Better teach your children Speak "Hokkien and Malay" at home !

[Tiu Kwang Yew]

Ten more years, prostitution and gangsterism will flourish In Singapore in the wake of the big time gambling at the bay and blakang mati.

PRC, honkees, etc will set up triad here to reap profits. Hokkien will the language to distinguish among the local triad and alien triads. Furthermore Hokkien sounds cool when come to spewing expletives like KNNCCB! And it sounds more intimidating for locals to hold sway.

We still sing Mari kita, army still uses Malay command.
Teach your children Malay becos singapore will become overly crowded, and migration to Malaysia sure happens to local posterity.

Besides, future Govt officials who can speak malay and be friendly to our malay neighbors will have fresh spring water to drink and abundant food to eat at cheap price.
No need to drink longkang water or sai chwee.

Speak Mandarin ? Singapore cannot be pulled away by tug boat to near China, even if GOd is willing, the local Malays and Indians and the rest of the rojak races how? Speak mandarin also?

lau yeow kwai, two is enough already jialat liao, still somemore mandarin.
afterwards, when the white men start loving singapore again and boom economy, speak english campaign again.

sei bei confuse, better teah your children to speak Hokkien and malay first at home for their future survival .
they can learn mandarin at coffeeshops, geylang.....

 

[commoner]

the Old Fart's getting bloody senile and talk cock again,,,

if mandarin is so important why Grandson Arrogrant HongYi study in angmo Obama country, if China important enough, send him to Fudan or Beijing Uni.

Who would still believe your speak mandarin campaign, your MPs, Ministers and pinkie son also cannot speak and listen properly,,,,, Onions and chillies....

 

[Tiu Kwang Yew]

next Ge, got many new PRC voters.
so they see lightning, they know mandarin is for Peepees.

if mandarin is so so so important, make mandarin lingua branca lah.

tok cock, better learn hokkien and malay for future survival, north is matland , south is indo----these two got food and water. China too far leh .
learn mandarin in singapore sure die one.

the Old Fart's getting bloody senile and talk cock again,,,

if mandarin is so important why Grandson Arrogrant HongYi study in angmo Obama country, if China important enough, send him to Fudan or Beijing Uni.

Who would still believe your speak mandarin campaign, your MPs, Ministers and pinkie son also cannot speak and listen properly,,,,, Onions and chillies....

 

[halsey02]

Dialects is our heritage, and Mandarin is one of the many dialects spoken in CHINA. It is known as 'gua yu' as in National Language, or ' pu tong yu', common language.

In case you people are ignorant..Chinese is a type of people, Mandarin is a common language spoken by the Chinese. It is not the language of the Chinese.

Learning a common language to ease communication bewteen different groups pf Chinese people is not wrong. But to kill dialects, we are not only slapping our ancestors, but very quickly loosing our heritage.

Remember, MANDARIN is a DIALECT

 

[Man in the streets]

well well said. Han ye is mandarin is also a dialect during the rule of the first emperor.

shanghai guns speak pu tong ye to FTs but their own shanghai dialect among them.

lose dialects, it will break unity.

Dialects is our heritage, and Mandarin is one of the many dialects spoken in CHINA. It is known as 'gua yu' as in National Language, or ' pu tong yu', common language.

In case you people are ignorant..Chinese is a type of people, Mandarin is a common language spoken by the Chinese. It is not the language of the Chinese.

Learning a common language to ease communication bewteen different groups pf Chinese people is not wrong. But to kill dialects, we are not only slapping our ancestors, but very quickly loosing our heritage.

Remember, MANDARIN is a DIALECT

 

[Ramseth]

The name Mandarin conjures up the image of being lingua franca of government, civil service and aristocracy. However, it's just the Beijing dialect among the many Chinese regional dialects. And, Beijing happens to be the capital of China, so its dialect prevails as the national common standard. The so-called Hanyu Pinyin Chinese dictionary based on Beijin pronunication system came into being only in the 1950s, after CCP established PRC and reconfirmed Beijing's place as capital and its dialect the national language.

Through millennia of history, Chinese people has never had a common speech in a land that's vast with capitals shifting here and there according to rises and falls of dynasties. Regional accents naturally developed into dialects.

What defined the unity of Chineseness in ancient times began with the common Chinese script, codified around the Shang dynasty between 3 to 4 thousand years ago. So that, wherever one was in China, what accent or dialect one spoke, everyone could understand each other in writing. That gave rise to the importance of literacy in Chinese civilisation. The word for civilisation in Chinese actually means literacy (文明),the antonym of illiteracy (文盲).

If one has watched documentaries and news featuring China's leaders from Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai to Deng Xiao Ping to today's Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, which of them speaks Mandarin without some dialectal accents, perhaps so heavily accented and dialectally modified that Hanyu Pinyin-educated generation can only understand partially at best.

MM Lee K.Y. said speaking modern Mandarin is the way to reach 1.3 billion Chinese. What for, if reaching is only superficial communication? If you're in HK or Guangdong, speaking Cantonese will surely get you endearing mileage, ditto speaking Hokkien in Taiwan or Fujian. And it's easier to earn endearing mileage in these places (which are already huge enough with hundreds of millions and plentiful opportunities) than in other provinces or territories of China. In Singapore, our ancestral immigrants already brought with them the priceless heritage of the dialects. Why lose it?

I agree with MM Lee that learning multiple languages can overload the capacity of the mind. Lack of use after learning will cause one to lose it, along with the time and effort spent on acquiring it. However, learning a dialect, especially mother-tongue dialect, alongside Mandarin isn't the same as learning two languages. The written script is the same and learning a dialect alongside Mandarin is killing two birds with one stone. Pick up another dialect with other friends and it's three birds.

 

[Ernie]

You may be right. So write in and tell HIM lah.

 

[cowbehcowbu]

The power of the chinese language,essentially a Han version, is a common set of WRITTEN words., which all chinese in china and worldwide can understand and adopted CONSISTENTLY and ONLY one adopted. Even the Koreans and Japanese use the Han words extensively in their legal ,constitutional,. academics..literatures..
In china,,,if one travel to different province and district..almost without exception..people of one locality always use their local dialet to communicate...they vonly use mandarin when communicate with people from other provinces or oversea chinese...
Mandarin was a northern dialet, just like the Cantonese, Hokkiens,Wu [ suzhou,] are very ancient languages...just that Mandarin was chosen as the common SPOKEN language.....
so to connect to the mainland chinese...the more dialet you know the better,,,one close the gap almost immediately if one start using the local dialect when dealing with chinese of that locality.........
ALMOST all mainland chinese who are educated can handle both their local dialect and mandarin proficiently...and NOW.. begin to master English..
Singapore chinese should be able to do the same and better by learning some Bahasa which is most needed when we go to our northern and southern neighbours....

 

[lancheowman]

The power of the chinese language,essentially a Han version, is a common set of WRITTEN words., which all chinese in china and worldwide can understand and adopted CONSISTENTLY and ONLY one adopted. Even the Koreans and Japanese use the Han words extensively in their legal ,constitutional,. academics..literatures..
In china,,,if one travel to different province and district..almost without exception..people of one locality always use their local dialet to communicate...they vonly use mandarin when communicate with people from other provinces or oversea chinese...
Mandarin was a northern dialet, just like the Cantonese, Hokkiens,Wu [ suzhou,] are very ancient languages...just that Mandarin was chosen as the common SPOKEN language.....
so to connect to the mainland chinese...the more dialet you know the better,,,one close the gap almost immediately if one start using the local dialect when dealing with chinese of that locality.........
ALMOST all mainland chinese who are educated can handle both their local dialect and mandarin proficiently...and NOW.. begin to master English..
Singapore chinese should be able to do the same and better by learning some Bahasa which is most needed when we go to our northern and southern neighbours....

the confucius' book of poems and the tang poems are written in old and middle chinese... reading them in mandarin is unpoetic esp. confucius's poems. dialects like hokkien and cantonese holds the key to reconstructing and understanding old and middle chinese and hence the rich culutral heritage of confucius' days and medieval china