it with priority BUT at the same time not be a chinese face who cannot speak a chinese language.
In many countries people speak more than 1 language. That is nothing.
Why should a singaporean not be capable of speaking well in 2 languages?
Europeans easily speak well in 2 european languages.
yes, to me it is a shame not able to speak your mother tongue (i mean dialect or mandarin) although that can be understandable that not all have the capability or talent or skill or ability to learn more than 1 language and although it is not breaking any law and although it is not a sin and although it is not compulsory to know 2 or more languages.
Its just a shame , that is all.
It is one thing to say we need to learn English and a ‘mother tongue’ – it is another to say we should learn it the way Sg schools are teaching.
I think the way tehy’re teaching is damn salah. Proberberly a result of half bake policies by our scholarboys.
so we end up talking salah salah.
Some of the phrases you mentioned are from cantonese rather than hokkien:
cat (paint) – cat in cantonese
cincai (anyhow) – cin caai
kamceng (close) – gam cing
kuaci (melon seeds) – gwaa zi
Hi Terence,
Thanks a lot for the corrections. The best thing about publishing online is having people chip in like this. Thing is, between the S Chinese languages there are also loan words, so sometimes it can be tough to see where a single phrase might have originated from. A friend also thinks that the traffic of the words I mentioned above should actually be Hokkien–>Baba–>Malay, but I’ll leave this to actual linguists!
Anyway, do jeh! Or should it be m’goi? People tell me that Cantonese is the most shiok language for scolding, but at the same time I also think it must be a very polite people to have come up with 2 words for ‘thank you’!
As a matter of curiosity, and of course the level of eloquence on this comments thread, what *are* some of the worst ways to scold someone in Cantonese? Haha.
Also, I’ve heard that ‘pok gai’ can be used as a swear word. Anyone to verify?
Wikipedia mentions the “outstanding five in Cantonese” (廣東話一門五傑): Diu (屌), gau (
I meant *to raise* the level of eloquence on this thread.
And I don’t know why the previous got truncated:
Diu (屌), gau (
Sigh. There seems to be some cantonese-swear-word censor on TOC.
Anyway the five that I was copy-and-pasting were: diu, gau, lan, tsat, hai.
Like five heavenly kings. Or four kings and one queen.
I ever encountered an elderly man asking for direction at the bus stop, but no one enable to help. It’s not the commuters bochap, but cos the old man was speaking in Hakka which most of them catch no ball. As Hakka is my mother tongue, i enable to communicate with him and flag a cab and asked the driver to send him to Toa Payoh where he lives. Imagine i listen to LKY and gave up my mother tongue and focus on Mandarin, then i won’t have the chance to help the poor old man.
Just simply ignore LKY’s advice and continue to do what we think is right.
I’m a singaporean who grew up in hong kong and I honestly am barely able to catch what the locals here are saying these days if they lapse into a dialect. This shows how heavy an effect our enviroment can have on our understandings even if we’re speaking in the same tongue.
btw Mr Alfiian has Hakka blood (see his biodata in Wiki)
Alfian,
U r welcome. I was quite surprised to see quite a few cantonese words making it into the malay language. Cantonese seems to be dying in Singapore – Saw an old lady asking some young singaporean gals in cantonese about bus routes and they ignored her. My guess is that they thought she is crazy as she is speaking gibberish!
11)Terence Goh
Please allow me to kaypoh here a bit.I am not a cantonese but indeed the four words that you mentioned are use by the Hokkien.Except spelling differences,Afian is not wrong and he has proven here his ability and knowledge in local dialects,something I or we should be proud of him.
But I say cat(paint) as chart
cincai as chin chai
kamceng as kamcheng
kuaci as kuachee.
Nice. Contested paternity. Those four Malay words got Cantonese and Hokkien fathers. Can do DNA testing hahaha.
I’d like to add that, in some Chinese dialects, we also append the word “Dutch” to indicate things that are of foreign origin. For example in Cantonese:
- Hor-Lan (Dutch) Shue ( a general term for root vegetable) is potato
- Hor-Lan (Dutch) Dow (bean) is pea
- Hor-Lan (Dutch) Shuei (water) is soft drinks
Also I’d like to point out that the ‘cincai’ mentioned in post #12 is a localised cantonese. Most people in Hong Kong don’t understand or use it to mean anyhow. In ‘proper’ Cantonese, anyhow is ’see-dan’ or ‘kao-kay’.
Me, like most other Singaporeans youth has absolutely no idea of our cultural heritage in the past. Our ancestors, our language, our culture, we are just oblivious. My parents are of teochew decent, but I neither understand or am able to speck a single decent string of teochew.
Ironically, despite having zero knowledge about our heritage. It is of wonder isn’t it, when kids this days are able to split out Hokkien vulgarities like nobody business? In a sense, they are tracing back their roots. On the other hand, they are doing it for the wrong reason.
Blame who?
My Malaysian friend shared with me how the Dutch were lucky in this part of the world–’Dutch’ became a shorthand for ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’.
‘Dutch water’ is hilarious!
Anyway, the English, who didn’t like the Dutch very much (competing imperial powers), have given us the following:
Going Dutch: splitting the bill
Dutch courage: reckless bravery often caused by too much drinking of alcohol
Dutch uncle: someone who gives unwanted advice
Dutch wife: a bolster
Dutch oven: a fart chamber created by pulling a blanket over someone’s head and farting
It is interesting that the Hokkien and Mandarin spoken in Brunei and Sabah is closer to the original Straits-Chinese influenced form, than the sinicised form spoken commonly today in Singapore.
The phrases that Alfian brought up, are examples that would be spot on in that context.
I liked the ancestral tracing of phrases, and this shows that we are by and large culturally embedded in this SEA region, and we should really try and preserve this fast disappearing linguistic uniqueness.
I can understand Hokkien because it is spoken by my parents who are both non Hokkien and of different dialect groups. So is Hokkien my “mother tongue” or simply the de facto common dialect used in their era? As is Mandarin circa 2009 who is spoken by billions of people of Chinese descent around the world, including USA.
But people want to learn any other Chinese dialect, it is their right and personal interest; to tell an interesting anecdote from ShenZhen, a retail shopgirl told me a young African American spoke fluent Hokkien to her and she was pleasantly shocked that a black man would not only be conversant in Chinese, but in a less spoken dialect (although ShenZhen comprises more Cantonese). I was surprised myself as I cannot speak Mandarin fluently as I would hope, nor can I speak in Hokkien fluently at all.
Since I am not that hardworking and time is limited, I would constrain my efforts to improve my Mandarin first.
From what I can remember, Hokkien and its sibling variations were known to be the dominant language of state during pre-Qing dynasty periods in Chinese history.
Power does play a role in determining the extent a dialect lives, thrives or gets sidelined.
walau. getting all misty-eyed and nostalgic siah. Hybridization as a process is not limited to a Hokkien-Malay intercourse except for the fact which you’ve mentioned, that it is a ‘historical phenomenon’(I like the way Chua Beng Huat tosses that phrase in the recent ST report) i.e. lesson is dun essentialize the hybrid leh… :)
“Hokkien and its sibling variations” are also sometimes incomprehensible to each other; after Qin Dynasty unification of China and 3000 years of history, I would have to say that after each successive dynasty, the dialects used today are different from a period of 2000 years or even 1000 years ago.
And as to whether Hokkien was the dominant dialect during the Han Dynasty or more likely the Ming Dynasty (the last native Chinese dynasty), I have no idea. You would need a professor with majors in Chinese linguistics and history.
The only hybrids this state seems to tolerate are orchids…
13) Alfian Sa’at on September 8th, 2009 9.20 pm
Alamak, Alfian, you no do NS is it? MANY, MANY swear words can learn there you know? Free of charge too. Ha, Ha. Seriously, I’m Cantonese but after 2.5years NS ++ reservist, one tends to pick up all the “important, fact-of-life” words for communicating in Hokkien. Mandarin was a real let-down in NS, almost everyone was using dialects or Singlish!
17) ZL on September 8th, 2009 9.54 pm
Agree, screw the “perfect” Mandarin or English crap. Ok, knowing more languages can be really useful overseas, but my experiences show “perfect” is hardly essential. In fact, I have closed more cordial deals using Singlish. Too perfect English could be a turn-off for non-English natives, so they really don’t mind our imperfect English. In fact, they consciously pick up the “lah” from us, and often use it to kid me! Noo-lah, nnoo-lahh, yeah-lah, yah-lah. Somehow, only a S’porean can say these well, but it’s good fun for everyone!
Here are more malay-hokkien…
Batu – stones or rocks
Mata-mata – police
jamban – toilet
longkang – drain
tuala- towel
roti-bread
sabun-soap
kahwin – marry
baru – new
32) I did NS la of course. Just not in the navy…or air force…or artillery (if Malays not supposed to handle machine guns can you imagine how they’d handle mortar?)…intelligence…etc…
My point was that to associate Hokkien primarily with swear words is to caricature it–because you associate swear words with the uncouth, the uneducated etc…it doesn’t explain how in the world it can be used by politicians in Taiwan.
My friend Chee Kien shared this fascinating nugget: “Learn Southern Chinese languages so you can better and reflexively grasp the contexts of Mandarin, even. For example, “to know” in Mandarin is ” 知道” (zhitao: to understand the way[道 tao]), perhaps not as poetic as in Hokkien/Teochew: ” 知影” (zai’ ia: to know the shadow/shades).
So were the Hokkiens and Teochews more humble to claim they “know a shadow “of something instead of to “know the way” of something?”
I’m all for celebrating dialects! Read here: http://thisauntieblogstoo.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/1057/
“one tends to pick up all the “important, fact-of-life” words for communicating in Hokkien … NS ++”
Like NS liao se gang, jia bah ke ying. or lang fei shi jian, chi bao tai you kong.
As you like it.
No one speaks perfect English, for example the Americans. But at least there must be a minimum standard of competency for foreigners to understand us. Then again there is the not so small matter of ACCENT:
Should I tell another story? May as well:
I was at a poker table in Oz, the dealer appeared to be Vietnamese or Chinese while my fellow table mates were Causasian and Greek, Italian, Lebanese and one Indian (from what I can tell) Australians. Anyway one of the players commented on a previous hand while I replied in perfect grammatically correct English regarding my play, he said this to the dealer “I dont understand him; can you translate for me?” My retort was “Yeah what; English to English?”
Yeah English is important, for interacting with the rest of the world, Chinese is important as well, with china rising and all. All this no one can deny. but to downplay dialect is just plain dumb. banning it from mass media is just plain dumb. thinking we can only master 2 language is just plain dumb. perhaps it’s because someone doesn’t speak the southern languages himself.
and look at what we have now? english and mandarin is neither here nor there. dialect is pathetic as well.
I’m struggling hard on my own to pick up hokkien and teochew, by speaking to my relatives and watching videos online.
#13 Alfian Sa’at on September 8th, 2009 9.20 pm
>what *are* some of the worst ways to scold someone in Cantonese? Haha.
The most cruel one I know is hum kar chan, meaning to curse the other party’s entire family to ill-fate. hum = entire, kar = family, chan = ill-fate
The most elegant one I know (more used amongst Hong Kongers) is fei zhao woh shong which literally means “African monk”. Implicit in that is the other way to say “African monk” in Cantonese, i.e. hark yan zan where hark = black, yan = man, zan = monk. The homonym of the hark yan zan in Cantonese is hark = entice, yan = people’s, zan = dislike (i.e. this person entices people to dislike him/her).
>Anyway, do jeh! Or should it be m’goi?
Btw, do jeh and m’goi is used under different circumstances. A Hong Konger explained to me that do jeh is used when someone gives you something, m’goi is used when someone does you a favour.
31) Alfian Sa’at
Hokkien in Taiwan will be called 閩南語 (Min Nan Yu) or 台语 (Tai yu) and to be truthful, when I heard them conversing in the their version, it gives me a homely feel…
Oh, and there are some taiwanese artiste who are attempting to sign 台语 song, because they feel that it is their heritage or they feel that these songs usually convey alot of feelings….even Ah-Mei who is a Taiwanese Aboriginal incorporate it into her album…
even there, they have hakka channel and even aboriginal TV, maybe there is a market for it, but sometimes it is done to promote their roots…
as for “it doesn’t explain how in the world it can be used by politicians in Taiwan. ” Well, Taiwanese politician did throw shoes so willing using those colorful words adds on to it…some people may say that their government are corrupted….but at least they appear to be accountable whereby the Premier have to step down recently…and their TVs stations are allowed to create program that is the spoof of the ongoing politics…
so someday, i feel, so what If we have nice and newer buildings? clean and well organized streets? Even though they are threaten by a giant across the straits, but they have the freedom…move over, they remember their roots whereby teens can speak in dialect fluent, abide their proficiency in english…but what are we? a rich pauper? We may be losing our roots…and that may be like having “everything” and yet is just an empty shell
39) Yamamoto on September 9th, 2009 1.39 am
> We may be losing our roots…
Agree, the real foreign language, English, is fast replacing Chinese’s Dialects and Mandarin in Singapore. Are our Malay and Indian languages also facing the same problem? How to prevent our language heritage from being replaced by English?
Thank you Alfian, interesting read for a non dialect speaker like me. I especially like the bits you wrote about the exchange of words between races. Its true the government underestimate the common identity people can see in one another through these hokkien and malay words.
I was thinking perhaps you’d like to publish a book on how to speak local singaporean hokkien/teochew with all the malay influence? It will be helpful for an adult like me who finds it hard to catch up on these dialects now at this age. I was the only kid in my family who can’t speak teochew because by the time I was born, PAP got most parents to speak only mandarin to their kids. It’s always been a sense of shame for me because I can’t communicate to my grandmother. I can listen and understand most of what they say but there are still some very chim words I can’t get.
Sad thing is the dialects are now also lost on my niece and nephew. So I think it will be great to have a book so its not all lost on future generations!
This is an interesting thread. In just a couple ofhours it already attracted almost 50 comments, it shows how much singaporeans whatever his racial background, feel about this issue.
I think at the endof the day, it begs the question, WAS THE MANDARINISATION OF SINGAPORE since the 1980’s a correct policy or wrong policy? Judging from the comments of the posters here, most feel that it was WRONG Policy.
What would have been the right policy, I ask? Allow things to develop without a policy, just like pre-1980’s Singapore. How would singapore be like now if PAP did not embark on Speak Mandarin policy? How will the TV broadcasts be like today? Cantonese films all the way from 1980-2009 on the TV all the way…(there are much fewer hokkien films or hakka films… because Hongkong is strongest in churning out great thrillers and shows), perhaps. Some confusion for those who speak only cantonese but not hokkien, and vice versa?. Some dialect groups unhappy because they have lesser exposure?. My guess is that Cantonese will become more powerful, because of the TV serials and the strong influence of Hongkong businessmen here. Of course without the speak mandarin policy, between 1980-2009, Singaporeans Mandarin command will be almost zero, because as someone here said, Mandarin is considered “foreign” and unlikely to have any dominant effect once a person finishes his formal education.
Actually, the Chinese people are extremely fragmented lot. The chinese people are one of the saddest group in the world in my opinion. Divisions and rivalries have been existing for a long time. Do you know, that some dialect group (i shall not name it) feel superior over other dialect group? Did you know that some dialect group, are indeed culturally much richer than other dialect group? Did you know that some dialect groups wouldn’t like their offspring to marry into a different dialect group? Please think about it : Mandarin is the only unifying force amongst different dialect groups, in the 1950’s, because it is sometimes difficult for different dialect groups tocomprehend each other , or see eye to eye in a worse case. You can’t promote one dialect group at the expense of another!!
Mandarin was like english, it helped to forge ties between different dialect groups!! Mandarin is neutral just like english is neutral!!!. Mandarin is GOOD, not bad!!! So just like every singaporean must know English for the sake of unity, every Chinese must know mandarin. Preferably he/she should also know his/her own dialect, but above all it is absolutely essential to know and be well versed in Mandarin. If given a choice of not knowing dialects and knowing Mandarin, AND the opposite, then in my opinion, it is better off for Singapore to select the former. It is the worse of too evils. I agree it is not a good thing not to know our own dialects, but when comparing between two non ideal situations, and we have to select the lesser of too evils.
Personally I support the speak Mandarin campaign entirely. It is the last reason why i support the PAP. Almost all other policies and behaviour of the PAP in recent times are deplorable, and unworthy of their crazy salaries, unworthy of the electorate’s support.
Of course many people will disagree with my views above. To those who feel that i am wrong, i throw the same question again “WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE RIGHT POLICY if the speak Mandarin campaign in the 1980’s wasn’t implemented at all? What would you have done, if you were the Prime Minister?
Zero
“We may be losing our roots…and that may be like having “everything” and yet is just an empty shell ”
Like how Chinese dont practice Chinese customs anymore or Chinese who think ancestor worship is idolatory or Chinese who cant even be bothered to know anything about China’s history.
If “roots” to some people is simply to learn to speak another language so to catch up on gossip, devoid of culture and heritage and not learning to read and write and understand the literature of your ancestors’ civilization at its various eras, I put it to you it is nothing more than childish navel-gazing.
I dont know how many Singaporeans are like me but my ancestors at least for four generations are neither Malay nor Hokkien (of various other dialect groups). I feel that while it is possible that for some people would find Hokkien easier to master than Mandarin for those seeking to compensate for their lack of proficiency in Mandarin or English, it is far from a universal case. In fact personally if I had to learn Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese along with my Mandarin, I would suppose my English and Mandarin would be even worse.
“How to prevent our language heritage from being replaced by English? ”
Not by wasting money and advertising everywhere that Mandarin is “cool”. How about pumping the money in some “boring” documentaries like Taiwan, China or HK and/or securing the endorsement of Chinese comics like Feng Yun for the children.
Alfian, good to know you feel that closeness to a chinese language. sui ! But to identify them southern or northern chinese is rather irrelevant in the Singapore context, mai kay guao ! You do not understand how mult-racialism works as reflected in your article, kon jiao wei ! We are one not two or three separated by province or geographical locations.
Singapore language policy, just like all other policies, is dictated by
eonomic and monetary concerns, that why we have this Mandarin as
mother tongue for the Chinese
I wonder why in pushing the use of Mandarin, the our pragmatic leaders
didn’t tell us the examples of Hongkong or Guangzhou which are part
of China which are still functioning well on Cantonese and English.
“Of course many people will disagree with my views above. To those who feel that i am wrong, i throw the same question again “WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE RIGHT POLICY if the speak Mandarin campaign in the 1980’s wasn’t implemented at all? What would you have done, if you were the Prime Minister?”
Lassez Faire should have resulted in the same outcome; look at Hong Kong for example. They used to be proud of speaking Cantonese only, but look at how many Hong Kongers are picking up Mandarin, both young and old, on their own WITHOUT government prodding.
Then again its Singaporeans we are talking about, who always need government to babyfeed them.
Zero,
It might make sense that every Chinese in the PRC should learn a unifying language, however, in the Singaporean context, has the Speak Mandarin Campaign really been a truly positive force in preserving Chinese culture when it is very clear that heritage and cultural transmission is often linked to personal and familial ties to the language.
I have my doubts over the actual efficacy of this approach.
In the local context, it would mean the mother dialect of the Singaporean Chinese.
By and large, the SMC has not really been effective in actualising this hope, because it has ironically and unintentionally drawn a barrier in communication from the older pre-war generations and the youth today.
What might have been a better way would have been to encourage the learning of Mandarin without the accompanying pressure to actually prohibit and strongly discourage dialect usage in the public conversational/media sphere..
Edited : (Mod, please remove my post 46, thanks)
Zero,
It might make sense that every Chinese in the PRC should learn a unifying language, however, in the Singaporean context, has the Speak Mandarin Campaign really been a truly positive force in preserving Chinese culture? I have my doubts over the actual efficacy of this approach.
It is very clear that heritage and cultural transmission is often linked to personal and familial ties to the language, In the local context, it would mean the mother dialect of the Singaporean Chinese plays a more dominant and efficient role in transmission of such values from generation to generation.
By and large, the SMC has not really been effective in actualising this hope, because it has ironically and unintentionally drawn a barrier in communication from the older pre-war generations and the youth today.
What might have been a better way would have been to encourage the learning of Mandarin without the accompanying pressure to actually prohibit and strongly discourage dialect usage in the public conversational/media sphere..
Kum-sia, Alfian. Chinese is an evil stepmother tongue to most Singaporean Chinese.
Interestingly, soap is called sabon in Tagalog and Hebrew, and savon in French.
I actually prefer to speak my own dialect Cantonese than Mandarin. I’m sure those ppl in Guangzhou or Fujian in China still speaks their own dialect too.
44) GON:
I hope you don’t think that I’m setting up false divisions within the Chinese community. Of course the Han Chinese are anthropologically speaking, one people. The fact that there are different regional languages, I think, doesn’t really affect the political idea–probably consolidated during the Qin–of China as a unitary state.
42) Zero:
Learning Mandarin yet still retaining S Chinese languages seems to conceived of as a zero sum game.
Is it necessarily true that knowing one is at the expense of the other?
I’m sorry if some of my Singaporean friends are offended by the statement I’m going to make…
But the Malaysian Chinese have always struck me as somehow being more ‘authentically’ Chinese. Maybe what I mean by that term is a people who are rooted to both the Malay earth (that concept known as ‘Tanah Melayu’) and their own immigrant history. Why is it that the Malaysian Chinese can speak their mother tongues and yet have produced some really excellent Mandarin writers?
I’m quite interested to know why this is so. I’m sure the vernacular Chinese-medium school system has something to do with this. Also, I wonder whether there are still intra-Chinese rivalries between say a Penang Hokkien and a KL Cantonese, simply because they are from different S Chinese language groups. ‘
I’ve heard the argument about Mandarin being a ‘unifying force’ many times. But I wonder if this has been somewhat exaggerated. Politically speaking, making sure the Chinese become a homogenised bloc is useful for the ruling party–you can try to predict its voting patterns, for example, and you can cultivate this constituency such that they will hopefully feel and think the same way.
In other words, no need to tailor your political messages to say, the Hokkien community, the Teochews, the Cantonese, the Hakka, etc, who might want different and specific things. Put them all in a blender, mix, and then serve chilled. Hopefully a good portion of that 75% throws their votes for you.
An advertisement in Hokkien, made by a Malay filmmaker. My Hokkien friend pointed out that there are subtle ‘varieties’ spoken in the clip, from a ’straightforward’ Southern Hokkien and a more ‘melodious’ Northern Hokkien.
Hiya everyone, nice to see so many of you contributing to this topic, so here is mine;
I am Cantonese & when I was a little boy; my family would tell me that being a Cantonese is the best thing I could hope for. The reason being that Cantonese food is the best among all other dialects & many heroes are from Canton, eg Wong Fei Hong (no joke!!). I was told that I must always remember my roots so I could pass it on to my children & their children. I even know which village in Canton where my forefathers came from! I would like to see it one day & perhaps have the real Sam Sui chicken there. BTW, if there are any Sam Sui folks reading this, the best place in Singapore to have our village food is at the Soup Restaurant. In the olden days, various jobs were reserved for various dialect groups; eg tailors, gambling den operators & hookers are quite Cantonese & you just need to look at Kong Siak Str, while the Teochew clan is more into trading & Hainanese people are into Food & Beverage.
My family always said that the worst group is the Hakka cos they are just like GUESTS to a place & after finishing the food & water, these people ll move on & probably not contribute much. But then again, it’s such a long time ago & I am sure the Hakka people aren’t that bad anymore. I am proud to say that I could speak Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew & Singlish perfectly, perhaps I was not paying much attention with those Speak Mandarin posters. I do agree that to unify Singapore Chinese, a single dialect should be used, but I really hate the methods they used & I don’t like things being forced down my throat!
Maybe if I was in charge of this island in the 80s, I would ENCOURAGE the use of Mandarin but not FORCE. I think people tend to rebel when things are forced onto them. Well, just look at the standard of Mandarin & English; both also like half baked!! Ok, think better speak Singlish with everyone, afterall I always think there shouldn’t have a RACE on our IC but just plain Singaporean cos there are Malays, Indians & Eurasians living on this little island too.
How about speak good Malay or Tamil campaign? At least, you might get a discount when you are buying a coconut in Pahang or Bombay!
Who kill our dialects, our children nowadays can not speak dialects ?? By another 50 years, all the dialects will disappear, very sad thing. Just like Sanskrit, hebrew, all are gone
“I do agree that to unify Singapore Chinese, a single dialect should be used, but I really hate the methods they used & I don’t like things being forced down my throat!”
Err your sarcasm is uneven. I really agree with the above statement. And please dont inject racism.
Cantonese is a wonderful language, anyone knows what is ” pai ka chai ” ?
[i]Why should a singaporean not be capable of speaking well in 2 languages?
Europeans easily speak well in 2 european languages.[/i]
every ang mor who goes to a foreign country to tangchia will learn the 2nd or 3rd languages within a 2 years stay..thats where they pauchia while we singapolian fail…
you all never seen angmore doin the bejing limericks with the ole hawker bamboo sticks yet.. and that british angmor was only in beijing less than 2 years
without a doubt you all also never seen africans swore on you in bejing mandarins yet have you?
pai ka chai is a son who destroys the family in wealth, reputation etc.
this is such a great article. i’m cantonese and we still speak cantonese at home.
btw alfian, chinchai is used alot in sg but it’s not cantonese. besides the 2 mentioned alternatives like si dan and kao kay, u can also use choei bean..
another thing, my sis is now married and living in HK. her father-in-law says alot of the cantonese words my sis use are actually the original form. in HK, cantonese is always evolving..
nice piece. but seriously I think the mother tongue of the younger Singaporeans these days is SINGLISH. Just hear them speak to each other and their parents.
@38) Hahaha on September 9th, 2009 1.34 am
“…The most cruel one I know is hum kar chan, meaning to curse the other party’s entire family to ill-fate. hum = entire, kar = family, chan = ill-fate…”
Somehow Cantonese just doesn’t have that kick when it comes to cursing…. at best it sounds like polite but sharp sarcasm!!!
PS. what about the Cantonese phrase cursing that someone’s kid will be born without backside?!
Whatever language one choose to learn (or refuse to learn), the important thing is to keep up with the time!
The world is indeed changing very fast! Anything or anything who don’t not or refuse to keep up is choosing the path of extinction.
Just like th A Peh who asked for direction in Hakka! He didn’t learn to speak other language (or dialect, whatever you want to call it!) and that the result of his own choice!
Too bad!
To me, I always feel that “mother tongue” should be the language/dialect our respective MOTHER speaks. So my “mother tongue” should be Hokkien and not mandarin. Mandarin is just a second language, not a “mother tongue” unless one’s mother native language is mandarin.
It’s sad that our education policy has replaced all dialects with Mandarin and wrongly called it a “mother tongue”. In my younger days, I grew up with neighbours who spoke all kinds of dialects, so till now I still can speak Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and a little bit of Hakka, on top of Mandarin/Chinese. I don’t see why our children can’t speak these dialects and still learn mandarin well if given the opportunities to do so in schools and in the community.
What 52) Alfian Sa’at said could be the only reason why sg govt has replaced dialects with mandarin:
“In other words, no need to tailor your political messages to say, the Hokkien community, the Teochews, the Cantonese, the Hakka, etc, who might want different and specific things. Put them all in a blender, mix, and then serve chilled. Hopefully a good portion of that 75% throws their votes for you.”
so, after 63 comments, what is so mother about the tongue?
what is the agreed standard meaning?
62) Jack Rabbit!
I am not sure about you, but perhaps you can put yourself into their shoes? I mean my grandparents can understand and speak chinese, but they always prefer to converse in dialect. been an old man living in a time whereby earning money is hard, and most of it is contributed to family usage, do you think he has the chance to learn another language by going for course? at the most, it may be picking up pieces here and there…and that’s far from complete…
So jack rabbit, when you become obsolete, when no companies want to employ you? that’s also too bad for you right?
Oh yes, and with regards to studying standard mandarin, perhaps they will need to get chinese teacher from Harbin, since they said that Harbin is the best at standard chinese pronunciation…..why is that so? I was told by my Harbin friend that it is due to the lack of dialet, or chinese is their dialect…then with that, our future generation can learn standard mandarin…
I’m not sure about the rest of you but I find that the “post 65ers” are less linguistic than the previous generations that did not face “Speak Mandarin” or “Speak Good English” campaigns. My late grandfather, a China born immigrant spoke Cantonese and a host of other dialects. My father’s siblings speak Cantonese and communicate in English and Mandarin quite well. I, on the other hand speak Mandarin and Cantonese badly and that’s a darn sight better than the rest of my cousins who are only being trained in English and Mandarin.
It’s not uncommon for Indians and Chinese of a certain generation to speak Malay as well as English and their respective languages but I dare any young (30+ and below) Chinese or Indian to see if they can do the same.
The worst part is, Singaporeans are not known for speaking particularly good English or Mandarin, even though these are the main languages that we’re taught in school.
So here lies the conundrum that the MOE should be dealing with. Back in the old days, people managed to communicate in a host of languages and dialects just by mixing around and dealing with other communities. Today you train the kids to speak only two languages and in the end they don’t speak either of the two very well..
62) Yamamoto
Sure, everyone would PREFER to converse in a language which they are most comfortable with. But if they never learn to change with the time, who’s to blame for their own short coming? Chances are there if one bother to look!
Take my mother as an example. Brought up in a Cantonese background, she not even finish her primary education, but through her exposure to different environment, she speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, and Malay! Too bad, she could only speak very basic English! Perhaps of her anti-colonial master sentiment.
So for that Ah Peh, it IS just too bad! And I agree with you. It IS too bad for me too, If I don’t bother to keep up with the time!
Take charge of your life, and stop blaming other for the choice you made.
@#23, if your context of ‘anyhow’ is to not do it in a proper way, it would be ‘chui been’, literally from the chinese words, 隨便 (ng hou chui been lei)。 If someone asks you what you would like to eat and you have no preference, you would say ’see dan’.
For someone who has a ‘dialect’ immersion growing up (exposed to listening or immersed in a dialect speaking environment), learning chinese is easy because both dialect and chinese have the same sentence construction.
Not known to many here, even hokkien the dialect itself, there are many variant of hokkien ( If i rem correctly, thousand of variant and many had long forgotten). Sometimes simply acrossthe river, the slang and tone of the language changed so much even a old hokkien has a hard times understand it. People just thought that there is only one unique version of “hokkien”.
Even hokkien the language itself, it was highly influenced by the ancient main stream “zhong yuan” ( central planteau) language ( prob due to war and popu migration) . Many of the words still retained the pronunciation of the past.
Many youngster today don’t speak their dialect anymore, simply beccos the environment is no longer there . Not much people around them speak to them.
And probably they think it is so old fashioned thing and awful to speak in dialect.
Mandarin is known as “Pu Tong hua” ( literally common lang), currently the mainstream language in chinese. You can don’t know abt yr dialect, but definitely good to know chinese/mandarin.
68) Jack Rabbit!
You are right about taking charge of life, but some people never have the privilege, which is why you should put yourself into their shoes? if it is the case of learning disablilty – those who saw it coming but refuse to change then i have no qualm about it….but the generations of that ah peh may go through hardship that we cannot even imagine….so perhaps you can look at it from a more sympathetic perspective
Jack Rabbit, how many people in this world lives in the ideal state? perhaps you are? I know I am…but not all people…and I have seem people who wants to but can’t do it due to prevalent circumstances….so instead of looking at people in a high-handed way, the world will be a better place with more sympathetic people…
but if that is so easy, the world will never have so much conflict…
Now seems this is related to culture, may i enquire, if overseas friend ask you about the must-see singapore culture….what will you recommend?
/// 12) Terence Goh on September 8th, 2009 9.07 pm
Some of the phrases you mentioned are from cantonese rather than hokkien:
cat (paint) – cat in cantonese
cincai (anyhow) – cin caai
kamceng (close) – gam cing
kuaci (melon seeds) – gwaa zi ///
Terence, these are definitely from Hokkien. Some Hokkien words may sound similar to Cantonese. The fact that you have to rewrite it to sound Cantonese show that their origins are not Cantonese.
The majority of Chinese in Singapore are Hokkien, and hence more interactions with the Malays. The early immigrants (my father among them) can only speak Hokkien and not Mandarin, and managed to learn Pasar Malay.
The predominance is Hokkien-Malay – gua (me) lu (you) kahwin (marry).
Hi 64) khuah eng seng,
“what is the agreed standard meaning?”
Some definitions of “mother tongue” below:
1. One’s native language.
2. A parent language.
- http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mother+tongue
Hi 67) Tang Li,
“So here lies the conundrum that the MOE should be dealing with. Back in the old days, people managed to communicate in a host of languages and dialects just by mixing around and dealing with other communities. Today you train the kids to speak only two languages and in the end they don’t speak either of the two very well..
Agree. I believe that speaking dialects actually help us learn mandarin better than if we don’t. Most of us who already know how to speak dialects at home could pick up mandarin rather easily, like what 69) Ally said. On the contrary, when school banned speaking of dialects, our children do not perform better in mandarin.
Hi 62) Jack Rabbit!,
“Whatever language one choose to learn (or refuse to learn), the important thing is to keep up with the time!”
I agree with “keep up with the time!” in learning mandarin, but it does not have to replace local dialects. This is a mistake made by of our education system and the sg govt policy.
74) creducator
Disagree! Mandarin has to be use as the common teaching language in school for Chinese, because the speaking of Mandarin and written Chinese do LINK!
What language or dialect would you suggest as the teaching language? Most dialect have no proper word! Listen to dialect news broadcast on the radio, and you will realized that they all sound so PROPER and POLITE, as it is written in Chinese.
That’s not how dialect common speak or sound like for common people.
Singapore government discourage the use of dialect IN SCHOOL. They never stop one for using it out side of school.
If one decided not to learn, that his/her choice! He/She DO have a CHOICE!
Or maybe we should suggest teaching of Math and Science in Hokkien! Nice, is it?
I don’t understand why you people are so adamant about learning Mandarin! In the 50’s to early 70’s, Mandarin was the language who united Chinese all over the world. Remember the popular Chinese movies from Shaw Bros, China backed Hong Kong Studio like Great Wall, Communist China movies, or even those mushy love story movies from Taiwan? Cantonese and Hokkien movies were just low budget trashy movies. OK, some were really Good trashy movies!
Of course, China was being view as a danger to the world for their left wing communist mindset.
Few make much noise when Singapore government decided that English as a main language for Singapore? English – a language which is totally foreign, belong to our colonial master, and only small percentage of Singaporean can speak, in a country which was then and still 75% Chinese.
Of course, whoever dares to suggest that will be label as Communist Sympathizer, Chinese Chauvinist, Leftist, etc., terms Singapore government commonly used to discredit any Chinese language support! Whoever dares to challenge that will be put in place – such as Operation Cold Stone, even though some of those are English educated and some are Malay!
Chinese school like Chinese High and Chung Cheng High were labeled as the breeding ground for Chinese Communism. Mostly worst bunch of teachers were sent to these schools, and even the good one were depress as the ministry viewed them as second rate, especially teachers who teach Chinese! Chinese school students were made fun off with labeling – Orange tag in National Service, and name calling like “Chinese Helicopter”! Nanyang University graduate were not recognized. Closing of Chinese schools and Nanyang University in the later 70’s. Anyone remember that?
Now why everyone feel such a “LOST” for not knowing his or her “Mother Tongue”? Remember when schools put up big banner – “Speak More English, Speak Less Chinese, Speak No Dialect”? Remember that?
So are you guys now jealous that the Chinese Helicopter who almost become endanger species, are now in a much better position to due with the Mainland Chinese? LKY realized that, and he learn, even though not proficient enough yet, but he LEARN! And despite how stubborn he is, he DO try his best to keep up with the changing time!
Maybe that’s why he still role!
So go ahead and push your dialects or Singlish as mother tongue! Maybe they will become such a world phenomenon!
Enough say.
I’d like to comment on some of the posts by Celluloid Reality, Alfan Saat and Ω李
Ω李: You didn’t like the idea of the “mandarin is cool” concept this year. I would ask, did you like the themes the year before, the year before before, all the way back to 1980? Each year the PAP came up with some themes sometimes quite similar sometimes quite, well, quaint. It’s not easy to have a theme that makes everyone happy. For me, I am quite satisfied with this year’s theme. It has a soft approach. It tries to tell the masses, you know, it’s nice to know mandarin, you can make friends, your angmo friends also know it so it’s nice for you to know it unless you want to continue to be a dud and refuse it just because it is from PAP. The idea is to try to not force it down our throats. Of course, if from the beginning, you hate mandarin a lot, every year’s theme will be a waste of money there is nothing to say.
Celluloid reality: It is unfortunately not possible to emphasis mandarin without deactivating the cantonese influence – which is so strong with their extremely interesting TV dramas and kungfu as those who are around during black and white Tv era would confirm. The cantonisation of the chinese here would have caused ire amongst the hokkiens, there is much hidden friction, i assure you. In my view, the government provide a neutral platform on national TV in the form of strictly mandarin broadcasts, is painful but correct medicine.
Alfian Saat: Malaysian Chinese are more creditable as chinese to you for a reason which i propose. They have a need to defend themselves against injustice against the original sons of the land, so they see a great REAL need for unity and they see it in Mandarin, because mandarin is the language of intellectual debate and connectivity with the intellegentsia. Malaysian Chinese are more prolific in writing for another reason, the physical numbers is higher! Even if the education system made a mess, because of sheer numbers, there will arise some smart chinese who can write superbly and win everyone’s heart. Singaporeans, well you know, we all spoonfed babies who cry when trouble come, dont know what to do.
some last words: All these hate mandariners really could not see the distinction between theory and practice. LEt me throw a puzzle. Suppose after China achieved independence, Sun Yat Sen declaled Cantonese as natinional language, everybody speaks cantonese. Today we have no trouble in Singapore, speak Cantonese campaign since China is doing it. Why no trouble? Because Cantoense is easier to learn!! mandarin is hard, many people just can’t do it. Because they can’t they condemn the system. They need to overcome their personal weaknesses.. it;s just too bad that Mandarin is hard to learn!
Can I just add something to this discussion…
I think language acquisition involves a lot more than what the State wishes to promote, and draconian measures such as banning the use of certain languages from the public sphere (such as broadcast media and cinema).
One can argue that Malaysian Hokkiens are not being served by television either, which does carry S Chinese language programmes–but mostly in the form of Cantonese-language imported shows from Hong Kong.
I think a very important factor would be in how kin relations are organised. Let’s face it, we’re a city. Pressures such as expensive housing have resulted in the transition from extended to nuclear families. Maybe over time some of these pressures, much of which is economic, have resulted in lesser interactions between the members of a family…double income families, overtime, CCA’s, etc.
Maybe the government might have believed that eliminating S Chinese langs from the public sphere did not mean it could not survive in the private and domestic sphere. But they might have overestimated the effects of what it means to also live in such a competitive, materially-oriented society. People are spending less time at home. Children are being raised by domestic workers instead of their own grandparents.
I am of course romanticising here, but I imagine lives in small towns and kampongs in Malaysia to be quite different. At dusk, grandparents call out to their grandchildren: ‘jiak peng!’ or ’sek fan!’. The family sits and eats together. They talk more to one another. I know it all sounds quite simplistic, but I think the discussion might benefit from an acknowledgement of how urban spaces structure our interactions with one another.
PAPIB is here. Haha…
Hi 75) Jack Rabbit!,
“74) creducator, Disagree! Mandarin has to be use as the common teaching language in school for Chinese, because the speaking of Mandarin and written Chinese do LINK!”
Please don’t ‘hop’ so fast to your disagreement. Read again, please.
When did I ever say that dialects should be used to teach in school? I merely said that learning Mandarin or Chinese “does not have to replace local dialects.” I, for one, learned Mandarin in school as ONE OF THE SUBJECTS and did it well, while keeping my local dialects when communicating with family members and people in the community. You can say that I disregarded the “ban” on speaking dialects. :P
Well, I did well in English, Chinese/Mandarin and still can communicate in most common dialects and a little Malay. So how wrong could I be in my suggestion than dialects should not be banned in schools?
Till today, Taiwanese still speak hokkien and Hong Kongers still speak cantonese though they also learn the ‘bu tong hua’/mandarin in school just like us. So what’s wrong with our education system in terms of language acquisition policy?
“It tries to tell the masses, you know, it’s nice to know mandarin, you can make friends, your angmo friends also know it so it’s nice for you to know it unless you want to continue to be a dud and refuse it just because it is from PAP.”
Sorry I no understand your England, especially your last sentence. I dont care whether if the ad campaign is from the CCP or the KMT (not that they would advertise the Confucian Academy in this way), it is simply flaccid and boring. Coming from a Party that blew $40 billion of the People’s money away, it is understandable.
For example, if yours truly were to advertise learning Mandarin (to Westerners), I would put theme like Chinese kung fu or Chinese medicine etc. or gee Chinese cuisine. Or have some witty humor with cultural misunderstanding (a bit cliched if not handled well).
But it is sad to advertise Mandarin to the local Chinese, especially the young ones who are already learning it in school?
With regards to the Cantonese insult, hum char chai, big deal, as if Mandarin doesnt have the same insult bai jia zhi.
Here is a difference between Cantonese and Mandarin insults: gey-lo and tongzhi. Both mean the same thing despite difference reference points.
“despite difference reference points. ” should be “despite different reference points”
“especially your last sentence” should be “especially the last part of your sentence”.
Pai Seh.
And I know the Queen’s English grammar police will have a field day with my own comments, as would they this sentence. Have at it.
I watch too many American TV shows.
“Here is a difference between Cantonese and Mandarin insults: gey-lo and tongzhi. Both mean the same thing despite difference reference points.”
should read
“To further elucidate the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin in the form of personal insults: “gey-lo” in Cantonese and “tongzhi” in Mandarin, both nouns have the same meaning despite the former being a homonym and the latter a derived pun”.
Wait… “ang mo kio” means “tomato”?
“ang mo kio” can mean “tomato” or “English bridge”, depending on the context. :)
Hi Zero #77
People object against the Speak Mandarin Campaign not because it is from PAP but because it is an artificial attempt to impose identity on Singaporeans. Identity has always been an organic realisation from the bottom of the heart. The PAP government is trying to make Singaporeans act what they aren’t. There should never be a Speak Mandarin Campaign at all. What is sufficient is the teaching of Mandarin in our schools. We don’t need anything beyond that.
Deactivate what Cantonese influence? The problem here is the Speak Mandarin Campaign should never have taken place in the first place. Such intervention is micro-managing our lives and any right-minded person will object. Alfian Sa’at made a good point on the role of families propagating Southern Chinese Langauges as a mean to glue the family together. The Speak Mandarin Campaign is no more than an onslaught against family values among Chinese Singaporeans. Now the government is trying to blame Singaporeans for their lack of rootedness to this country?
Alfian Sa’at never made the point about Malaysian Chinese being more credible as Chinese than Chinese Singaporeans. Your failure to appreciate the link between substance and form is an unfortunate but intended product of PAP indoctrination. So stop shifting the blame to Singaporean’s apparent lack of capability of mastering Mandarin. The real problem here is not the lack of capability but the lack of motivation to learn Mandarin. Discriminating people on the basis of capability to learn Mandarin is not only elitist, but reeks of “You all should learn from me”. Inventing non-plausible scenarios to justify your rant does not bolster your arguements.
To Jack Rabbit
I think i can explain why the taiwaness still speak hokkien in addition to mandarin and english, and likewise hongkong speak cantonese in addition to mandarin and english. It is really the concept of “mother tongue” which is being debated furiously here. If mama speaks to you continuously in that language you will be proficient in that language, no need to have big brother PAP to tell you how to speak. Ttaiwan people are homogenous, same like hkg. Cantonese marry cantonese, children speak cantonese; or hokkien marry hokkient children speak hokkien. In Singapore we have say 60% hokkien, 40% cantonese, some hakka, some teochew, some babas, some yellow bananas who chronically hate chinese and adore the west. When they intermarry, what happens? The family dialect is a blurred, plus the fact that mandarinisation is going on officially, so the dialect will suffer unless one is thorughbred pure xxx dialect intermarriage.
Therefore our very inhomogenuousness is really the main cause of the demise of dialects – not just the government’s policy!! Secondly, the education system kills it, we are drowned by english, and some chinese who are bad in mandarin detest it, abhor it, and speak england to child from birth .. i feel sad about it, why should chinese mothers speak english from birth to kids. It would have been better to speak hokkien or cantonese, ANY dialect, if Mama couldn’t manage Mandarin. why english, it makes my hair stand when i hear baby-talk in bad broken english. I am utterly repelled by it..
So we chinese singaporeans, end up being quite like Freaks in the world of Chinese peoples. We are destined to this fate, neither here nor there. We cannot blame the ruling party for any of these quirky results.
It is best to make the best out of it, behumble, try to learn very good mandarin, enjoy the language, learn from the foreign talents here who are really good at it, learn from zero, to baby talk to your kids and nieces and nephews, and hope that three to five generations from now, people all over the world will marvel at how great our mandarin is, as hopefully our english would be, too.
We cannot turn back the clock my friends. One has to build new meanings into the language and build new sub-cultures to maintain one’s sanity as part of the race group to which one belongs to. English alone wouldn’t do. We will never be like Them . Look in the mirror and see where you belong..
Zero
Haha, maybe the whole fixation on defining racial boundaries is just another step in the divide-and-rule strategem.
excellent posting. i love your observation, Alfian
Zero,
“We cannot turn back the clock my friends. One has to build new meanings into the language and build new sub-cultures to maintain one’s sanity as part of the race group to which one belongs to. English alone wouldn’t do. We will never be like Them . Look in the mirror and see where you belong..”
Mandarin alone will not do as well. The thing with language and identity is that it is communitarian, yet it is also individual.
The point about there being some resistance to Mandarin due to it being an “imposed” structure of language-identity is simply because there is a clash between what the community thinks the individual should do in terms of his/her language, and what the individual thinks he/she can do to contribute to the community.
It’s either a top-down or bottoms-up approach to forming this identity, be it community > individual or individual > community.
We should learn as many languages as possible, and perhaps this is just from my own personal view that we live in a post-modern condition, where your values and culture may not necessarily be transmitted effectively through a prescribed language as well as another language which you are intimate and heart-felt with.
One does not need purely Mandarin to transmit Chinese values, one does not need Low German to transmit Bavarian heritage too. The point being that values and passing them to one’s descendants is at the basic level, a personal choice, and it cannot be that much more adequately done at a macro level as compared to an individual, micro level.
I suppose this is where some of us will have to agree to disagree. :)
Hi 88) Zero,
Not sure if you use your nick, “zero”, to indicate that Singaporeans ended up “zero” in language acquisition due to our “very inhomogenuousness” which you suggested. However, a good language education system should encourage and help overcome this unique barrier to language acquisition instead of adding to the problem.
As mentioned, to wrongly term “Chinese/Mandarin” subject as “Mother Tongue” has added to the confusion. So students and children start to ask “what is Hokkien, or Teochew, or Cantonese?” They thought that their mothers and grandmothers speak Chinese/Mandarin from birth so that’s why Chinese/Mandarin is called “Mother Tongue”.
For that matter, I know most China nationals still use their local dialects or their mother tongue to communicate with each other although bu tong hua is their national language. So if our govt really want to do business with China, boycotting our local dialects is a silly mistakes. Dialects always bond people together.
Good observations.
A linguistic legacy such as this loses its value if its contemporary users do not simultaneously appreciate the value of that degree of integration it took to produce it, and the further potentials of said integration.
Compare the past to the present, and one will see that such integrative words are not being produced as much, if at all, at present.
When this happens, the integrative produce of the past is expropriated by all groups whilst the integrative perspective discarded.
That is why, or instance, the singlish of the present may be seen as chinglish, and indicative of the ethnic fragmention of singapore.
ed
Hi Zero,
One of your remarks particularly struck me:
“We cannot turn back the clock my friends. One has to build new meanings into the language and build new sub-cultures to maintain one’s sanity as part of the race group to which one belongs to. English alone wouldn’t do. We will never be like Them. Look in the mirror and see where you belong..”
And add to that your mention of ‘yellow bananas’…
My question here to you would be: what do you make out of many of the Nanyang Chinese in this part of the world who do not speak Chinese languages any more? I’m thinking of Filipino mestizos, the Peranakans, the Sino-Thais and the Chinese Indonesians (the latter two were brutalised by the ethno-nationalist policies of Pibun and Suharto respectively).
Do you consider them as Chinese?
And when they look at a mirror, what do you think they see?
Language is a common ground that buids communication between individuals. Everyone is entitled to the smattering of dialects and sub-languages out there. But are we communicating better or further alienate others who say it differently from us?
I don’t bother with dialects. My mandarin, as I have discovered in a recent trip to Taipei, is under par. The same with my English, as compared with average English -speaking native. Am I still allowed to speak?
The writer Alfian is famed for his English mastery, but I find it a tad condescending and pretentious for him to espouse dialects over mainstream languages, when we should be finetuning them instead of being comfortable with below standard communication. I confess I am just average in that facility, but I dont profess to be proud of it.
Alfian Saat: You asked whether those Filipino mestizos, the Peranakans, the Sino-Thais are chinese.. In my opinion, the race of “chinese” to begin with, is a complexity in itslef. There are Hans, Mongolians, and what-have-yous. In any culture there are boundary people, those who live on the boundary between countries and intermarry. As to what language they should adopt, as far as i believe, it can be anything so long as it is not English. Because we are never British , we are never, in any way remotely linked to THAT system. These boundary races would do well to move with the tide and pick up mandarin or they could stick to tagalog if they prefer, malay too, as a real mother tongue…but not english please.. just my opinion..
To Creducator: In my posting, you will notice that I never once supported the government branding of Mandarin as “mother tongue” for singaporean chinese. When I was in primary six, the schools called it “Vernacular” that sounds hifaluting but it is better than to say Mother Tongue which i totally agree, it is not. Putting that point aside, becuse Mandarin is the connective tissue for chinese academia and intellentsia, IT IS NECESSARY TO PROMOTE IT vigourously in my opinion. The structure is correct, but the form, maybe not. The government could do well to retain the term “Vernacular”. It makes sense and will not offend anyone i think. Calling it Mother Tongue digresses the issue and leads to all sorts of irrelevant discussions. The main discussion should be whether Mandarin be vigorousely championed as defacto (though somewhat artificial) lingua franca social language of choice for chinese families whilst maintaining English as common for all race types of singpaoreans. For me yes, because it is a neutral medium in the chinese world with no bias to any dialectal affinities.
Celluloid reality: I don’t quite agree that the resistance to Mandarinisation is primarily because people think it is being forced down the throat by LeeKuan Yew. Let us agree, Mandarin with its four precise tones to control all words, require extreme discipline to master, especially when many are already familiar with polyphonic dialect tones (cantonese has 9 tones). If Mandarin is as easy as Malay (yes, Malay is a very easy and fun language to learn, i love it!!) I guarantee you all this arguments here wouldn;t even arise. If Mandarin is as easy to learn, nobody will complain because there is nothing to complain about. It is because mandarin is such a difficult language, so it creates problem for many people. Please note I have never insinuated that anyone is stupid because they don’t master Mandarin; on the contrary i am now insinuating that Mandarin is a bid stupidly difficult to master. Let me quote some examples. 镜子(mirror) has exactly same pronunciation as 禁止 (prohibit); so is 年终(year end) and 年中(mid year); so is 趋势 (trend) and 去世 (death). In fact, Mandarin is so stupid, that just say “shi”, there can be 30 different interpretations of this tone!! Doublet words also has numerous intepretations the above just few examples…, so one has to be very precise in pronunciation!! I never said anyone is stupid. On the contrary, Mandarin is actually a bad choice of the official language of the masses for Chinese. Cantonese or even hokkien would have been much easier, the homonyms (same sound words) are extremely rare compared to mandarin.. because mandarin only use four tones to distinguish words. Of course, cantonese think their dialect is the best in the worldbecause it is extremely colourful, robust, vibrant and easy to learn!
But we have to accept the artificial superiority of Mandarin, simply because leaders of 1.4 billion people on earth selected it as standard since 1910 Sun Yat Sen time. You cannot turn back the clock.
Finally i disagree that language is unnecessary to transmit culture. Maybe part of culture can be transmitted without language, but my take on it, is that well over 70% of the essence of culture, by way of emotional bondings, transmission of intelligence, requires language to transmit it. “就从今天起,大家说华语” This was a nice slogan from the 1980’s speak mandarin campaign.. you either love it or hate it. It is the lessor of two evils as i mentioned before in my last post.
Zero
The one good use of romanized Chinese, han yu pin yin, is for sms.
But i love dialects, it is rich in cultures and values.
In this exercise of logic and philosophy, I will have to write an extended commentary when I am free. Things like No True Scotsman fallacies and non Anglo-Saxon European Caucasian pioneer Americans, the transmission of “Western” philosophy and logical thinking (hence science and maths) to Asia come to mind. More about religion and culture as well.
Something about globalization as well: consider this; in 2009, we have an Australian Caucasian PM who can speak Mandarin fluently and an African-American USA President who can speak Bahasa Indonesia fluently. Are they Chinese and Malay respectively if language can transmit culture? What seems to be an implausible scenario in the past becomes a reality today or in the future due to technology, intermarriage and globalization.
趋势 (trend) and 去世 (death) different intonation qu. Spoken Language is one matter, what about written language? In fact if I am not mistaken, there are a few phrases in dialects that cannot be directly written as modern Chinese but must be translated as it were into written chinese.
“chinese academia and intellentsia”
I didnt know they still exist in Singapore. One thing to advocate Chinese/Mandarin, another to actually use it in a business environment. It takes a long time to type or write Chinese on something called PCs as compared to English.
“就从今天起,大家说华语” would not be grammatically correct or is deemed clumsy. And rhyming is more apt for English. Correct me if I am wrong.
How about “ANG MO TAN”?
when LKY promoted speak mandarin campaign, it was a consolation to the chinese ground as he was closing down Nantah, which was a very emotional issue that embedded with potential political backlash.
The theory of MM was that “dialects are no match to English”, but Mandrain and Chinese can.
Let’s take a page from econ text book, marginal return, in abbreviation is two alphabets “MR” is written as 边际销用收益 in Chinese.
Hence, Chinese is still no match in aspect of drawing chart, grapgh or power points.
Late MP Major Andrew Fong published a good book in 1984, he differentiated Shinese ( Singapore Chinese language ) from Chinese, similar to Singlish ( Singapore English )
Late Major Fong is one few PAP MP who had independent views.
He also made indepth study on langauges in Singapore.
The book is A Pragmatic Approach to THE LANGUAGE QUESTION。
以踏实得太度， 正视语文问题
9/9/09
This is a good article and my answer is Yes Hokkien is my mother tounge and I am all for it as our traditions and cultures are embeded in it, and hence making it a very colorful one unlike Mandarin no culture and no traditions. We need a few good men in Parliament to stand up and say time to bring back all the dialects in our Modern Singapore and hence making Modern Singapore once again very colorful and vibrant (the good old days are back.
Regards
Andrew Chuah
And if you see Da Xi or those chinese puppet show? ain’t that part of our chinese culture? and might I ask, did anybody see it been performed in chinese b4?
没错。去世的“去”发音是跟“趋”不相同的。所以，华语要说得很准，大家才能沟通。当然，方言比较容易，而一般的老百姓，没有气力或时间 搞好自己的华语水准，所以我们这个“华族问题”不易解决。 的确，很多华人会同意，方言是比较多样化，比较生动，许多方言句子，不能以华语表达。
关于“华族知识份子”新加坡还是有的，只不过，迟早会全盘淘汰。只有一个挽救的方案， 就是靠我们的大陆同志，以后的新加坡华语水准，他们会给一份贡献。关于用电脑输入华语，其实，不会太难。天下无难事，只怕有心人。
Zero 零
98) Ω李
///// if I am not mistaken, there are a few phrases in dialects that cannot directly written as modern Chinese /////
“Char bor” has no Mandarin equilvalent
“Char bor” as mentioned actually does have mandarin equivalent 丫头 (ya tou). Whilst it is true that there are numerous colourful phrases in dialects not available in mandarin, the reverse is true as well. There is no dialectal equivalent for 卖关子 (mai guan zi – to beat about the bush) – 想不开 (xiang bu kai ). Speak to a beijing/shanghai origined “foreign talent ” and you will uncover many more.
It is quite meaningless to debate the details and compare a little here, a little there. The point i wanted to make was that the decision on the language issue for chinese was resolved in 1910 after sunyatsen founded chinese republic. Therefore it is mandatory for chinese to have knowledge of mandarin. This is not to say that dialects are inferior to mandarin, it is irrelevant!!! In the singapore context, especially, because we have the highest non-homogenous dialectal potpourri in the world in a single location, it would be highly divisive to glamourise any specific dialect without attracting attention of another dialectal class. Do remember dialects also have class associations with it albeit not as much as indian Caste system. Mandarinisation is neutral and were it not for the difficulties of Mandarin, no one would have objected to the speak mandarin campaign. For me it is not politics. It’s just that mandarin is tough and hard so the average joe cannot accept it as the defacto standard,but what to do, you cannot turn back the clock since 1910. And it is also in my opinion, not correct to push 100% of the blame to the government as i had explained in several posts ago.
Zero
Char Bor is not limited to 丫头 (ya tou), unless it is Char Bor Gia
Char Bor applies to women in general ( 女人）
#85, “ang mo kio” refers to a bridge (kio in Hokkien) built by an ang mo. Read somewhere that there was a bridge in what is now AMK that was designed by a white engineer during our colonial past. FYI, the Havelock Rd/Ganges Ave area is called “or kio tau” [head of the black bridge], after the black metal bridge where the old F&N factory was {opp the Esso station). The river (now monsoon drain) that runs in the middle of Comonwealth Ave was called “bo beh kang” [no tail river] as it ends abruptly at the Queensway junction.
I grudgingly admit that the bilingual policy (English plus 1 of ‘mother tongues’), for all its faults, is probably desirable in order to maintain a minimal level of societal cohesion. Besides, unless one has an innate flair for such things, gaining mastery (rather than mere proficiency) in two languages is already a big ask.
But just to throw out an idea (may have been suggested before): perhaps the more academically-inclined students, when offered the option to learn a third ‘language’ at the secondary/JC levels, can choose among the local vernaculars (including Chinese dialects other than Mandarin), rather than some of the relatively ‘foreign’ languages which MOE presently makes available through its auxiliary Language Centre (German, French and Japanese).
105) Zero,
“It’s just that mandarin is tough and hard so the average joe cannot accept it as the defacto standard,but what to do, you cannot turn back the clock since 1910. And it is also in my opinion, not correct to push 100% of the blame to the government as i had explained in several posts ago.”
Mandarin is not “tough” for those who have already mastered any of the dialects from childhood. The grammar for dialects and mandarin is the same. The ability to pick up languages before the age of 5 is tremendous when children are given that opportunities to learn.
However, it’s tough for our younger generation now because our education system and the govt had discouraged the use of dialects. It is an irreversible mistake, since many of the young parents themselves have lost the ability to speak good dialects and therefore, unable to teach it to their own children now even if they want to. The only way is for the children to stay with their grandparents who are good at dialects, which is not a common practice these days. In the next generation or two, good dialects will be totally lost in Singapore.
I have only one point in my head (to add to the long list of comments above):
the “melting pot” strategy that was part of the social engineering exercise can be deemed efficient (academically speaking), but I think we can see by now that it’s not very successful. (http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/5/500022.pdf)
there are two ways to “assimilate” the population. if you let them interact, mix and match, you can see that for the early immigrants, hokkien, cantonese, malay, indian, have common words borrowed. this can only happen when speakers of the language learn from other languages, and use it in their speech. why would that happen? simply because to communicate effectively, you have to have a “common point”, and this commonality is established by first, learning the words/culture/practice of another, and second, practising/utilizing it.
but the “speak mandarin”/1st & 2nd language policy of singapore is mere engineering. so there are lotsa different people, you unite them by making them fit into the same mould. this is not unlike how China made everybody speak 普通话, which is a version of Beijing Chinese (correct me if I’m wrong), teach them in schools and stuff. this policy also affected the indigenous minorities, with many of their younger generation unable to speak the dialect (e.g. 傣族、纳西族、白族).
perhaps in the name of efficiency and pragmatism, singapore has long favoured the approach that the brightest minds will engineer a mould/path, and everybody has to fit in and play along, and we have a common cause. that worked well in the 80s, when we are playing catch up and the economy was simple.
with the internet age, the one size fits all language policy in schools and in the society is now a failure (among other education/societal engineering failures), with singaporeans failing to have a good grasp of their 1st and 2nd language. I don’t mean ordering char kway teow kinda proficiency, but I mean native speaker proficiency. The Ris Low saga of late is one example.
by forcing people into a mould that you think will work is dangerous, because in losing diversity, you are putting all your eyes in that basket, and if you fail, you are left with nothing.
language is about people and culture, and it should be full of life. look at how taiwanese and HK people have applied plenty of creativity in creating words that are very expressive and ingenious, you can see the difference in the mastery and mindset of the people.
we have a language policy that is dinosaur in age, and can be seen as memorizing dictionaries and stuff to be successful. again, in the internet age, there is wikipedia and google, there is no need to do such things. red ocean is old, blue ocean is new.
the old leadership is just not keeping up with the times, and the suffering lives of singaporeans and the economy is but one manifestation.
107) Zero
“it would be highly divisive to glamourise any specific dialect without attracting attention of another dialectal class.”
It is okie not to glamourise any specific dialet….but to omit or minimize its use until it is disappearing? Chinese may be good as a standardize language, but somehow dialect always gives a closer feel, like, that’s our root
you know, back to Taiwan, when I was there visiting a friend in Hualien….even though the people there speaks chinese, but trying to speak in Min Nan Yu with the older people always turns out more fruitful…
however, the killing of dialect is not limited to singapore….even in Taiwan talkshow, they have been mentioning about young kids not been able to converse in dialect properly…and the killing of dialect can been seen in the case of their aboriginal whereby some of their dialect has gone extinct and the remaining population are trying now to preserve their language and culture…
112) shibuyume
you are quite right about the 普通 been a version of Beijing Chinese
this is what i saw online
‘If you want to study Chinese language, come to China. If you want to study Mandarin, come to Beijing. If you want to study standard Mandarin, come to Harbin.’
Very interesting indeed
Re: 109) What Change? on September 9th, 2009
Re: #85, “ang mo kio” refers to a bridge (kio in Hokkien) built by an ang mo.
1) The angmok was Mr. Pierce.
He built 5 wooden bridges bacross the stream which is now the canal infront of Bishan Park.
Pierce lead the construction of Lower Pierce reservior, to ease the water level during monsoon season, he widened that steam that ran across the farm land of Cheng Sam village,.
Note: There was a Chang San Road linked upp thomson road to serangoon garden as recent as 1976, and that is how Cheng San GRC was named.
2) The river (now monsoon drain) that runs in the middle of Comonwealth Ave was called “bo beh kang” [no tail river] as it ends abruptly at the Queensway junction.
Actually, the Bo Beh Kang also applied to Mei Chin Street and Stirling road estate in 1970.
Dear Zero,
The reason why I asked about the other Nanyang Chinese who have by and large assimilated into their host cultures is this…
You mentioned that “Therefore it is mandatory for chinese to have knowledge of mandarin.” Should this also apply to overseas Chinese? It’s as if the central government in China still has immeasurable influence over its people, no matter that they are now part of other nations.
I understand the need to have links to the ‘homeland’, but sometimes the issue can get politicised. You would know, for example, that when Malaya was formed, one of the thorny issues was whether to give the Chinese automatic citizenship. The suspicion was that they were still extremely invested in what was happening in China (galvanised by say, the Sino-Japanese war, or the founding of the Republic of China), and would therefore be of questionable loyalty.
I’m not an authority on this by any means, but maybe a comparison of the various diasporas (namely the Chinese and Indian diasporas) is useful. The Tamil community in Singapore and Malaysia speak a regional (Dravidian) language from South India. The official language of India is Hindi (as well as English), but to my knowledge, the Tamils here are not conversant in it.
Despite being about 58% of the Indian population in Singapore (the rest being Sikhs, Gujeratis, Malayalee, Punjabis etc), Tamil was granted the status as an ‘official’ language.
If we want to draw an analogy, let’s look at the composition of the Chinese in Singapore: 41% Hokkien, 21% Teochew, 15% Cantonese, 11.4% Hakka, and the rest being Hainanese, Hockchew, Hockchia and Hinghwa.
I’m not suggesting that Hokkien thus becomes the default official language of the Chinese in Singapore! (it has to be said that Hokkien and Teochew have perhaps 50% words in common). I’m saying that we have these two cases: the Chinese and Indians in Singapore. Why didn’t the government make Hindi the official language of the Indian community?
One might argue that the Hindi-speakers are a very small minority within the Indian community. But it would not be impossible to do so–Bahasa Indonesia, for example, is based on a language native to about 3% of Indonesians–namely, the Riau Malays. BI is very interesting for me because a minority language actually became a national language (though it has to be said that Malay was a lingua franca for trade in the region).
So back to the question…for the Indian community, the language spoken by its largest majority, the Tamils, became an ‘official language’. On the other hand, where is that ‘Mandarin’ community among the Chinese? Why are the Chinese expected to follow the ‘national trend’ in China, but the Indians are not obliged to?
I know the whole thing is more complex than this…one of the biggest differences between India and China is that the former is a pluralistic society, whereas China has a more unitarian character. I am wondering, for example, if it is required for all regions in China to study Mandarin, or whether they have some regional autonomy to decide what their ‘official languages’ might be (as is the case in India).
I think quite soon I’ll tip over to something way out of my depth, heh. But thank you all for the discussions. I’m learning a lot. : )
wow Alfian, this could be a good reading for one of the modules i’ve taken before – intercultural communications!
I think it all boils down to how we were brought up and what kind of language(s) and how much of it(them) we were exposed to. When I was a kid, my parents spoke to me in English, I listened to them converse in Teochew and picked up the language from there (and from my grandpa, who babysitted me) and listened to Mandarin songs when my dad was driving and I only started hating learning Mandarin in school because of the way they taught it.
My parents didn’t really explicitly teach me all the words from the languages but as kids learn really fast, we should be exposed to more languages, as studies showed that kids won’t get confused and indeed, I didn’t! I can now converse in Teochew, English and Mandarin. I mean, even my grandma’s pet dog understands Teochew now, despite living with my Uncle in the States before coming here (where he commands her in English!)
Yea so my point is that we should let nature take its course. Of course, the parents have to expose us to the different languages first lah!
Random: And I started picking up Cantonese by watching HK serials. I think MediaCorp should let HK serials have dual-sound since they’re doing it for the J-dramas and K-dramas. I see nothing wrong with that!
@Zero, if I could play devil’s advocate: is mastering Malay (and not just being able to use it in everyday conversations and informal transactions) really easier than mastering Mandarin/Chinese? I doubt so.
(By the way, 镜子doesn’t quite have the same pronunciation as 禁止, if one follows the hanyu pinyin.)
The reality, I think, is that very few of us have the aptitude or the resources to master even one or two languages, let alone three or more. I’d rather we focus on excelling in just one or two, rather than being trilingual or quadrilingual but achieving only a serviceable level of proficiency in each language. The adulterated pidgin English, Mandarin or Malay we often hear and speak is simply not good enough. It’s no defence to say that one can be understood well enough. A person without an assured command of grammatical syntax and vocabulary in any one language is tragically limited in what he or she can experience and appreciate. “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
It’s also important to point out that Alfian in his article approaches the topic of Chinese dialects as a philologist or etymologist; each word or phrase is like an archaeological relic, with its own historical and cultural lineage. Indeed, one ought to be aware of such cross-fertilization among our local languages, because it lends a deeper insight into the implications of ‘multiculturalism’. At the same time, for the “rest of us”, ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘cultural preservation’ can hardly be a sufficient reason for learning Chinese dialects or any other local vernacular. The value of any language is not its link to some tradition or way of living, but its signifying and communicative function. Hence, it should not matter for the average person which or how many languages/dialects she achieves facility in, so long as she achieves facility in at least one.
While we are on this topic, is Tamil the mother tongue of every Indian in Singapore?
Why not Hindi, Pinjabi, Malayalam, Urdi, Ceylonese, Bengali, and the rest of the languages and dialects recognised as official languages by the government of India?
Is Malay the mother tongue of every “Malay” (considering some are of Indonesian descent) in Singapore?
What about Acehese, Javanese, Batak and other Indonesian languages – not to forget that Bahasa Indonesia is different from Malay/Bahasa Melayu?
For further reading, see:
Accepting our Common ASEAN Culture and History
by Dr Farish Noor, a scholar of Southeast Asian history and culture
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=135939462594&ref=nf
I just want to point out that, for Chinese, the written language is the same. Just as spoken and written forms may be different for some other languages, sometimes some dialect phrases are verbal. Written wise, the language has it’s own grammar rules. I learnt Chinese using Cantonese pronounciation as my grandfather who taught me the language spoke Cantonese. Writing is the same, only the way you pronounce the words is different. It did not affect me in learning the language is school, I just learnt that there are other ways of saying the same thing. Mandarin as it is pronounced now is a recent version. Languages change, phrases used inaccurately widely for long enough will become correct.
I am going to raise a lot of heckles with this but most of our ancestors were immigrants who were poorly if at all educated. Their grasp of the language was not strong to begin with. This is one of the reasons why it was easily corrupted and eroded. Language is not eevrything about the culture though and I feel overseas Chinese have protected our traditions much better than Mainland China.
Anyway, if my memory does not fail me, Mandarin only won by one vote to become the official spoken language (more like the offical pronounciation like Tokyo’s form of Japanese is official over the Kansai accent) over the next most popular choice, Cantonese.
I think you have to look at this from a cultural anthropological line that “Language is Culture.” If you want to understand how certain cultures think, then you have to look at the language that the people speak.
The last time I looked an anthropology book was about 10-years ago but if memory serves correctly, we look to our dialects as something that creates our identity and we know who we are by knowing who we are not. For example, I know I am Chinese because I know I am not Malay, Indian or Caucasian. Then to distinguish myself from other Chinese, I know I am Cantonese because I am not Hokkien or Teochew etc etc. Such distinctions go deeper.
Now, we have to look at the race politics that made early Singapore. Guess who brought LKY to power. In his own biography, LKY admits that it was the Chinese Educated – Hokkien and Mandarin speakers who brought him to power – they caused revolutions unlike the more docile English-Educated.
Look at things from a political strategic view point. If the “Chinese-Educated” caused revolutions that got rid of the British, they could easily do the same to the PAP. So what was the best move to neutralise the Chinese Educated? Re-Culturalise them. Hence, Mandarin was imposed as an effort to reimpose a new identity on the Chinese-Educated. By destroying dialects, we got a situation where old loyalties would be destroyed and shifted to a new hero….
Personally, I think people if forced to will learn a language to survive. Learning Mandarin makes sense because China is providing more business opportunities than any where else at the moment. You could say “Speak Mandarin” was a sign of foresight.
But let’s be honest here. The government is not “Pro-Mandarin” and “Anti-Dialect” because it wants us to be economically competitive. I love the way LKY makes speeches about how the human brain cannot handle learning Mandarin, English and Dialects when his son has actually encouraged us to pick up third languages like Arabic (which is by no means easy to learn). It does not make sense.
Our “Pro-Education” government should actually encourage people to learn as many languages as they can rather than have a vendetta against certain learnings.
The Animal School, from Chicken Soup for the Soul:
Once upon a time, the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of “a new world”. So they organized a school.
They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.
The duck was excellent in swimming, in fact better than his instructor, but he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practise running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he became only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that except the duck.
The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.
The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down. He also developed a “charlie horse” from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and a D in running.
The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class he beat all the others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there.
At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well, and also run, climb and fly a little, had the highest average and was valedictorian.
The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.
Does this fable have a moral (for us here in Singapore)?
Hi Brick,
“While we are on this topic, is Tamil the mother tongue of every Indian in Singapore?
Why not Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Urdi, Ceylonese, Bengali, and the rest of the languages and dialects recognised as official languages by the government of India?”
Of course it isn’t. But as I understand the policy has been loosened somewhat–non Tamil-Indians can now take their Mother Tongue subject in some of the languages you’ve mentioned above. But the onus would be on the student to arrange for tuition in that language.
And neither was Malay a ‘Mother Tongue’ for many Eurasians, non-Tamil Indians, Chinese ASEAN Scholars…and neither was Mandarin a ‘Mother Tongue’ for many Peranakans.
A good book to look up on this is “Negotiating language, constructing race: disciplining difference in Singapore” by Nirmala Purushotam. Interestingly, one of the things she discovered is related to what la nausée mentioned: “is mastering Malay (and not just being able to use it in everyday conversations and informal transactions) really easier than mastering Mandarin/Chinese? I doubt so.”
Parents whose children could not be easily boxed into CMIO often opted for their child to take Malay, because for one thing, the alphabet is Romanised. It’s got no declension, no conjugation etc. But it’s a trap! Many of the parents she interviewed had the impression that bazaar Malay seemed basic and some even had the stereotype that a ’simple’ people would produce a ’simple’ language. Of course this was all before their children were introduced to that devious system of affixation known as ‘imbuhan’.
As for la nausée’s remark that: “The value of any language is not its link to some tradition or way of living, but its signifying and communicative function.” Methinks this is a tad too instrumentalist for my taste. A language is often the manifestation of certain cognitive and affective features unique to a culture. Should we be concerned at all about ‘vanishing languages’ if they had no value whatsoever? And should we not study ‘dead languages’ like Latin or Sanskrit just because they are not used for current modes of communication? I agree that ‘cultural heritage’ alone is not reason enough to practice a language, but I think questions can be raised about the *choice* of which language(s) to use as the dominant one for communication is any society.
As for “A person without an assured command of grammatical syntax and vocabulary in any one language is tragically limited in what he or she can experience and appreciate.”…I’m not too sure what these limits are. How can we define ‘functional literacy’, and what kinds of experiences and forms of appreciation are we talking about? And when we say “The adulterated pidgin English, Mandarin or Malay we often hear and speak is simply not good enough”, the question is, not good enough for what?
I submit that there might be certain written documents that are of vital interest to someone, such as a will, but isn’t that why we have lawyers–to crack open the legalese for us? And let’s say it requires a certain level of linguistic proficiency to read poetry–but is someone ‘tragically limited’ if he or she has no desire to read or understand a poem? : P
“However, it’s tough for our younger generation now because our education system and the govt had discouraged the use of dialects.”
Not true really. The obstacle with Chinese (at least for me) has always been the vocabulary and the number of ideograms that one has to commit to memory. Thanks to technology like PDAs and smartphones, this has become less of a problem.
As for dialects, all this discussion is about the three major dialects in Singapore, Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. What about all the obscure and little known dialects like Hunan, Hainan etc. And some of the posters post as if like them, everyone else’s parents and grandparents are from the same dialect group.
It is unfortunate that education is almost invariably politicized due to the parents’ various political and social agendas. Why should LKY be regarded as a hero because he promulgated the use of Mandarin? Even if he did not implement such a policy, chances are Chinese Singaporeans would still pick up Mandarin on their own for business. Just look at at the TVB actors and actresses speaking (albeit some heavily accented and broken, while others excellent) Mandarin now.
Another thing to consider: the younger generation does not know how to read Traditional Chinese, for better or for worse. While it should not pose any problems in China, it would become a minor inconvenience reading any article from HK and Taiwan.
To Aflian Sa’at: You asked whether the overseas chinese need to know mandarin, I think it depends. If you live in Vancouver chinatown, it is obvious that every overseas chinese there, just about speaks Cantonese, historically they were the most popular destination of the southern chinese seeking fortunes in america or other reasons. I personally do not see a requirement to learn mandarin for them because they are already homogenised from day zero. Moreover, they have by and large, no requirement to develop trade with mainland china for survival reasons. Hence mandarin is unnecessry though useful for such chinese (as for example, it is not necessary to know how to read music to get on in life, but it would be a fine thing to know it). On the other hand the overseas chinese of Singapore (YES singapore chinese IS 华侨) must know mandarin. With 50% hokkien, 30% cantonese, and there rest hainan, hinghwa, teochew, etc. it is absolutely essential that Mandarin is popularised willfully, otherwise each group will split deeper into its own chauvinistic ambitions, as each dialect group is understably very proud of its own heritage.
Regarding your mention of politicising the issue, i cannot see any link in your example you quoted of malaya govt’ consideration whether to give auto citizenship to overseas chinese non bumiputras. This question is a political question not related to whehter the chinese overseas local, speaks mandarin or hokkien or hainam. Chinese are chinese, whatever dialect. If china is in trouble, overseas chinese will always be sympathetic. Just like malays here are more sympathetic to disasters in Indonesia, “blood is thicker than water” , c’est la vie.
Regarding the selection of Tamil not Hindi, BI not Achehese or other dialect, and Mandarin not Hokkien as the official media, this is an interesting question. I don’t have a good answer. I guess that whichever you select, so long as there is no fierce objection from any quarters, it cannot be wrong. For mandarin, I have pointed many times, no Singpaoren chinese would ever complain, if mandarin is an easy language to learn. Look at BI, as you said, it is only 3% of the Indos original language, but since it is rather easy to learn, and it is still after all a local lingo, nobody is disadvantaged seriously, it was happily assimilated into Indonesia since the days of their independence. However, in Singapore especially, Mandarin creates problem because it is difficult to learn and some of the chinese here will be disadvantaged if they could not cope with learning it. That is why we are debating this issue to no end, all because Mandarin is a difficult language, yet no one wants to be disadvantaged and discriminated upon.
To Creducator
You said that dialect speaking will in some ways help the children’s mastery of Mandarin. But how do you explain that, prior to 1980 speak mandarin campaign, there are very large numbers of students who utterly fail and completely unable to handle Mandarin yet dialect was prolific in those days? Sorry ACS school, you are one of the well known producers of people who dont like Mandarin and can’t handle it, in singapore there are many such baby boomers with lots of exposure to dialects, yet they fail in Mandarin, hate the language, scoff it. Therefore, i am not very sure if dialect speaking helps one to learn mandarin, though the idea appears quite reasonabl. In my opinion TV programs for children play a very dominant part too. Look at what Barney , Hi Five, etc, are doing to children here, they are just totally engrossed in them and in so doing, learn possible as much as what their parents teach them in English. If there is any big mistake of the speak Manadarin campaign, I feel that the govt had failed to introduce high quality Mandarin cartoons, joke shows, simple entertainment and so on over the last 20 years, these are essential subconscious learning environment that has a impact on learning, greater than you ever imagine. Even today, the quality of kid’s shows in Mandarin leaves much to be desired. They should increase the budget for it instead of leaving it to laissez faire based on advertising support. I think govt should do well to spend some money on this investment in social infrastructure.
Zero
There are many reasons for MM to promote speak mandarin , and more reasons evolve over time.
Some are good for the nation, some are self serving for the party
1) in 1978, the Closure of Nantah did not go down well with people, tgovt need to pacify the Chinese groung
Every policy has its political elements
2) To do business with the Greater Chinese community in the world
But govt leaders who went to Suzhou and failed, moat of them can’t converse and little understanding of Chinese language and culture.
3) To remove local political affliation.
Hougang are still populated with more Teochew, we see pap send a teochew Low Eric to fight Teochew Low Thia Kiang ( WP )
This is to blur the identity of dialect groups and the clans’ influence
4) To attract more China immigrants.
And hopefully, when they become citizens, they will vote pap in a few GE
Just my two cents
121) theforgottongeneration
> The Animal School, from Chicken Soup for the Soul:
> Does this fable have a moral (for us here in Singapore)?
(1) It will have a moral for Singapore if this fable include the fact that all animals are “forced” to learn a common skill as the most important skill (In Singapore we “forced” everybody to learn English as common language and subsequently as FIRST language after 1986), and all the priorities and benefits are given to those animals who can master this common skill.
(2) Luckily all animals have the free-will to choose not to master this common skill by giving up all the priorities and benefits associate with this common skill.
(3) They will only feel the “forced” factor when they have to decide whether they should give up or down-grade their original skills in order to master the common skill. They know they will be marginalised in their animal kingdom if they choose not to master the common skill.
(4) The saddest thing for those who have chosen to master the common skill is that their offspring are so used to the common skill that they start to think that the demise of their ancestors’ skills are due to all other factors but not the common skill they possessed now.
(5) Saddest of the saddest thing is that subsequently a scapegoat (The Speak Mandarin Campaign) was found and it has become the main target of the blame for causing all animals to lose their original skills.
(6) The real culprit is thus “strangely” immune from the blame and the animal kingdom continues with their biases.
@124) LionCitiZen on September 10th, 2009 12.14 pm
“….(5) Saddest of the saddest thing is that subsequently a scapegoat…..”
Every generation leaves some legacy. Saddest is S’poreans are psyched to think our crownging legacy is progession from a Third World to a First(?) World. Unfortunately, our future generations have to live with:
1) highest concentration of myopic population in world;
2) scratching head on what is “Mother Tongue”;
3) working to death in order to support 1.28 children (if married) & to have luxury of a roof over head;
4) being monkeys which are supposed like peanuts, which is better than nothing;
5) work till 54, then told to go to 62. At 61, being told to 65. At 64, being told to 70. At 69, being told …. (Recall: Boxer of Animal Farm)
6) all the above, in time, will the explained away as someone’s Aspirations. There is no “blame” (aka MSK escape style).
Interesting the government offers Non Tamil Indian Languages ( Hindi, Pinjabi, Malayalam, Urdi, Bengali) in school. There are two reasons for this, first the rule that you must take your mother language, meaning Chinese, Tamil, Malay. Unless you can provide valid reason (economic advatage does not count). Many Indians continued doing mandarin by indicating that Tamil was not their mother tongue. So we had to have NTIL in schools so that they do no not take Mandarin. Second it did not want the Indians to have a common langauge to unite them , like the Chinese. Simple policy.
Maybe cause the gahmen is scared of the Indians if they unite? Imagine if there’s 10 JBJs.. PAP confirm cannot tahan
#127
10 JBJs, PAP will be power for another 100 yrs.
His ignorance of econs, the way he ran WP, and his focus on freedom of speech, was very helpful to PAP.
Sad they “rewarded” him by suing him.
But whatever -ve things I say abt him, I still respect him because he got balls of brass.
The pertinent question Alfian has raised is what it means to be Nanyang Chinese, a Chinese in this part of the world and a product of the inter-mixing between different races. I agree with him that Malaysian Chinese from the Chinese schools are more connected to the land and to their roots than many Singapore Chinese (I won’t say all), but I don’t think you can say that Mandarin has nothing to do it — Malaysian Chinese don’t have the kind of politicised dichotomy between Mandarin and dialects that we do, they speak both, dialect at home and Mandarin in school, and if you look at the Taiwanese, they mix Hokkien and Mandarin all the time (although for political reasons, some will push Hokkien, but it doesn’t mean they don’t implicitly recognise the cultural value of Mandarin).
Basically, knowing both Hokkien and Mandarin enriches rather than subtracts from each other, and I agree with those who have talked about the place of Mandarin as a ‘bridging’ language in Chinese culture. If you talk about Malay-Hokkien hybridity, well, there’s a whole lot of hybridity to be studied in Hokkien-Mandarin too.
Who’s to say that as language evolves here, Mandarin and Malay won’t start influencing each other as well and spawning new forms of multiculturalism? I think the issue then is not so much about the loss of dialects, but how many young Chinese Singaporeans cannot speak Malay at all compared to their parents’ generation which at least had pasar Malay.
Fantastic article. Really entertaining. A lot of my older patients in hospital are also able to speak Malay-Hokkien.
Alfian Sa’at
In your article, “Is Hokkien My ‘Mother Tongue’?”, you wrote:
“……As a matter of fact, since almost two-thirds of the Malay lexicon consists of borrowings, I definitely had Arabic and Indian (linguistic) ancestors too……”
Am I right to guess that if the above statement is true, then, within the 2/3 of Malay lexicon, a large portion of them could be borrowed from English since we were colonized by UK for a long time?
If my guess is true, then there may be some more interesting facts to share, you may need to write another article with a new title.
Great to see this subject raised again. Many2 moons again my friend and I went to HK – she speaking Singapore Cantonese and me, Hokkien (useless in HK of course until you find out where the Hokkien speaking enclave is – North Point then). We were in stitches as we realised that the Cantonese in HK didn’t understand her when she asked to buy ‘loti’ and where was the ‘passat’ (pasar). On the subject of ‘Taiwanese’ I am told it is Hokkien with Japanese loan words since it was a colony of Japan.
If you are interested in going further into this subject and to consider loan words in Indonesia too, there has been research done on this. Someone else commented loan words from other languages (Arabic, Portuguese etc.)
See this book: published by KITLV – the editor bowled me over with his Hokkien!
http://www.kitlv.nl/book/show/1210
I’m pasting the book website blurb below:
Loan-words in Indonesian and Malay
Jones, Russell (general editor), Editors: C.D. Grijns†, J.W. de Vries, Asst. editor: M. Siegers
This is a register of twenty thousand loan-words in Indonesian and Malay, deriving from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, English and Japanese.
Given for each are the Indonesian or Malay headword, the word in the source language, and, for foreign scripts, the page where it is to be found in a bilingual dictionary of the source language. Since each headword is provided with an English translation, this is a potentially convenient reference base for compilers of dictionaries of European languages who will find it useful to draw on this material to improve their etymologies. More importantly, it provides a resource for researchers into the etymologies of other languages of Asia, a somewhat undeveloped field, since many of the loan-words (from Arabic for example) are veritable Wanderwörter which may turn up anywhere.
With this publication, Indonesian is served with an etymological resource which few other Asian languages can claim, and from which many may benefit. The dictionary is accompanied by a DVD with a facsimile of Carstairs Douglas’ Amoy dictionary, with Chinese characters written in by hand, and Thomas Barclay’s Supplement to this dictionary.
Reminds me of a joke I heard of.
Some Singaporeans were eating out at HK. One of them tried ordering fried noodle, but was told that noodle had run out. Replying in half-past-six cantonese, the Singaporean said:
“Mo meen, bei guai tew” (No noodle, give kway teow)
The hawker was so offended and chased them out.
We all know the flat rice noodle, in hokkien is known as kway teow. Perhaps of the famous char kway teow, it has somehow influenced the local cantonese into calling it ‘guai tew’ instead of what it is known in HK, as ‘hor fun’. Even though we also have ‘hor fun’ over here, it’s more commonly referring to the dish instead of the flat rice noodle. Also the intonation for ‘hor’ is slightly different over here compared to HK.
“bei guai tew”, for an unknowing HK’er, it sounded like an insult – get f**ked by an angmo.
@136) Lop on September 10th, 2009 10.17 pm
Good one, Lop,
I will definitely add “bei guai tew” to my vocabulary. Though “guai” could also mean devil/demon/spouse, etc… in local context (I think), but not sure in HK.
Sorry, this is not really related. Something happened at lunch that reminded me of Chinese values, or the lack thereof. It could also be a miscommunication due to poor standard of Chinese.
———————————————————————————————–
30+ telling-off 50+ for bullying 70+
Something interesting happened at lunch today. I, a 30-something, told off 2 ladies, in their fifties, for bullying 2 ladies in their seventies.
I was at lunch at HDB Hub’s basement food court. It was filled with the lunchtime crowd. I could hardly find a place for myself, a solo diner. Then I spotted a place at 2 adjoining tables. Table 1 with seats L1, L2, R1 and R2 and table 2 with seats L3, L4, R3 and R4.
L1 L2 L3 L4
R1 R2 R3 R4
R1 and R2 were taken up by 2 young ladies in office wear. The lady at R1 told me that L1 and L2 were also taken. L3, L4 and R4 were taken up by a family of 4 who were about to finish their lunch and R3 was vacated by one of their child. I asked the parents if I could occupy R3, despite the table being almost full of dirty dishes. The parents kindly shared their table with me. Soon enough the family completed their meal and left the table.
A lady, who looked like she was in her fifties and dressed in office wear, came over to asked me if seat R4 was taken. I indicated that she could have the seat. Then she went off to buy her lunch. She returned with her soupy meal, left it on the table and went off again to buy something else. Then she returned to her R4 seat. Let’s call her Lady 50A.
Then 2 elderly ladies, dressed in casual, came by. They looked like they were in their seventies. One of them, facing me and Lady 50A, asked if they could occupy seats L3 and L4. I nodded that they could have the seats. Both of them sat down. Let’s call the one sitting at L3 Lady 70A and the other sitting at L4 Lady 70B. Lady 50A did not make any remark.
Lady 70B decided to buy her food, leaving Lady 70A to reserve seat L4 for her with small plastic bag of things on the table. After a while, a friend of Lady 50A came by and stood next to seat L4. Let’s call her Lady 50B. Lady 50B chatted briefly about the food with Lady 50A. Then Lady 50B turned to face Lady 70A, who was sitting at L3. Lady 50B pointed to seat L2 and said the following to Lady 70A.
“你坐那遍。我剛才坐那遍，你可以坐那遍。”
To think that all 5 of us (I, Lady 50A, Lady 50B, Lady 70A and Lady 70B) are Chinese and the typical Chinese emphasis on value of respecting one’s elders. I kept quiet, waiting for Lady 50A to correct her friend. Instead I was stunned by the deafening silence from Lady 50A and the “this is my seat” serious look on the face of Lady 50B.
Without complaining, Lady 70A moved over to seat L2. Lady 50B sat down on L4. Both Lady 50A and Lady 50B started eating lunch and chatting as if nothing happened. These two 50-something professional looking ladies spoke in fluent English to each other, not Singlish. I looked at Lady 70A and gave her an apologetic smile, indicated to her with my eyes darting to Lady 50B and shook my head. Chinese body language for “那個人沒家教”。 Sometime later, Lady 70A moved further to seat T1L1 and her friend Lady 70B sat at another table, to the left of R1.
After a while, Lady 50B got up from her seat to get something from the stalls. To avoid Lady 50A from “丟臉”， I took this opportunity while her friend was not around and feedback to her,
“Next time you should have informed that you are reserving the table for 3. We are all here to find a place for lunch, we should be kind to each other.”
“My friend was sitting at there (pointing vaguely to the direction of L1 and L2). When I came over, I was expecting to be sitting alone.” was her lame defence. By then, her friend Lady 50B returned and indicated with her body language to Lady 50A “what’s going on?”
I looked at her and repeated, “I was just telling your friend that next time she should have informed that she was reserving the table for 3. Don’t demand that an elderly moves from her seat.”
“But I offered my seat to her”, Lady 50B retorted, raising her voice in her defence.
“You should not demand that she moves over. She an elderly. You could offer your seat, but not demand that she moves.”
Lady 50B insisted that she offered her seat. Is her Chinese language so poor that she doesn’t know how to offer her seat to an elderly in a polite manner? Even then, is her body language so lousy that she don’t know how to smile when making a request? Then Lady 50B sat down, ate her lunch and started talking to Lady 50A as if nothing happened. Lady 50B decided to adopt the “ignore the nuisance” (aka me) strategy.
I turned to Lady 50A and repeated, “Next time you should inform that you are reserving the table for 3.”
Lady 50A whined, “I was expecting to eat alone”. I’m not convinced. If that were true, why didn’t she tell her friend not to bully an elderly lady into giving up the seats? The only logical conclusion I could come to was that she did not see anything wrong with her friend’s bullying and played along so as to have a nice face-to-face seating for her lunchtime chat with her friend. Anyway, after my final sentence, she became quieter and less participative in her conversation with Lady 50B.
I finished lunched quickly and left the table without further words. Fifty-somethings in Singapore often lament the lack of traditional values in the younger set. It is perhaps time for them to look into the mirror.
@Alfian (#123), perhaps I was being too polemical and reductive when I said, “The value of any language is not its link to some tradition or way of living, but its signifying and communicative function.”
My point, however, pertains to the average person constrained by aptitude and time. For him, language is a Swiss Army knife — multifunctional, precisely engineered, efficient. The fact that that particular ‘Swiss Army’ knife was ‘Made in China’ is and should be of little concern to him. Tracing the links between language and culture is indeed a valuable exercise, but only a few are dedicated and skilled enough (sociologists, linguistic scholars, writers) to take up this historical conservation project.
Moreover, it’s far more advisable for the average person to own one Swiss Army knife and learn how to use it really well (all its attachments), than to own several such knives but only know how to use a single blade in each.
Why would a person with poor linguistic ability be “tragically limited”? Because language is bound up with cognition, with the ability to process what’s happening around us. It’s not just about being able to read a legal document or a poem (arguably, these activities require some expertise, if one is to get the ‘full experience’).
Having a wide vocabulary means more ways of cataloguing our experiences (and therefore, experiencing more), rather than just feeling either “shiok” or “tu lan“, or assessing something as either “sui” or “CMI”. I concede, though, that loan words, if used in a way that is sensitive to their cultural nuances, can supplement the vocabulary of one’s primary language. (The problem with pidgin languages like ‘NS’ Hokkien and bazaar Malay, however, is that they each have a small inventory of mostly generic expressions.)
Equally important, though, is proper grammar — which an examination of loan words will inevitably ignore. Without grammar, all we have are fragments of meaning, a quaint word here and an evocative phrase there. Proper grammar is indispensable to understanding the relationships between the words we use, whether these relationships be spatial (prepositions), temporal (grammatical tense), or logical/causal (conjunctions, subject-object relationships, punctuation, interrogative words, independent and dependent clauses, negation, conditionals, etc.). Good grammar and cogent thinking go hand in hand.
Hence, being familiar with a wide range of loan words is pointless if one hasn’t mastered the grammar of at least one language. Grammar is, of course, the more unappetizing part of any language, not least because it bears much less relation to culture and history (though I can instantly think of some counter-examples, like grammatical gender in the Romance languages and the lack of past tense in Mandarin and Malay).
@ 61) theforgottongeneration on September 9th, 2009 12.40 pm
“PS. what about the Cantonese phrase cursing that someone’s kid will be born without backside?!”
Think that is a Mandarin curse, not a Cantonese one. I have never come across it in Cantonese. But then, my Cantonese is somewhat limited to what I hear in my family and what I learnt from Hong Konger ex-colleagues.
“Without grammar, all we have are fragments of meaning, a quaint word here and an evocative phrase there….. Good grammar and cogent thinking go hand in hand.”
Is this an assumption / opinion or empirical fact? According to Wikipedia (or some article I have read), Chinese lacks a proper “grammar” apparently to English users or least lacks some of the rules of English grammar, but communicates the same desired meaning of any given sentence effectively nevertheless. And with regards to grammar, if I am not mistaken, one must be at least a post graduate of English to understand some of the more arcane and obscure rules of English grammar; strict adherence to which in normal everyday life would be laboriously pedantic and in my opinion, asininely inefficient.
“Anyway, do jeh! Or should it be m’goi?”
I just want to add that, i think “do jeh” is like saying “thank you”, while “mgoi” means “you should’t have (done this for me)”and it is less formal.
#140
No, that curse is not exclusive to Mandarin. The Cantonese version:
“Sang zai mou see fut”
LOL
Writer, you forgot about LELONG! How can forget leh alamak! But well written.
@140) Hahaha on September 11th, 2009 2.43 am
@143) Lop on September 11th, 2009 11.50 pm
Yeah, think first heard that phrase from Malaysian colleagues (KL or Penang). Anyway, point of origin not important to me since S’poreans seem to simply pick up such things on the go.
But this kinda illustrates my point. I mean shouting “bei guai tew” or “Sang zai mou see fut” (many thks Lop) in a heated argument would hardly fizzle your opponent! In fact, they sound hilarious! Screaming them in Mandarin, Hokkein, etc… translations would kinda lose the “soul” of the meanings, you know what I mean? I guess when we go to just English or Mandarin, we lose each “soul” of the …. southern china languages(?). Something just can’t be translated.
Aside, without some cross-breeding/rojak of dialects, how can we appreciate things like what NOT to name our kids, e.g. (Everyone know these, I am sure…..)
Paul Chan (Cantonese = go bust)
Monica Cheng (Hokkien = molest your backside)
etc…
How does a single dialect out of a polyglot of dialects get to become a dominant or established dialect in society?
Let us assume that the bulk of early Chinese migration to Singapore was of Cantonese stock and it came largely from Hong Kong, a thriving British mercantile centre port then. People from the southern regions flocked into Hong Kong either to elk a living or sojourn there for 2-3 years or more before moving to Singapore. During this transit stay period in the Cantonese speaking environment, they would have probably picked up basic Cantonese to understand and speak it. Hence the Chinese society here would have turned up speaking Cantonese largely and make it a dominant dialect though the population itself is an inter-mix of sub-groups like Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka and others.
Oxford Dude (87), in noting that identity has always been an organic realization from the bottom of the heart, seems to argues that if the goal is to serve economic and strategic needs, it is sufficient to confine language expansion to the teaching of Mandarin in schools whilst keeping the dialects intact instead of super-imposing Mandarin forcefully at the expense of dialects. He has a valid point. Perhaps the government should consider reviving the dialects.
Whilst the above depicted Chinese inflow from Hong Kong is perhaps largely hypothetical, the inflow of early immigrants to Singapore from India under similar circumstances, on the other hand, was real.
During the time of East India Company and much later, the British administered India by dividing it in two zones, the North and the South. The Northern administrative capital was Calicut (now Kolkata) in West Bengal. Calicut was also the capital of British Raj with the Governor-General located there. The Southern zone was designated as Madras Presidency with Madras (now Chennai, Tamil Nadu) as capital, with a Governor, subordinate to the Governor-General. The non-Hindi speaking Southern states, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka came under the administration of Madras Presidency.
As a thriving trading post Madras attracted thousands of people from Kerala (Malayalam-speaking), Andhra (Telungu-speaking) and Karnataka (Kannada- speaking). By staying in Tamil Nadu and interacting with the Tamils there they picked up the Tamil Language. The early Indian settlers to Singapore came largely from Madras and constituted these polyglot groups. Hence they and their decedents embraced Tamil here, making the Indian community here in later years almost 80% Tamil speaking
The demographic profile of the Indians here has, particularly over the past 10 years, changed significantly with the influx of PRs and new citizens, who are largely well-heeled entrepreneurs, professionals and business people, most of them Hindi-speaking, if not non-Tamil speaking. This segment is quietly increasing and they wield considerable clout. Few examples: Oli 98.6 Tamil radio station, which used to announce in Tamil the Hindi songs to be played on its channel has, in acceding to their demand, now been making the announcements both in English and Tamil (which I think is only sensible); they are allowed to run their own language classes (Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati) outside school hours to enable their children to offer their mother tongue as a ‘O’ level subject ; a free monthly tabloid titled “Tabla” (published by Singapore Press Holdings) and a dedicated Hindi song channel from 5 to 8 pm (FM 96.3) daily.
Out of the 7% Indian community here, some 60-65% of them read, write, speak or understand.Tamil. If the percentage drops to below 50% or lower – and the trend indicates to this – the issue of retaining Tamil as an official language will crop up. It is fool hardy to continue spending considerable resources on an endeavour which lacks a critical mass. I am versatile both in Tamil and English. Tamil is a very old classical language and unlike Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, it is holding its ground and thriving. Singapore is the only country outside India where it is given an official language. I will certainly mourn the day it loses its official status here.
Alfian,
Another great article from you. Congratulations.
By the way, can you speak Hokkien? I can.
I still speak Hokkien with my friends whenever and wherever I can. Hokkien, to me is unique and contains some kind of irreplaceable element by Mandarin. A visitor from Fujian province was amazed with my ability to converse Hokkien with him, and this brought very much goodwill and confidence between us.
Singapore, in fact, is fortunate to have you as citizen. Your articles are useful to Malaysian as well. I am looking forward to read more of your articles and if possible, meet you in person one of the days.
By the way, I think if you can learn some teachings of the Buddha, that will help you a lot in your works. I am not trying to convert you here, as knowledge of Buddha’s teachings will make you a better person, a better Muslim. After all, to me, in essence, Buddhism is not a religion, it believes in no creator God. His teachings are about universal truths.
I recommend you to go this blog to know Buddhism better.
alfian saat
“The product of their alliances, friendships and inter-marriages is reflected in the language they have passed on to us. To lose this legacy is to sever a vital connection not only to the historical origins of the Nanyang Chinese, but also to Singapore’s dynamic multicultural past.”
to me, there’s something spontaneous and organic in the way languages borrow from each other, adapting to suit the vibe of times. if an interference or disturbance, aka government policies, stall this process or even kill it, then i say it’s decay or death is part of that organic-ness. my point is, don’t you think there’s something contrived and contradictory in trying to preserve it?
146) K Das on September 13th, 2009 …. Let us assume that the bulk of early Chinese migration to Singapore was of Cantonese stock and it came largely from Hong Kong, a thriving British mercantile centre port then.
THIS IS INCORRECT, the majority and earliest China immigrants to Singapore were the Hokkien and TeoChew, they first settled down along both side of Singapore river, which is the first plot of land allocated to Chinese by Colonial authority
This was a really fascinating article. My parents speak Hokkien and Tagalog (they were born in the Philippines), but the only language I speak fluently is English because I was born and raised in Canada. So I understand what you mean when you talk about losing your sense of heritage, and being unable to communicate with the older generations. I’m a terrible child, I know.
It’s really sad hearing about Hokkien and other Chinese languages being devalued and overwritten by Mandarin (not to mention English taking over the world). I know it’s a strategic choice to learn the language that grants you the most prestige and lets you communicate with the greatest number of people…but it’s also a choice that people should be allowed to make themselves, not something that the government should impose on them!
Like you said, language mixing will happen on its own anyway, if you let it. And what results from than mixing is far more interesting than what you get when you teach the doctrine of “pure” languages.
[...] 27, 2009 #3: our languages Posted by stephooi under Uncategorized Leave a Comment Is Hokkien My ‘Mother Tongue’?, wonders Alfian Sa’at, a Singaporean-Malay poet and [...]
[...] 28, 2009 #3: our languages Posted by stephooi under Uncategorized Leave a Comment Is Hokkien My ‘Mother Tongue’?, wonders Alfian Sa’at, a Singaporean-Malay poet and [...]
I wanna just add a comment on Language.
English is mistaken to be the language that is a must for progress or for survival.
This is not True.
Case in point, Japanese scholars and scientists do not speak engrish.
They have one of the highest standards in this world in terms of Technologies, Standards of living, Innovation, Creativity, Education etc.
The world uses Japanese technology like electronics , laptops etc.
The world is dependent on Non-Engrish speaking people.
Do not be a frog in a well.
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Uncategorized - Jan 15, 2010 10:12 - 126 Comments
It is affordable – Mah Bow Tan
More In Uncategorized
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Uncategorized - Jan 15, 2010 10:12 - 126 Comments
It is affordable – Mah Bow Tan
More In Uncategorized
- Rebutting Law Minister K Shanmugam
- Challenge of communication
- TOC & Talk Politics hold successful Year in Review forum
- “Live” from Post Museum – TOC’s Year End Review
- The Fajar Generation
Dear Alfian,
Thank you for another piece of outstanding work. Kam Sia, Kam Sia or Xie Xie Ni.
JY