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"It’s not every day that Singaporeans consider crossing an international border to hear their own ancestral language.
Yet that is exactly what some are planning to do.
The surprise Chinese blockbuster Dear You, which traces the journey of a Teochew migrant to South-east Asia, has arrived in Singapore. But while audiences in Johor Bahru can watch it in its original Teochew, Singapore audiences are mostly getting a Mandarin-dubbed version instead. The original Teochew cut is confined to a handful of special screenings, all of which sold out almost immediately.
The film has inadvertently reopened a debate on one of Singapore’s oldest cultural trade-offs: what we gained from the Speak Mandarin Campaign, and what it cost us.
Launched in 1979 by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the policy rode on the rationale that the Hokkiens, Cantonese, Teochews, Hainanese and Hakkas needed a common language to bind them. Lee argued that children were already learning English and Mandarin in school and that adding dialects into the mix was simply too much.
On its own terms, the campaign could be counted as a success.
Almost every Chinese Singaporean today can speak some Mandarin. Whether our bilingual policy has produced a nation genuinely fluent in two languages, rather than moderately competent in both - or equally mediocre in each, depending on whom you ask — is a different debate altogether.
But dialects have largely retreated from daily life and many younger Singaporeans can no longer hold a conversation with their grandparents in the language those grandparents are most comfortable in.
In 1980, more than three-quarters of Chinese households spoke a dialect as their main language. By 2020, fewer than one in 10 did.
Mission Accomplished?
The campaign has achieved what it set out to achieve. So what purpose does this policy still serve?
The official explanation for restricting commercial screenings of full-length dialect films remains tied to promoting Mandarin among Chinese Singaporeans. Yet nearly half a century after the campaign began, Mandarin hardly looks like an endangered language in need of protection from Teochew or any other dialect.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2015/05/singapore-education-news-updates.html
Yet that is exactly what some are planning to do.
The surprise Chinese blockbuster Dear You, which traces the journey of a Teochew migrant to South-east Asia, has arrived in Singapore. But while audiences in Johor Bahru can watch it in its original Teochew, Singapore audiences are mostly getting a Mandarin-dubbed version instead. The original Teochew cut is confined to a handful of special screenings, all of which sold out almost immediately.
The film has inadvertently reopened a debate on one of Singapore’s oldest cultural trade-offs: what we gained from the Speak Mandarin Campaign, and what it cost us.
Launched in 1979 by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the policy rode on the rationale that the Hokkiens, Cantonese, Teochews, Hainanese and Hakkas needed a common language to bind them. Lee argued that children were already learning English and Mandarin in school and that adding dialects into the mix was simply too much.
On its own terms, the campaign could be counted as a success.
Almost every Chinese Singaporean today can speak some Mandarin. Whether our bilingual policy has produced a nation genuinely fluent in two languages, rather than moderately competent in both - or equally mediocre in each, depending on whom you ask — is a different debate altogether.
But dialects have largely retreated from daily life and many younger Singaporeans can no longer hold a conversation with their grandparents in the language those grandparents are most comfortable in.
In 1980, more than three-quarters of Chinese households spoke a dialect as their main language. By 2020, fewer than one in 10 did.
Mission Accomplished?
The campaign has achieved what it set out to achieve. So what purpose does this policy still serve?
The official explanation for restricting commercial screenings of full-length dialect films remains tied to promoting Mandarin among Chinese Singaporeans. Yet nearly half a century after the campaign began, Mandarin hardly looks like an endangered language in need of protection from Teochew or any other dialect.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2015/05/singapore-education-news-updates.html
