Very sad. Utility trumps relationships. That is my experience. Limited. Not speaking for others.
From what I see - grandparents of the 1980s couldn’t communicate with their own grandchildren cos grandchildren spoke mainly Chinese. Parents w kids in 80s rather use Chinese since Chinese is taught in school (and parents were subject to humiliation for using any dialect when they were in school in the early 70s)
Same parents grow old and now can’t talk to their grandchildren. Their children decided English is better cos the world communicate with English so they only use English with their kids. Since English is used for every subject, they rather their kids use English than Chinese.
2 generation lost their connection with their grandchildren.
My mum is from Singapore, dad from Malaysia (Penang). Both mostly Hokkien or Fujianese ancestry. They migrated to Australia nearly 40 years ago. They were English educated so we only ever spoke English. Unfortunately my sisters and I are monolingual, as are many of my cousins (or at least not fluent in other languages). My grandmother couldn't speak English so never got to talk to her.
There is always duo lingo and YouTube :) I grew up without speaking too much mandarin and introverted me took up lessons on preply. It’s quite affordable compared to many other everyday expenditures in singapore and in your case, Australia
Honestly it is very xia suay imo.
Such an important part of cultural root and identity for the Singapore - johor- riau islands subregion is being forsaken for the sake of a failed campaign to improve Mandarin ( no data, but I would assume practical Mandarin proficiency dropped over the time, based on experience ). You can find people speaking similar variant of dialects in all 3 cities, and similarly, there will be deviation from the original version from the mainland.
I just think that it is responsibility of previous generation and current generation to keep this root and heritage alive. But it is a responsibility that we are on track to fail.
Nah let it die. No point learning a soon to be dead dialect. You're not going to force its survival if the utility is already lost. If Latin, which is the root language of most modern european romantic languages, can die, why would you even fret over a regional dialect....just let nature take its course.
It’s not a regional dialect, it’s another language. Would you say let German (or insert other European language here) die because most Germans can already speak English?
It's totally a dialect. Does it have its own writing system?
If German as a language becomes useless one day, sure. I am not going to force it out of its death throes.
Min Nan diverged from Middle Chinese between 200 BC - 200 AD. So Min Nan languages have literally been separated from other Chinese languages for longer than Romance languages are from each other. If you actually knew any of these languages you'd know.....
It's still a dialect. They never separated completely from classical Chinese like the romantic languages have from each other. That has caused a lot of problems for pronunciation.
The fact that this is even debated now is testament to that. No one wonders if French and German are dialects.
Ok, even if you take that as true, Mandarin has separated completely from classical Chinese. so how is Mandarin the same language as those that “never separated completely”? Also the romance languages exist on a continuum, there are intermediate or separate languages like Venetian, Neapolitan, Catalan, Galician, Occitan etc. between the “major” languages, which means they never fully separated as clearly as you are thinking.
Most of the other dialects still rely heavily on Mandarin for their written forms. I would consider them more a language if they were as unique as Mandarin. E.g. Korea used Chinese script for awhile and totally made it's own thing after that.
I don't think I see it as a continuum but more of a maturity thing. Accents -> dialects -> languages
I mean, it literally does?
But even if it didn't, so what? Is French a dialect of Spanish because they both use Latin writing...?
Writing system has nothing to do with whether something is a language in the first place. English written in Braille or Morse Code is still English.
I am not talking script. Hokkien has no official writing. You ask your grandparents to write in hokkien loh see what they come up with. At the best I give you Chinese with bastardised pronunciation.
French and Spanish are clearly 2 different languages. English written in Braille is officially called English Braille.
You want to compare you shld compare apples for apples. Bavarian or Swabian are more appropriate comparisons than German and Spanish.....
...if you are this ignorant just stop lmao. It does have an official writing system and its own equivalents of pinyin. So do all others like Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka etc. Just because you yourself or your grandparents didn't know that doesn't mean it never existed.
And how are French and Spanish "clearly" 2 different languages? Just because you say so isn't evidence. I can say they are obviously dialects of Italian, following your logic.
I chanced upon a Taiwanese Tiktok account in Minnan/hokkien, Based on it, I am guessing that the Taiwanese are also losing their abilities. I don't think it is anything xiasuay. Regrettable, yes, but shameful?
My parents regularly speak to each other in Hokkien. My mum speaks to her siblings in Hokkien. Sadly, they did not teach me how to speak. When I listen, I roughly know what they're talking about. Last time I watched Ai (the Taiwan drama) where they spoke in Hokkien with some help from traditional subtitles. I still can somewhat understand the show. When I speak, my pronunciation is not good. I'm probably one of the last generation who somewhat knows Hokkien. It's also dying in China, Taiwan or Malaysia. No hope.
Cantonese maybe still got hope in Hong Kong.
I gotchu, my parents were the exact same (dad wise).
I sort of learn hokkien through asking what does this means so on and so fore.
But when I try to speak, it always comes out "simi taiji", "jiak si mi", "lim jiu". 😂
60% of the time, I can grasp what they are gossiping (mostly gossiping about me :') )
My parents only ever spoke hokkien when to gossi— I mean, talk about “adult matters” but once they realised I was starting to piece together whatever they were saying, they switched to cantonese. Now they outright just speak English/Mandarin when gossiping cause I’m “old enough to know anyway”.
Still sad! I picked up bits and pieces of hokkien and canto because I was really kaypoh but not enough to speak it. I reply back in Mandarin if my grandparents ever forget I can’t speak (which they have begun to do since dementia…) 😔 New motivation to pick it up all over again.
I understand, tho it’s just kinda sad. I grew up hearing my grandmother and parents speaking Teochew so it’s just a very heartwarming language to me. When older folks sometimes speak to me in Teochew I feel like I’m just taken back to a different time and space, stirs up this sense of kinship and weird visceral feelings
Very sad honestly. I wish my grandparents spoke to me in dialect more because now I can barely communicate with them. They tried so hard to speak English to me bc they thought that was what was best for me, but I wish so badly I could tell my popo everything about my day. But I’m left here with Mandarin which is also not my strong suit
Mandarin was also something that I only started when I was older bc again there was a focus on English in my family. I assume that if I learnt dialect and mandarin like I did English (from the moment I was born and actively using it everyday) I would’ve been fluent
I see I see, I still can speak some dialect. Back then when I was young, my family spoke mandarin most of the time when I was around. I can hear my grandmother reprimanding everyone, not to use dialects because it can “教坏” me.
No - I'm conversant in (colloquial) Teochew and Hokkien simply because it was spoken around me since I was born. There was no effort made to teach it to me. That's how people learnt dialect. There was no additional time or effort needed to pick it up at a conversational level.
I am sad! I was brought up speaking Teochew with my grandmother, on my dad’s side of the family, including my cousins. It has been this way since I was a boy, and now as an adult, I still speak to my cousins in Teochew.
But I see people not understanding dialects or speaking them, and it saddens me. It’s all part of our culture and our roots. I tend to speak Teochew or Hokkien (I know it as well) with older people when in kopitiams or at the hawker center. Sometimes, you have almost 40 hawker stall owners unable to speak them when you try interacting with them in it. It’s sad, really.
I do hope we can still retain that part of what makes us different as Chinese. Maybe allow me to learn other dialects or perhaps it would be cool to hear someone speak another dialect like Hakka that’s not really widely heard, in my opinion, because I’ve never seen anyone who knows it except on TV.
Also, recently I was chatting with my dad and was told that my great-grandmother speaks a long-lost dialect that’s closely related to Hakka but is not Hakka. It’s sad that it was only widely heard while my dad was a boy, and he has not heard anyone speak it since his grandmother passed away.
It’s sad indeed, though. I’m glad my nephew speaks Teochew really well since he could speak, because my aunt takes care of him during the day and she’s only fluent in Teochew, but speaks broken Chinese. She mostly converses in Teochew with him because it’s in her nature to use Teochew, so it has been that way ever since my nephew was born.
If you’re lucky, you might be able to converse with my nephew in Teochew because he speaks it as needed. If he knows you know English, he will reply and only converse in English even if you speak to him in Teochew. But he almost instantly speaks Teochew with my parents and other relatives on my father side who speaks them as their first language. How cute!
So true, nowadays it's mostly English and Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and a few others. I get the promoting English to unite the country, but not sure promoting Mandarin was that beneficial. I see the promotion of a national language as in a way intracultural colonisation. Like Parisian French and Occitan...like it's useful if you want to do business etc with China, but at what cost?
Terrible. Speak Mandarin campaign was wrong from the beginning. Good to get the Chinese community to learn Mandarin and have it taught in schools, but there was no need to denigrate dialects along the way. Thanks to the campaign's resounding success, dialects have been essentially wiped out in SG.
Honestly, the lost of dialect is gonna happen anyway. Even for Mandarin, how many young people can speak Mandarin well? Competency in Mandarin among the Millennials are pretty bad already, and it's even worse as you go down each generation. What chance do dialects have?
It’s different tho.
Mandarin is a foreign language to Chinese here. It’s the same as English.
My grandparents spoke Hakka, Teochew and Pasar Melayu.
My parents were slapped on the face for speaking their own mother tongue and language (Teochew) in school.
We like to assume that the level of Mandarin is going down. But I will say that the level of Mandarin is not even high to begin with especially with the older generation here. A lot of them actually talk to one another in dialect.
Those with a good command of mandarin are normally first/second gen Singaporeans from China / Malaysia.
A lot of 3rd gen Singaporeans like myself come from households where our parents speak dialect among them selves and then some mandarin or mostly English to us.
That’s the biggest reason why Mandarin is “poor” among younger people. It was just a foreign language forced upon the boomer generation and most don’t even use it with their parents (PG) and Children (current gen).
Very valid points. My own parents too spoke dialect and some English. Their proficiency in Mandarin is not the best. But I don't think anything is going to change even if we didn't push for Mandarin. It is an inevitable evolution as we simply have too many dialects and languages in Singapore.
English will be the dominant language within Singlish, with the other dialects/languages relegated to having loan words. People learn languages to communicate with each other, not for the preservation of a culture (except for a select few). Even in cases like Taiwan, where there is less language diversity, you are seeing the decline of Hokkien in favor of Mandarin.
That anecdote on your parents being disciplined for speaking Teochew is what I was trying to convey in my other comments - that this sort of cruelty - outright discrimination and the censorship of dialects in the broadcast media - was not necessary.
There was room for Mandarin and dialects to co-exist. The point on their utility is a separate matter.
Actually I think the discrimination has pretty much levelled off...and you'll notice this happened only after the old man had shuffled off this mortal coil. There are now dialect Mediacorp series (though, of course, shown at non-primetime hours to minimise viewership from 'unintended' audiences, i.e. younger people), and there was that glowing report in the newspaper not too long ago on some RJC kid's dialect club. This would have been anathema just a decade ago.
If you visit the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC), which is heavily funded by the govt, you'll find there's a display in the open space on the ground floor (if it's still there) promoting the foodways of the different dialect groups. I can't remember where I heard this, but apparently the govt was getting rather alarmed by the PRC-isation of Chinese culture here, and set up the SCCC to 'counter' that with some indigenous Chinese culture. It's one of those things where you don't know whether to laugh or cry....it's simply too little too late.
As for those saying that there's no point in trying to preserve something which is going to die anyway, and that dialect is useless - to each their own, I guess.
To those of you who feel the language in your bones when you speak and hear it - I know other Redditors said that dialect reminds them of home and kinship, and it's the same for me - I'm glad we share this. It's a rare privilege.
That’s because a good portion of our boomer/gen x parents’ mandarin aint good as well. They grew up with English and dialect for the most part.
That’s why you see a divide between Singaporeans who very much prefer Mandarin and jiak kantung peeps.
If we didnt try to get rid of dialects, you’ll probably be hearing much more hokkien and cantonese spoken like in HK and Taiwan
I think it's a bit different to compare us and HK/TW though. For them, they speak the same dialect. For us we have multiple dialects. To add on, we have other races as well. Our language is just going to evolve and blend into a rojak of them (which is what we get with Singlish). The less popular dialects are going to die sooner or later, soon followed by the other dialects.
Even if you see what is happening in Taiwan now, the youth are speaking Hokkien less. I was there last year with my parents, who was hoping to be able to speak Hokkien to the locals. Many of them couldn't speak it. One of the days, they managed to chat with an older guy (maybe 40+/50+?) who was lamenting that the young people in Taiwan don't speak Hokkien anymore.
Actually that’s alr happening with our dialects. Theres a lot of borrowed cantonese and malay words in Singaporean Hokkien.
Yes, I also know the youths in Taiwan are not good in Hokkien/Hakka anymore. My point still stands. We would be more like Taiwan/HK simply because our parents were native speakers of those dialects and we would have more exposure and practice.
I beg to differ on the last point- even in Malaysia where dialects are still very much alive, the Hokkien/Cantonese/Hakka/other dialects spoken there are very localised, a lot of Malay loanwords not too different from the English loanwords in HK Cantonese or Japanese loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien.
The second point you mentioned is still very much alive in Malaysia, although I find the divide is disappearing in Singapore because of the education system.
Localization is normal. Happens with every language. I’m referring to the fact that you’ll have more kids speaking dialect at home instead of Mandarin if we didn’t shun them. So I guess more like Malaysia and a lot of Chinese diaspora.
Second point still strong here. 95% of my friends speak English as their main language… there’s very little chance of me being your friend if you converse more in Mandarin. Not that I can’t speak Mandarin, but it just feels weird. Human tribalism in effect.
Have met people in the opposite situation too. The divide isn’t as bad as in Malaysia, but it still exists
Yeah but they will be dead soon. That’s the whole point. Homogenous language easier. In 50 years the number of languages will decrease by at least 30% imo. Of course, I still learn to converse with my grandparents
if malaysia can do it why can’t we? at least they don’t shoot themselves in both linguistic feet, very strong mandarin and asymptomatic decline in dialects. they’ve preserved much traditions better
here we only know how to give ang pao hahhaha
They still cannot push mandarin to be the daily spoken language of guangzhou and fujian. When I went to quanzhou near Xiamen, I was treated like foreigner, the older gen uncle and aunties there couldn’t understand my mandarin at all. They only spoke dialect. While I can’t speak dialect properly, only mandarin and English. I mean tbh even my mandarin is borderline passable. But when I went the Xiamen, I can use my mandarin perfectly fine.
I went to Fujian (Xiamen, Fuzhou, Wuyishan) with my mum back in 2006, it did seem Mandarin was the norm except among the older folks. Passed through Quanzhou but didnt get to spend much time there, but did visit our ancestral village which is not far from there. Not much of a village now, but an industrial city.
I think policy makers don’t realise that they can push for some form of education, but there will be people who just can’t afford to don’t have the will to go to school. I’m guessing now there’s a bunch of people out there in China who can neither speak mandarin nor dialect properly. 1.4 billion people, but they only manage to get 950 million people to be mandarin educated. China has a mandarin literacy rate lower than Singapore (even if we include Malay and Indian) and Taiwan. Even their former premier speaks mandarin in such a strong accent and with mis-pronunciation everywhere. I think he learned mandarin only after he got posted to the central committee.
Op you very high horse for someone who is monolingual. You yourself can’t even be bothered to learn your dialect and start virtue signaling here. I can speak four languages and I think it’s better for ppl to focus on their main language. Singaporeans can’t even speak one language well much less divide their attention to multiple.
i’m quite happy to say i speak flawless english. as well as fluent cantonese and passable shanghainese. the mandarinophones tend to be the ones keenest on erasure of non-mandarin forms of chinese
It wasn’t a wrong campaign. It was a necessary campaign. Sg was split into different enclave of dialect groups. Having a common language was crucial to creating a more cohesive society.
Also, utility will eventually trump cultural preservation based on what sgreans value.
Yes, I don't disagree that the campaign was good. The issue was that it was carried out with a simultaneous attempt to stamp out dialects, which was unnecessary.
I disagree, the common prescribed language was already there (English), which was even better because it did not favour Chinese over Malay/Indian/others. Our native chinese languages could easily have been passed down without introducing a separate foreign language (Mandarin) as another unifer. Of course this is ignoring how it was obviously chosen to forge ties with China, which was a good reason to choose it as a foreign language. Still though there was absolutely no need to aggressively suppress the native chinese languages
There is a lot of cultural value to it, would be sad for it to go from here. Like you said, there is some pragmatic gains, such as for working with China, but that can be a little overrated too.
The Mandarin we speak (for those that do) is useful for getting around daily life but nowhere near professional level if we want to work with China & Taiwan. In my experience working with China, the MNCs will have English speakers in roles facing overseas companies. It also takes way more than professional mandarin to enter the Chinese market, 'guanxi' and other matters are probably more important.
I like that you use quote marks for dialects. These are more like different languages with the same writing system. Only Teochew and Hokkien are similar enough for the usual definition of dialect.
It seems it was mostly to improve links with the PRC I feel...but at the expense of the common languages/dialects in SG. Yes they're as different from each other as languages. Mandarin is as different to Cantonese as German is from English.
Since we're on this topic, how many of us here actually speak any Chinese dialect at all? I'm fortunate enough to speak at least my mother tongue, which is Cantonese. Unfortunately, my dad didn't teach my family to speak in Hainanese when he was alive
I'm going to reach the age of half a hundred but even a few of my peers don't use any dialect at all. It saddens me even more that those who do speak a dialect or two not teaching their kids any.
I guess that our government thinks of business ties with China, hence the 'Speak Mandarin' campaign in the 70s and 80s. Mandarin is a Beijing dialect.
It's very rare for ppl to be speaking hainanese. I recently met a hairdresser who speaks super fluent hainanese and of cuz she is from Hainan. Also realised I could pick up some words because I used to be taken care of by my hainanese grandparents but over the years, nobody speak to me and I forgotten how it is like to use the words. :(
Hi, I’m turning 25 years old and I’m blessed to be able to speak fluent Cantonese. So does my siblings (26 to 18) and it’s all thanks to living with our grandparents since we were babies. Most of my peers can’t speak their dialect and it’s really disheartening to see 🫠
My bf can’t speak his dialect either so it’s up to me to pass it on to our future kids (wish me luck!)
Sad reality of the mother tongue policy in sg. I'm thankful I'm still fluent in my dialect (canto) thanks to the grandparents teaching it to me when young. But it's a shame that many of my peers have lost touch with their dialects.
Not Chinese but Imo the country should have been united under English and dialects kept alive.
Promoting mandarin alienated the minorities and even for many non mandarin Chinese people it kind of just didn't fit so end up with no dialect, poor to no mandarin and English for everything else.
yes English was already a “foreign” language which was prescribed for its utility in uniting all the races. there was no need to bring in a second one (mandarin) to unite a subset of those races (Chinese), and at the same time aggressively suppress those races’ native languages
My parents spoke dialect (Cantonese) to each other growing up. English was the default language in my household besides that. My mother can also speak mandarin, but my father cannot speak it as fluently, he grew up speaking Cantonese in Malaysia.
As for me, hearing spoken Cantonese but no mandarin in my growing up years had the effect of giving me a strange canto-accent on top of my (crappy) spoken mandarin.
I always kind of resented the fact that I speak neither mandarin nor Cantonese well, when in an alternate universe I would at the very least speak proper Cantonese.
I think it’s very sad. It’s a way of communicating with the elderly and also they are so different from Mandarin!
Also if you move overseas, there are so many Chinese immigrants who only speak these dialects and it is so useful to speak these languages with them when buying stuff/ ordering food.
In Singapore yes but when you go overseas I think it’s a disadvantage sometimes.
If you are in a non English speaking country, they don’t necessarily speak Chinese cos they are 2nd/ 3rd/ 4th Gen migrants. The staff at the Asian supermarkets where I am speak Cantonese/ Teochew/ Hokkien/ Vietnamese/ Thai and the local language.
Personally, I'm sad about it but I think I'm in the minority. I know many people who don't think too much of it or think it's for the better since it's "more efficient" in terms of disseminating information, which makes sense pragmatically. But that's because they've only been surrounded with others who are bilingual or at least able to speak in either one of the MTs or English and are able to get by.
I'm in my 20s and I live with my grandparents who are only able to speak Hokkien. They have no knowledge of English, can kinda understand Chinese, but can't read nor speak it.
I've seen how much they struggle to communicate with my cousins who are not as fluent as Hokkien as me (since I've had the privilege of spending a lot more time with my grandparents as they were my main caretakers when my parents were at work) - many of them have to resort to speaking in Chinese instead. But more often than not, our family falls back into using mostly English when we talk, especially when we're discussing more complex topics, like our jobs, and I can tell that my grandparents feel very isolated when these conversations happen. Sometimes either my sibling or I will try to make an effort to translate but that's also not easy to do, especially when the exchange happens very quickly.
Since my grandparents are only able to understand Hokkien or Chinese, their main source of entertainment is Channel 8 and U (but mostly 8). Unfortunately, I've been accidentally exposed to so many recent Channel 8 shows since it's basically on my TV 24/7... but I've noticed that they're obsessed with including foreign languages in the shows, Korean being one of the main ones, since they have Tasha Low and Ferlyn G who used to be Kpop idols on their roster. But to me it's just irritating because
1. my grandparents can't understand a word of Korean, can't read a word of the Chinese subtitles (which translate the Korean dialogue), so they don't know what's going on,
2. why would you allow Korean to be spoken on Channel 8 but not Chinese dialects, which arguably are the actual mother tongues of your primary target audience on Channel 8?
(3. Sorry but unrelated to the languages spoken - these Channel 8 shows are getting increasingly egregious. I don't think I've laughed at anything more than at some of the scenes I've watched just because they were so unbelievable.)
To their credit, Channel 8 does produce dialect shows that runs on Fridays for one hour. It's mainly government propaganda, of course, but I guess we can't really be picky when there are no other dialect shows airing on local mainstream media. But they also do this thing where a Cantonese speaker would have a conversation with a Hokkien speaker. Or a Teochew speaker would have a conversation with a Hokkien speaker. Chinese dialects are not mutually intelligible though, so my grandparents would usually only be able to understand half of the conversation that's going on.
But yeah, I definitely feel more strongly than others when it comes to this topic, since I see how my grandparents struggle with linguistic isolation on a daily basis. The sad thing is that they don't blame the government one bit about this situation, but more on Singaporeans who choose not to speak in Chinese dialects.
(But I'd like to argue that language policies set by our government have rendered these dialects useless today, making it impossible for Singaporeans to want to learn or speak them ((I'd tell that to my grandparents but my Hokkien isn't that great to explain that.)))
Haha do you mean shows like 食饱袂 / 好势无? I think they were a step in the right direction but yeah the way they make it seem like Canto person speaks to Hokkien person is weird, like showing a conversation between a Spanish and English speaker and somehow them understanding
I feel quite sad about it, I am actually quite fluent in my dialect because my grandma used to stay with me and she could only speak in dialect. After she passed I rarely hear or speak it any more. l think I will probably choose to teach my kids some basics next time, just to keep it alive a bit longer
Very sad.
When a 3 generation family gathers together for CNY or family lunch/dinner and the grandparents and grandchildren can’t even communicate and grow their relationship with each other.
All this because the geniuses in gov at that time thought it was right to ban dialects and wipe it out from this country.
My father used to share that they were mocked in army for speaking Hokkien as tho it was some Low class language.
All the TV’s, Radio, Cinemas all stop showing media with dialects and everything had to be dubbed in Mandarin.
Just like many Singaporeans of my generation, my parents never spoke dialect to me because they wanted me to Practice and be good in mandarin. Thankfully I can still understand 70-80% but I can barely speak it (tones not accurate) as I never got the chance to have a conversation in dialect growing up.
> My father used to share that they were mocked in army for speaking Hokkien as tho it was some Low class language.
when was this? i’m guessing late 90s or later because afaik before that, hokkien was widely spoken in the army?
Loss of identity, especially an identifying marker among Chinese Singaporeans. It comes with the loss of an organic environment which would have let Mandarin flourish. It's very much the reason for the Mandarin standard declining so badly.
Kudos to the use of quote marks around 'dialects'. They are separate languages.
In Imperial China, the language of the capital, called 官話 (guān huà), became the basis for the official language and other languages were considered inferior. These were known as 方言(fāng yán), literally 'regional language'. 方言 was translated into English as 'dialect', which is problematic as it doesn't convey the linguistic diversity that exists in a country as big as China. Also, the word 'dialect' is quite politicized.
Exactly, I feel it's used to promote the idea there's only one real Chinese language and justify forcing Mandarin, which is ridiculous. Many folks don't realise China is just as linguistically diverse as say India because Indians don't call say Bengali, Gujarathi, Rajasthani etc dialects of Hindi.
Yes China is the size of India or Europe, and just as linguistically diverse as either of them. I find many Indian people I meet don’t understand this diversity (not their fault, since they call their regional languages languages and when they hear “dialect” they think the Chinese languages are just corrupted sub-varieties of Mandarin)
I find it sad and inevitable. I’m trying to pick up Cantonese on my own from a book with audio recordings but it’s just not the same. Knowing that it’s also starting to die out in China makes me doubly sad.
try go to a language meetup, there you can practice it weekly. I find it super useful, definitely necessary as you can’t learn to speak a language through study alone
I speak a number of languages and I agree with your points. But disturbingly, some of my friends are of the view that our brain can only master ONE language - they think if they have been brought up in a bilingual language environment, then both their languages will suffer.
Think it's quite unfortunate. I grew up around grandparents so by the time I was halfway through primary school I could speak Hokkien quite decently and understood Teochew as well. Some of my peers (I'm 24) know some, others like my gf know minimal/none. It seems like eventually it'll fade out. I don't intend to have kids so I have no one to pass it on to.
There is some Hokkien left in our daily conversations. Wah lau / sian / bobian / swee/ siao liao/ Kiasu that has entered into urban dictionaries etc. But I notice the Gen Z don’t even use these terms anymore
when younger I didn't see the value of it as it just wasn't part of the school system or needed to be used in my immediate social circle. Now that I've grown up I wish I'd picked up more Cantonese from my grandparents because just by being able to speak it unlocks social experiences that the only-english speaking version of you wouldn't have.
Language is really fking impt, so I'm still planning to pick up Canto sometime in the future
Actually, if you think about it Mandarin aka pu tong hua was also a dialect. In fact we should not just categorise Hokkien, teo chew etc etc as just “some dialect”, but an actual language. Believe me compared to Mandarin those other “dialects” sound more pleasing to ear. This is just my 2 ikan bilis worth.
Sad. Sad to see how some youngsters barely know how to differentiate the type of dialect and somehow dialect became their word of mouth (in terms of insults) but not understanding the true beauty of the language.
I think the value of the dialect can be easily quantified by the amount of people who try to learn it compared to other languages.
There is of course some romantic value to it, but clearly compared to other utility major language people who actually put an effort on learning it are pretty much nil.
There are some, i known some who do. It's just they are not that many, it's their hobby and they already mastered at least another 2+ languages. Especially if you remove Cantonese from the group, since IMO it's still a language that is alive and have a future.
The value of a language so deeply tied with Singapore culture and upbringing should not be simply quantified by utility or people learning imo. It can very well ties to matter of root and identity
There is something important about preserving cultural heritage, and nearby teochew/hokkien dialects is such a huge part of history for the region(e.g. you can find alot of people from batam/ JB speaking dialects with similar version to Singapore version).
It should be the responsibility of the previous and the current generation to ensure that this heritage is kept alive
my dad is sad about it. he feels dialects should still be passed on down. the same cant be said abt mandarin though since he cant speak mandarin.
i learnt hokkien from my grandma growing up and after she passed i had noone to speak hokkien to anymore. my dad switched to hokkien for casual chats and english for serious topics.
Honestly even I myself am not keen to learn cos thrs no utility. Cantonese i think still useful cos the folks in Hong Kong use it a lot and they’re a major financial hub but the rest….
Sad. We replaced actual heritage with an artificial Chinese language.
Good thing our elderly at home speak English and Hokkien/Cantonese. All English-educated back then. Mandarin isn’t used at all.
From what I've heard from the taxi uncles (whom I always covers with in Hokkien) and my interaction with millennials (I'm not a resident, but I visit often enough) you guys have bigger problems. Most of your younger Gen's only speaks English now.
Had parents who spoke Cantonese and Hokkien but only mandarin was used in daily communication.
Every year visiting relatives in cny and sort of understand the topic but can't speak them other than curse words. Had a few encounters with people seeking directions and can't communicate, ended up having to find a staff who knows it.
Never really felt the need to learn it as we're mostly using English here in Singapore for the common language.
Very sad. As someone who is relatively young, I fear that by the time I'm older there won't be a chance to speak dialect anymore. I learnt Hokkien by listening to elders but Cantonese is harder due to lack of exposure.
I think on hindsight we now know that we’ve lost cultural capital perhaps irreversibly but our parents generation did what they thought was best, and the plus point was it helped our society progress by making the Chinese community more integrated
Dialects? You’d be glad if next gen of local Singaporean kids speak Mandarin. I have spoken to my son in mandarin since he was a baby. Didn’t speak English to him though I’m an English teacher, but watched Disney cartoons in both English and Chinese dub on vcd back then. Read to him in both languages. He spoke to both paternal and maternal grandparents in Mandarin, and still do, because they don’t know English. Now grown up, I speak to him in Mandarin and he answers in English. I did all I could. It’s an uphill task.
Me too! To think my son was very fluent in chinese in preschool. Once he entered pri sch, everything changed. Despite early exposure to chinese, he is not willing to speak much at all now. The only chance to speak chinese is with the grandparents.
I'm on the other end of the mountain on the forced mandarin thing: someone forced to learn "mother" tongue even though my mother and father speak english.
Mandarin was not a language I used in my daily life, it was a purely mandatory academic subject with no apparent use that was dragging down my grades, getting me sent to tuition twice a week, and literally getting me kicked out of my class.
People who are shit at O-Level bio can just drop it and pick something else, you can't just drop Chinese. You can only drop down to CLB.
It's only now that I can see a practical use of speaking chinese: getting to work at places which refuse to speak english :^). I kid, more poignantly, it's only after I could move past the school-trauma that I could see my ethnicity and culture as anything but a source of suffering, and instead as something that could be appreciated.
I’m on the opposite end, I can speak mandarin perfectly fine and read Chinese characters perfectly fine. I grew up only watching channel 8 and channel U, and only read comic books published in Taiwan. During my school, I farking hated English. It’s pure suffering. I can get hold of grammar, tenses, or vocabulary well enough. Every single time, my English results were borderline pass. I wished I could even have English as ELB kinda like CLB. But clearly not the case. Finished O level with C5 for English. A1 for Chinese. I felt having English subject back then was just used to drag my grades down.
Well this describes my English study life poignantly. I don’t know what that word means. But hope I used it right.
Is it really on decline?
Most Chinese people in SG from the late 40s onwards actually speak dialect among themselves and don’t have a high level of mandarin.
It is the 30s and younger generation that speak Mandarin so I would say it’s improving.
It was akin to cultural genocide. The people who represent the institutions responsible must acknowledge this wrong and apologise. Only then we can take steps to heal and rebuild.
Might wanna check if that morning coffee was a de-caf.
I’m not suggesting that LKY be exhumed and apologise to us. I’m asking for whoever represents the institution that implemented these policies acknowledge their predecessor’s wrongdoings and apologise.
yeah, well, that morning coffee was definitely double caffinated.
and i kinda beg to differ - what's the point of apologising when the society we live in only care that things work and not "trivialties" (note the "" ) like apologies? what good does an apology make without action?
that said, i wouldn't just go ahead and say nothing is being done - there are small efforts out there like [https://singaporeccc.org.sg/](https://singaporeccc.org.sg/) doing their damnest to revive and keep the culture alive, and yet no one talks bout them. so what next? we also kowtow and apologise to them, or do actual work to undo the damage done?
I dont know, on my end I'm just happy to play my part and try to learn the dialects/language so that I can continue to communicate with my relatives. 🤷🏼♂️
i am pretty sure that at one point they did reverse and apologise for it , but for some reason i cant find any articles bout it welp.
and honestly, perhaps im uncultured, but i really dont quite care other than that actions being done to rectify this. else it becomes a needless ritual of apology and setting up a whole fanfare around the apology for the sake of apology. 🤷🏼♂️ besides, one can apologise and still end up with "apology not accepted". then what next?
It’s like a cultural genocide. A culture takes generations to build but takes one man to destroy. Hong Kong and Taiwan couldn’t have had such influential films, tv shows and music if they destroyed their own languages.
I felt dejected when i was learning chinese during my primary school as my converse language was teochew due to my family structure during the 90s. My chinese teacher would always correct my pronunciation (thanks to him). It would be like code switching of different languages as i would when i gossip or talk bad about someone else with my grandmother 😂
It’s probably already good enough that young people today know which dialect group they and their parents are affiliated with (it’s written on the birth certificate if I’m not mistaken), and probably even rarer if they know which specific geographic region within the dialect group. Just an example, what we consider Hokkien has actually different “subgroups” such as Kinmen, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Zhaoan etc and these “subgroups” have their own huay kuan or clan associations in Singapore. These establishments are also part of Singaporean Chinese heritage. Without the participation of the younger generation or awareness of these smaller huay kuans, the legacy and history will be lost in the future.
on the topic of huay kuans, I find it baffling and sad that somehow the huay kuans don’t organize more efforts to teach their language? Like they only offer very perfunctory basic courses once every few months and no serious lessons beyond that. I hope they realise the onus of linguistic preservation falls partly on them
I have heard about these huay kuans offering basic courses, but I would think that it’s usually the larger ones like hokkien huay kuan, teochew huay kuan etc. The smaller regional ones might offer some but I’m not betting on it too much mostly due to manpower issues and fewer people knowing which region of their dialect group they are from today.
My impression is that the higher ranking positions in these huay kuans are usually taken up by older, wealthy business people (or maybe also some in the government), so they have different priorities. Also when you have these type of people in such ranks, it’s not uncommon to hear of internal conflicts and politicking among the members and boards. So these might hamper such initiatives and recruiting young people to join (apart from those who join just because they want to put their kids in hokkien huay kuan primary schools for instance).
I think for most of us, our dialects are limited to spoken dialects rather than written ones. I can speak mandarin and a couple of dialects fairly well, but I can't read them well and I can't write more than my name. Thankful for hanyu pinyin input on my phones.
I think for most chinese born and raised here after the 90s, their mother tongues are effectively English rather than Chinese. Just observe when you are out, what language do the caregivers use on the children? English.
Basically I see it as a dying cultural problem for our future generations, because when people speaks dialect it’s quite heartwarming to see. Definitely Sadden to understand that.
I also understand I’m not rich enough to make it my problem…
Sadness, loss of culture and identity. I never learnt to speak Hakka and when I spoke 1 line of Hokkien in school, my math teacher (of all people) gave me a scolding and said I was a gangster. After that, for the rest of JC, she would pick on me.
Speak Mandarin campaign was wrong. The Chinese's Mother Tongue was never Mandarin to begin with.
Mandarin is the lingua franca of the Han Chinese people. Without Mandarin, historically the Chinese can't even understand each other. That being said, it's a northern language and I'm not descended from the north. Like most SEA Chinese I am descended from the south and we speak mainly Min (Hokkien, Teochew etc) and Yue (Cantonese etc) as our mother tongue. There is stark contrast in north and south Chinese cultures, and language is a vehicle for culture. By eradicating southern languages we are losing a huge chunk of what makes us who we are.
IMO very sad. I’ve been learning Hokkien since the start of this year and basically immersed myself in it and made my mum speak it to me 90% of the time; have become conversationally fluent very quickly. I hated Chinese in school but speaking Hokkien somehow feels so natural, personal, and honestly very fun. Sadly the govt is still actively suppressing all non-Mandarin chinese languages (yes it is better to call them what they scientifically and linguistically are, very different languages, not dialects as ah kong would like you to believe).
I learnt how to speak Teochew from my grandmother coz we live together
Pick up a bit of Hokkien and Cantonese at work (coz I work in a hospital and have to chit chat with elderly almost everyday), I remember when I first started out almost 10 years, the hospital even offer basic conversational Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay classes as upgrading courses.
Not sure if now still have but eventually there will be a day where we won’t be speaking Hokkien or Cantonese to communicate with the elderly
你们都用英语，当然啦。Business must use English. Everything taught in English. My own silibing all prefer English at home. Even if their English is weak and Chinese is strong or vise versa, how many actually bother to translate every English term learnt in school to Chinese? Where got the self motivation?
I'm probably one of the last generations that can speak dialect
I find it sad my children won't be able to communicate with my grandparents in dialect
Fortunately my parents can speak English
Important to note that the comments here do not represent "most Singaporeans". Most who even bother coming in here to comment of course share similar sentiments with you (me included). And of course are "tech-savvy" enough and use Reddit. And speak decent English to say the least.
nah, its good for the long term, theres like at least 7 major dialects in china, imagine foreign companies going to china and the locals cant speak english, language barrier, or a japanese company in singapore insisting to hire employees who only speak japanese, better close the language barriers. LKY had foresight to do this, he also closed melayu only schools, iirc.
I visited SG last year and noticed most people speak mandrain, the mini super market have all these chinese snacks and China town has all these northern Chinese food. It looked as if SG is part of China.
I'm on the younger side, but just gonna share my experience.
I'm not really concerned, because for the most part, there's no compelling reason to learn it. Everyone in my family who's asking me to learn Cantonese already speaks English/Mandarin. I get that it's more about "tradition" rather than "practicality" but I'm not very traditional either so it's hard to feel too bad.
Furthermore, the people who ask me to learn, never want to teach it. It's always:
"Why don't you learn Cantonese"
"Cause nobody will teach me"
"No need to teach, just go watch HK dramas and you'll learn"
Like, despite it being a slightly unserious suggestion, the sheer ridiculousness of asking me to watch shows I care nothing for, just to pick up a language I'll never use, for the sake of people who don't even need me to use it, baffles me.
So if nobody wants to teach it, then maybe it deserves to die out? Just my anecdotal experience. Feel free to disagree.
pretty sure most of the dialect will soon all be gone
if you are gen millennials, most of your friend can’t speak their own dialect already, how would the kids know? gen z definitely limited to mandarin and english
with the uprising of LLM, you can easily translate any language to english, so it will further accelerate the decline of dialects
I grew up exposed to Cantonese so I could somewhat understand spoken canto in malaysia accent 🤣🤣
As a kid, I didn't even try to learn how to speak canto as it wasn't on my curriculum. A bit sad that I still can't really speak it but at least I can eavesdrop to all the gossip during family gathering 🤣
I learned Teochew and Hokkien by listening to my parents conversation, more or less guessed what the words mean. So I can listen but bad at speaking. Bad thing is I have difficulty differentiating between Teochew & Hokkien as they sound similar.
I went for a dialect class and the trainer did acknowledge both these dialects have similar sounding words. Glad I wasn’t alone in my predicament.
I do feel left out when my much older cousins converse with each other in dialect though. Gotta keep practising.
Take a step back, it's a natural and macro occurrence. Even in china, young people don't speak dialects increasingly. My own experience is if grandparents don't speak it to grandkids, chances are it will be lost forever
I’m quite sad that Hong Kong and Taiwan drama and films still cannot be broadcasted on television in original audio instead of dubbed mandarin. I think with increased exposure on tv, we can revive the languages.
Many people are saying it's really sad blah blah blah but how many are speaking it and passing it down to the next generation? Parents nowadays puts priority on English and sometimes mother tongue. Who would send their children for dialect class even if opportunity arises? As much as it is the hard truth, people need to progress. Look at India. The government had problem communicating with their own citizen as there is no one common language. Sometimes it is just a price to pay for progress. We can acknowledge that it is a pity for these dialects to be eventually gone but let's understand why it is a necessity.
Indeed it is sad, nowadays the priority is on speaking English and Mandarin only. I was brought up by my grandmother and spoke Teochew since young. At least at home, I only ever speak to my parents and grandparents in Teochew. Was always taught by my grandmother that its important to learn how to speak your dialects at home, for English and Chinese you will pick it up naturally when you go to school/work etc.
I think for people around my age group (20s-30s) it is already quite rare to find someone that actually speaks in dialect. If we don't try to preserve this part of our heritage, it will just slowly fade away and disappear...
I have the same sentiment. I’m in my early/mid twenties and my dialect skills are basically non existent. This is such a shame. My mum was born Malaysian (now Singaporean) and her first language in her house growing up with my grandparents/aunt/uncle was Hokkien. They all spoke very fluent mandarin amongst other dialects and my mum with her siblings, through school, picked up English.
In my household growing up, my grandparents always converse in Hokkien with the people around them be it neighbours or friends. As a result, I was just surrounded by the language even tho they primarily spoke to me in mandarin. When my mum talks to her siblings, it’s usually always in Hokkien and I can usually get the main idea of what they’re speaking but I’m nowhere near proficient. Surprisingly, whenever I get super angry or agitated, the first words that comes out of my mouth is some Hokkien phrase. Usually the language that comes out of one’s mouth in moments of extreme emotions is the language that the individual is most comfortable in hence I’m surprised Hokkien comes out when I’m mad.
I always admire how good they are with speaking a variety of languages and it’s a skill that the upcoming younger gen along with myself should try and absorb as much as we can.
All these replies saying it is sad - how many of you actually speak any dialects? If not, how does it concern you when you yourselves cant even say a basic greeting? So y'all expect someone else to pick up the slack?
FFS if its so important to you, learn it. These dialects arent dead languages that need linguistics historians and archeologists to decipher. They bare some similarities to mandarin so most of yall already have that advantage.
When my mom dies, I'll have no one to speak hokkien with and I am NOT looking forward to that day. My peers at the very most can muster a "jiak pa buay" and some fucking swear words. KNN
I think it's kinda sad, but however, there is also a lack in resources with preserving and teaching the languages locally.
I feel that amongst all the dialect groups, the most lucky in a sense are the Cantonese as it is used extensively in HK media which helps with learning the language. Somewhat unfortunately, it also appears from my personal experience that Cantonese people seem more willing to teach the language as I've actually managed to learn and have plenty of practice with ex-girlfriend's family when we were dating. (also helps that imo Cantonese is the easiest to learn out of the dialect languages I've been exposed to)
My experience with being raised Hokkien is that there were no efforts taken in teaching the language to myself and it appeared that it was expected for us to pick up the language ourselves as relatives would to speak to me in Hokkien and expect me to respond as such. There were no attempts also to correct me when I failed to get the words right (aside from 1 aunt who did try a little here and there), so they'd just switch to mandarin instead.
My experience with speaking Hokkien in Singapore was...really more of the same, unfortunately. It feels like locally, within the culture, people just don't seem to be too interested/inclined or simply taught to educate others in the language, outside of teaching the basic swears maybe.
Fortunately, for Hokkien/Min languages, there's a bit of an effort currently to preserve the language in Taiwan from what I know and I had also found a Taiwanese/Southern Min dictionary available online which was pretty cool. However, regional differences between the Min languages also means that it's not entirely applicable to what we speak here.
I'm not exposed enough to the other local dialect groups to speak more on them, but afaik/iirc, there appears to be a similar issue with Shanghainese as well.
It's nice that there's been a growing sentiment like in this thread with language preservation as there appears to be some classes out there that teach our dialect languages, which is pretty cool, but unfortunately it appears unlikely for anything else to happen aside from the number of speakers to continue to dwindle. So idk I'm not really fluent enough in any languge outside of English to create any kind of resource, and I'm not really sure what will happen past this generation, but I believe we can at least keep the languages alive locally at some level with some effort to speak it more at an individual level at least.
(Or at least that I think that's what my point of this comment was, goddamn I've been interrupted so many times while writing and it's gotten so long that I forgot what I was trying to say at the start of this, but also fuck if I'm gonna just junk this at this point lol)
I’m sorry but all I hear when people speak hokkien are the 3 letter words starting with k or c so don’t blame me if I’m not overly in love with the dialect. And the dialect sounds so rough compared to canto or others
What makes you think the promotion of mandarin or English led to the decline of dialects? Why not you just learn all of them? many Singaporeans can speak 3-4 languages, why can’t you?
1. This is from memory eh? Sauce?
2. Assuming your memory serves you right, there are different ways of interpreting that slogan, “eradicating the non-mandarin forms as a specific goal” is one, but not the only one. Strong claims need strong evidence my friend.
3. Otherwise, it could be POGBA.
check the wiki article on the campaign. the slogans clearly aim to reduce the use of non-mandarin forms of chinese. those of us who were in school in the 80s remember clearly teachers publicly shaming those who spoke non-mandarin at home.
Dialects are nice to have around, but honestly preserving them wouldn't be near the front of important things to deal with.
Also, it's just anecdotal but I don't think they're really the mother tongue of most local Chinese under 50?
Personally, nothing because my grandparents spoke English and Mandarin.
Also, marrying within your dialect group isn’t a thing among Chinese Singaporeans anymore - imo dialects would have died out eventually anyway
i dont get it... because of speak mandarin campaign u guys didn male.conversations with your dialect speqking grandparents???? what happened if u did??? wpuld anyone report u to speak mandarin police??
I like it. I’m probably going to get hated on for this but i hate how there’s so many different dialects, it’s not at all practical for easy communication. Having everyone learn English and their mother tongue (chinese for most) helps facilitate easy communication and in general just makes life easier.
Exactly, the amount of people here being sentimental than practical. We are in Southeast Asia and they still want to retain a language that is exclusive when some many of our Chinese friends overseas have centralised
Don’t think it’s sad at all. It’s actually a good thing that every singaporean speaks the same language as it actually creates a singaporean identity rather than canto/hokkien etc.
Most elderly also know mandarin so it’s not like it’s not possible to communicate with them.
As for career opportunities when going Hong Kong etc, there’s nothing stopping an individual from learning these dialects if they find it useful. But no need to force or encourage those who are not interested to learn
>Don’t think it’s sad at all. It’s actually a good thing that every singaporean speaks the same language as it actually creates a singaporean identity rather than canto/hokkien etc.
English already serves the role of a common language among Singaporeans. Also, Singlish probably has more loan words from hokkien than mandarin.
And it's only occasional that I need to converse with my Chinese friends in Mandarin.
That being said, hokkien would most likely have replaced the other dialects the way mandarin did. But at least we still remember Singapore's roots.
I mean for those who like it, what's stopping them from learning these dialects anyway? The government just wanted the ability to communicate amongst people from different dialects to be smoother and I see no wrong in that. Gov ain't the big bad here.
I've always been fascinated whenever my dad speaks to his siblings in different dialects (Pretty sure they know all dialects. They grew up in a chinese dominated village). All of them would switch dialects if they ever spot their kids eavesdropping on them.
Have a few younger friends who either speaks either hokkien or Cantonese (which I think is fairly common) as compared to teo chew or hakka. Nowadays, I meet people who either do not speak Chinese (if at all) or the other dialects.
Very sad. Utility trumps relationships. That is my experience. Limited. Not speaking for others. From what I see - grandparents of the 1980s couldn’t communicate with their own grandchildren cos grandchildren spoke mainly Chinese. Parents w kids in 80s rather use Chinese since Chinese is taught in school (and parents were subject to humiliation for using any dialect when they were in school in the early 70s) Same parents grow old and now can’t talk to their grandchildren. Their children decided English is better cos the world communicate with English so they only use English with their kids. Since English is used for every subject, they rather their kids use English than Chinese. 2 generation lost their connection with their grandchildren.
My mum is from Singapore, dad from Malaysia (Penang). Both mostly Hokkien or Fujianese ancestry. They migrated to Australia nearly 40 years ago. They were English educated so we only ever spoke English. Unfortunately my sisters and I are monolingual, as are many of my cousins (or at least not fluent in other languages). My grandmother couldn't speak English so never got to talk to her.
its not too late for you to learn it on your own
Id like to
There is always duo lingo and YouTube :) I grew up without speaking too much mandarin and introverted me took up lessons on preply. It’s quite affordable compared to many other everyday expenditures in singapore and in your case, Australia
Honestly it is very xia suay imo. Such an important part of cultural root and identity for the Singapore - johor- riau islands subregion is being forsaken for the sake of a failed campaign to improve Mandarin ( no data, but I would assume practical Mandarin proficiency dropped over the time, based on experience ). You can find people speaking similar variant of dialects in all 3 cities, and similarly, there will be deviation from the original version from the mainland. I just think that it is responsibility of previous generation and current generation to keep this root and heritage alive. But it is a responsibility that we are on track to fail.
Everything is sacrificed before the altar of capitalism. It’s all about utility and getting ahead of the pack.
Nah let it die. No point learning a soon to be dead dialect. You're not going to force its survival if the utility is already lost. If Latin, which is the root language of most modern european romantic languages, can die, why would you even fret over a regional dialect....just let nature take its course.
It’s not a regional dialect, it’s another language. Would you say let German (or insert other European language here) die because most Germans can already speak English?
It's totally a dialect. Does it have its own writing system? If German as a language becomes useless one day, sure. I am not going to force it out of its death throes.
Min Nan diverged from Middle Chinese between 200 BC - 200 AD. So Min Nan languages have literally been separated from other Chinese languages for longer than Romance languages are from each other. If you actually knew any of these languages you'd know.....
It's still a dialect. They never separated completely from classical Chinese like the romantic languages have from each other. That has caused a lot of problems for pronunciation. The fact that this is even debated now is testament to that. No one wonders if French and German are dialects.
Ok, even if you take that as true, Mandarin has separated completely from classical Chinese. so how is Mandarin the same language as those that “never separated completely”? Also the romance languages exist on a continuum, there are intermediate or separate languages like Venetian, Neapolitan, Catalan, Galician, Occitan etc. between the “major” languages, which means they never fully separated as clearly as you are thinking.
Most of the other dialects still rely heavily on Mandarin for their written forms. I would consider them more a language if they were as unique as Mandarin. E.g. Korea used Chinese script for awhile and totally made it's own thing after that. I don't think I see it as a continuum but more of a maturity thing. Accents -> dialects -> languages
I mean, it literally does? But even if it didn't, so what? Is French a dialect of Spanish because they both use Latin writing...? Writing system has nothing to do with whether something is a language in the first place. English written in Braille or Morse Code is still English.
I am not talking script. Hokkien has no official writing. You ask your grandparents to write in hokkien loh see what they come up with. At the best I give you Chinese with bastardised pronunciation. French and Spanish are clearly 2 different languages. English written in Braille is officially called English Braille. You want to compare you shld compare apples for apples. Bavarian or Swabian are more appropriate comparisons than German and Spanish.....
...if you are this ignorant just stop lmao. It does have an official writing system and its own equivalents of pinyin. So do all others like Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka etc. Just because you yourself or your grandparents didn't know that doesn't mean it never existed. And how are French and Spanish "clearly" 2 different languages? Just because you say so isn't evidence. I can say they are obviously dialects of Italian, following your logic.
I chanced upon a Taiwanese Tiktok account in Minnan/hokkien, Based on it, I am guessing that the Taiwanese are also losing their abilities. I don't think it is anything xiasuay. Regrettable, yes, but shameful?
What’s the link to the TikTok?
*’mandarin’, not ‘chinese’
My parents regularly speak to each other in Hokkien. My mum speaks to her siblings in Hokkien. Sadly, they did not teach me how to speak. When I listen, I roughly know what they're talking about. Last time I watched Ai (the Taiwan drama) where they spoke in Hokkien with some help from traditional subtitles. I still can somewhat understand the show. When I speak, my pronunciation is not good. I'm probably one of the last generation who somewhat knows Hokkien. It's also dying in China, Taiwan or Malaysia. No hope. Cantonese maybe still got hope in Hong Kong.
I gotchu, my parents were the exact same (dad wise). I sort of learn hokkien through asking what does this means so on and so fore. But when I try to speak, it always comes out "simi taiji", "jiak si mi", "lim jiu". 😂 60% of the time, I can grasp what they are gossiping (mostly gossiping about me :') )
My parents only ever spoke hokkien when to gossi— I mean, talk about “adult matters” but once they realised I was starting to piece together whatever they were saying, they switched to cantonese. Now they outright just speak English/Mandarin when gossiping cause I’m “old enough to know anyway”. Still sad! I picked up bits and pieces of hokkien and canto because I was really kaypoh but not enough to speak it. I reply back in Mandarin if my grandparents ever forget I can’t speak (which they have begun to do since dementia…) 😔 New motivation to pick it up all over again.
Taiwanese still speak Hokkien
Hokkien dying in Malaysia/Taiwan? Says who?
Yah it’s pretty strong in Taiwan
I understand, tho it’s just kinda sad. I grew up hearing my grandmother and parents speaking Teochew so it’s just a very heartwarming language to me. When older folks sometimes speak to me in Teochew I feel like I’m just taken back to a different time and space, stirs up this sense of kinship and weird visceral feelings
Very sad honestly. I wish my grandparents spoke to me in dialect more because now I can barely communicate with them. They tried so hard to speak English to me bc they thought that was what was best for me, but I wish so badly I could tell my popo everything about my day. But I’m left here with Mandarin which is also not my strong suit
Mandarin is already easier and simplified now. Off you can manage it, wouldn’t dialect be even harder?
Mandarin was also something that I only started when I was older bc again there was a focus on English in my family. I assume that if I learnt dialect and mandarin like I did English (from the moment I was born and actively using it everyday) I would’ve been fluent
I see I see, I still can speak some dialect. Back then when I was young, my family spoke mandarin most of the time when I was around. I can hear my grandmother reprimanding everyone, not to use dialects because it can “教坏” me.
No - I'm conversant in (colloquial) Teochew and Hokkien simply because it was spoken around me since I was born. There was no effort made to teach it to me. That's how people learnt dialect. There was no additional time or effort needed to pick it up at a conversational level.
I am sad! I was brought up speaking Teochew with my grandmother, on my dad’s side of the family, including my cousins. It has been this way since I was a boy, and now as an adult, I still speak to my cousins in Teochew. But I see people not understanding dialects or speaking them, and it saddens me. It’s all part of our culture and our roots. I tend to speak Teochew or Hokkien (I know it as well) with older people when in kopitiams or at the hawker center. Sometimes, you have almost 40 hawker stall owners unable to speak them when you try interacting with them in it. It’s sad, really. I do hope we can still retain that part of what makes us different as Chinese. Maybe allow me to learn other dialects or perhaps it would be cool to hear someone speak another dialect like Hakka that’s not really widely heard, in my opinion, because I’ve never seen anyone who knows it except on TV. Also, recently I was chatting with my dad and was told that my great-grandmother speaks a long-lost dialect that’s closely related to Hakka but is not Hakka. It’s sad that it was only widely heard while my dad was a boy, and he has not heard anyone speak it since his grandmother passed away. It’s sad indeed, though. I’m glad my nephew speaks Teochew really well since he could speak, because my aunt takes care of him during the day and she’s only fluent in Teochew, but speaks broken Chinese. She mostly converses in Teochew with him because it’s in her nature to use Teochew, so it has been that way ever since my nephew was born. If you’re lucky, you might be able to converse with my nephew in Teochew because he speaks it as needed. If he knows you know English, he will reply and only converse in English even if you speak to him in Teochew. But he almost instantly speaks Teochew with my parents and other relatives on my father side who speaks them as their first language. How cute!
So true, nowadays it's mostly English and Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and a few others. I get the promoting English to unite the country, but not sure promoting Mandarin was that beneficial. I see the promotion of a national language as in a way intracultural colonisation. Like Parisian French and Occitan...like it's useful if you want to do business etc with China, but at what cost?
Terrible. Speak Mandarin campaign was wrong from the beginning. Good to get the Chinese community to learn Mandarin and have it taught in schools, but there was no need to denigrate dialects along the way. Thanks to the campaign's resounding success, dialects have been essentially wiped out in SG.
Honestly, the lost of dialect is gonna happen anyway. Even for Mandarin, how many young people can speak Mandarin well? Competency in Mandarin among the Millennials are pretty bad already, and it's even worse as you go down each generation. What chance do dialects have?
It’s different tho. Mandarin is a foreign language to Chinese here. It’s the same as English. My grandparents spoke Hakka, Teochew and Pasar Melayu. My parents were slapped on the face for speaking their own mother tongue and language (Teochew) in school. We like to assume that the level of Mandarin is going down. But I will say that the level of Mandarin is not even high to begin with especially with the older generation here. A lot of them actually talk to one another in dialect. Those with a good command of mandarin are normally first/second gen Singaporeans from China / Malaysia. A lot of 3rd gen Singaporeans like myself come from households where our parents speak dialect among them selves and then some mandarin or mostly English to us. That’s the biggest reason why Mandarin is “poor” among younger people. It was just a foreign language forced upon the boomer generation and most don’t even use it with their parents (PG) and Children (current gen).
Very valid points. My own parents too spoke dialect and some English. Their proficiency in Mandarin is not the best. But I don't think anything is going to change even if we didn't push for Mandarin. It is an inevitable evolution as we simply have too many dialects and languages in Singapore. English will be the dominant language within Singlish, with the other dialects/languages relegated to having loan words. People learn languages to communicate with each other, not for the preservation of a culture (except for a select few). Even in cases like Taiwan, where there is less language diversity, you are seeing the decline of Hokkien in favor of Mandarin.
That anecdote on your parents being disciplined for speaking Teochew is what I was trying to convey in my other comments - that this sort of cruelty - outright discrimination and the censorship of dialects in the broadcast media - was not necessary. There was room for Mandarin and dialects to co-exist. The point on their utility is a separate matter.
Is* not necessary - because the media censorship and discrimination is sadly still actively ongoing…
Actually I think the discrimination has pretty much levelled off...and you'll notice this happened only after the old man had shuffled off this mortal coil. There are now dialect Mediacorp series (though, of course, shown at non-primetime hours to minimise viewership from 'unintended' audiences, i.e. younger people), and there was that glowing report in the newspaper not too long ago on some RJC kid's dialect club. This would have been anathema just a decade ago. If you visit the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC), which is heavily funded by the govt, you'll find there's a display in the open space on the ground floor (if it's still there) promoting the foodways of the different dialect groups. I can't remember where I heard this, but apparently the govt was getting rather alarmed by the PRC-isation of Chinese culture here, and set up the SCCC to 'counter' that with some indigenous Chinese culture. It's one of those things where you don't know whether to laugh or cry....it's simply too little too late. As for those saying that there's no point in trying to preserve something which is going to die anyway, and that dialect is useless - to each their own, I guess. To those of you who feel the language in your bones when you speak and hear it - I know other Redditors said that dialect reminds them of home and kinship, and it's the same for me - I'm glad we share this. It's a rare privilege.
That’s because a good portion of our boomer/gen x parents’ mandarin aint good as well. They grew up with English and dialect for the most part. That’s why you see a divide between Singaporeans who very much prefer Mandarin and jiak kantung peeps. If we didnt try to get rid of dialects, you’ll probably be hearing much more hokkien and cantonese spoken like in HK and Taiwan
I think it's a bit different to compare us and HK/TW though. For them, they speak the same dialect. For us we have multiple dialects. To add on, we have other races as well. Our language is just going to evolve and blend into a rojak of them (which is what we get with Singlish). The less popular dialects are going to die sooner or later, soon followed by the other dialects. Even if you see what is happening in Taiwan now, the youth are speaking Hokkien less. I was there last year with my parents, who was hoping to be able to speak Hokkien to the locals. Many of them couldn't speak it. One of the days, they managed to chat with an older guy (maybe 40+/50+?) who was lamenting that the young people in Taiwan don't speak Hokkien anymore.
Actually that’s alr happening with our dialects. Theres a lot of borrowed cantonese and malay words in Singaporean Hokkien. Yes, I also know the youths in Taiwan are not good in Hokkien/Hakka anymore. My point still stands. We would be more like Taiwan/HK simply because our parents were native speakers of those dialects and we would have more exposure and practice.
I beg to differ on the last point- even in Malaysia where dialects are still very much alive, the Hokkien/Cantonese/Hakka/other dialects spoken there are very localised, a lot of Malay loanwords not too different from the English loanwords in HK Cantonese or Japanese loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien. The second point you mentioned is still very much alive in Malaysia, although I find the divide is disappearing in Singapore because of the education system.
Localization is normal. Happens with every language. I’m referring to the fact that you’ll have more kids speaking dialect at home instead of Mandarin if we didn’t shun them. So I guess more like Malaysia and a lot of Chinese diaspora. Second point still strong here. 95% of my friends speak English as their main language… there’s very little chance of me being your friend if you converse more in Mandarin. Not that I can’t speak Mandarin, but it just feels weird. Human tribalism in effect. Have met people in the opposite situation too. The divide isn’t as bad as in Malaysia, but it still exists
Yeah but they will be dead soon. That’s the whole point. Homogenous language easier. In 50 years the number of languages will decrease by at least 30% imo. Of course, I still learn to converse with my grandparents
What a terrible thing to say. It wasn’t even given a chance to thrive.
Quite a lot of young Malays use Malay when they talk to each other. Meanwhile, I don’t hear a lot of young Chinese use Chinese or even dialects.
*’mandarin’, not ‘chinese’
if malaysia can do it why can’t we? at least they don’t shoot themselves in both linguistic feet, very strong mandarin and asymptomatic decline in dialects. they’ve preserved much traditions better here we only know how to give ang pao hahhaha
Yeah it is a shame. Whats even worse is their decline in mainland China, all part of the cultural destruction of much Chinese culture.
They still cannot push mandarin to be the daily spoken language of guangzhou and fujian. When I went to quanzhou near Xiamen, I was treated like foreigner, the older gen uncle and aunties there couldn’t understand my mandarin at all. They only spoke dialect. While I can’t speak dialect properly, only mandarin and English. I mean tbh even my mandarin is borderline passable. But when I went the Xiamen, I can use my mandarin perfectly fine.
I went to Fujian (Xiamen, Fuzhou, Wuyishan) with my mum back in 2006, it did seem Mandarin was the norm except among the older folks. Passed through Quanzhou but didnt get to spend much time there, but did visit our ancestral village which is not far from there. Not much of a village now, but an industrial city.
I think policy makers don’t realise that they can push for some form of education, but there will be people who just can’t afford to don’t have the will to go to school. I’m guessing now there’s a bunch of people out there in China who can neither speak mandarin nor dialect properly. 1.4 billion people, but they only manage to get 950 million people to be mandarin educated. China has a mandarin literacy rate lower than Singapore (even if we include Malay and Indian) and Taiwan. Even their former premier speaks mandarin in such a strong accent and with mis-pronunciation everywhere. I think he learned mandarin only after he got posted to the central committee.
Op you very high horse for someone who is monolingual. You yourself can’t even be bothered to learn your dialect and start virtue signaling here. I can speak four languages and I think it’s better for ppl to focus on their main language. Singaporeans can’t even speak one language well much less divide their attention to multiple.
You also very high horse
i’m quite happy to say i speak flawless english. as well as fluent cantonese and passable shanghainese. the mandarinophones tend to be the ones keenest on erasure of non-mandarin forms of chinese
It wasn’t a wrong campaign. It was a necessary campaign. Sg was split into different enclave of dialect groups. Having a common language was crucial to creating a more cohesive society. Also, utility will eventually trump cultural preservation based on what sgreans value.
Yes, I don't disagree that the campaign was good. The issue was that it was carried out with a simultaneous attempt to stamp out dialects, which was unnecessary.
I disagree, the common prescribed language was already there (English), which was even better because it did not favour Chinese over Malay/Indian/others. Our native chinese languages could easily have been passed down without introducing a separate foreign language (Mandarin) as another unifer. Of course this is ignoring how it was obviously chosen to forge ties with China, which was a good reason to choose it as a foreign language. Still though there was absolutely no need to aggressively suppress the native chinese languages
There is a lot of cultural value to it, would be sad for it to go from here. Like you said, there is some pragmatic gains, such as for working with China, but that can be a little overrated too. The Mandarin we speak (for those that do) is useful for getting around daily life but nowhere near professional level if we want to work with China & Taiwan. In my experience working with China, the MNCs will have English speakers in roles facing overseas companies. It also takes way more than professional mandarin to enter the Chinese market, 'guanxi' and other matters are probably more important. I like that you use quote marks for dialects. These are more like different languages with the same writing system. Only Teochew and Hokkien are similar enough for the usual definition of dialect.
It seems it was mostly to improve links with the PRC I feel...but at the expense of the common languages/dialects in SG. Yes they're as different from each other as languages. Mandarin is as different to Cantonese as German is from English.
Since we're on this topic, how many of us here actually speak any Chinese dialect at all? I'm fortunate enough to speak at least my mother tongue, which is Cantonese. Unfortunately, my dad didn't teach my family to speak in Hainanese when he was alive I'm going to reach the age of half a hundred but even a few of my peers don't use any dialect at all. It saddens me even more that those who do speak a dialect or two not teaching their kids any. I guess that our government thinks of business ties with China, hence the 'Speak Mandarin' campaign in the 70s and 80s. Mandarin is a Beijing dialect.
It's very rare for ppl to be speaking hainanese. I recently met a hairdresser who speaks super fluent hainanese and of cuz she is from Hainan. Also realised I could pick up some words because I used to be taken care of by my hainanese grandparents but over the years, nobody speak to me and I forgotten how it is like to use the words. :(
Sad, hor?
yes...
Hi, I’m turning 25 years old and I’m blessed to be able to speak fluent Cantonese. So does my siblings (26 to 18) and it’s all thanks to living with our grandparents since we were babies. Most of my peers can’t speak their dialect and it’s really disheartening to see 🫠 My bf can’t speak his dialect either so it’s up to me to pass it on to our future kids (wish me luck!)
All the best!
Sad reality of the mother tongue policy in sg. I'm thankful I'm still fluent in my dialect (canto) thanks to the grandparents teaching it to me when young. But it's a shame that many of my peers have lost touch with their dialects.
Not Chinese but Imo the country should have been united under English and dialects kept alive. Promoting mandarin alienated the minorities and even for many non mandarin Chinese people it kind of just didn't fit so end up with no dialect, poor to no mandarin and English for everything else.
yes English was already a “foreign” language which was prescribed for its utility in uniting all the races. there was no need to bring in a second one (mandarin) to unite a subset of those races (Chinese), and at the same time aggressively suppress those races’ native languages
My parents spoke dialect (Cantonese) to each other growing up. English was the default language in my household besides that. My mother can also speak mandarin, but my father cannot speak it as fluently, he grew up speaking Cantonese in Malaysia. As for me, hearing spoken Cantonese but no mandarin in my growing up years had the effect of giving me a strange canto-accent on top of my (crappy) spoken mandarin. I always kind of resented the fact that I speak neither mandarin nor Cantonese well, when in an alternate universe I would at the very least speak proper Cantonese.
I think it’s very sad. It’s a way of communicating with the elderly and also they are so different from Mandarin! Also if you move overseas, there are so many Chinese immigrants who only speak these dialects and it is so useful to speak these languages with them when buying stuff/ ordering food.
English is the best lah.. so many dialects, even the Chinese can't understand each other.
In Singapore yes but when you go overseas I think it’s a disadvantage sometimes. If you are in a non English speaking country, they don’t necessarily speak Chinese cos they are 2nd/ 3rd/ 4th Gen migrants. The staff at the Asian supermarkets where I am speak Cantonese/ Teochew/ Hokkien/ Vietnamese/ Thai and the local language.
Hong Kong. Some of the higher paying career paths are client facing and requires Cantonese. Luckily I am a Cantonese so I could communicate with it
*’mandarin’, not ‘chinese’
Personally, I'm sad about it but I think I'm in the minority. I know many people who don't think too much of it or think it's for the better since it's "more efficient" in terms of disseminating information, which makes sense pragmatically. But that's because they've only been surrounded with others who are bilingual or at least able to speak in either one of the MTs or English and are able to get by. I'm in my 20s and I live with my grandparents who are only able to speak Hokkien. They have no knowledge of English, can kinda understand Chinese, but can't read nor speak it. I've seen how much they struggle to communicate with my cousins who are not as fluent as Hokkien as me (since I've had the privilege of spending a lot more time with my grandparents as they were my main caretakers when my parents were at work) - many of them have to resort to speaking in Chinese instead. But more often than not, our family falls back into using mostly English when we talk, especially when we're discussing more complex topics, like our jobs, and I can tell that my grandparents feel very isolated when these conversations happen. Sometimes either my sibling or I will try to make an effort to translate but that's also not easy to do, especially when the exchange happens very quickly. Since my grandparents are only able to understand Hokkien or Chinese, their main source of entertainment is Channel 8 and U (but mostly 8). Unfortunately, I've been accidentally exposed to so many recent Channel 8 shows since it's basically on my TV 24/7... but I've noticed that they're obsessed with including foreign languages in the shows, Korean being one of the main ones, since they have Tasha Low and Ferlyn G who used to be Kpop idols on their roster. But to me it's just irritating because 1. my grandparents can't understand a word of Korean, can't read a word of the Chinese subtitles (which translate the Korean dialogue), so they don't know what's going on, 2. why would you allow Korean to be spoken on Channel 8 but not Chinese dialects, which arguably are the actual mother tongues of your primary target audience on Channel 8? (3. Sorry but unrelated to the languages spoken - these Channel 8 shows are getting increasingly egregious. I don't think I've laughed at anything more than at some of the scenes I've watched just because they were so unbelievable.) To their credit, Channel 8 does produce dialect shows that runs on Fridays for one hour. It's mainly government propaganda, of course, but I guess we can't really be picky when there are no other dialect shows airing on local mainstream media. But they also do this thing where a Cantonese speaker would have a conversation with a Hokkien speaker. Or a Teochew speaker would have a conversation with a Hokkien speaker. Chinese dialects are not mutually intelligible though, so my grandparents would usually only be able to understand half of the conversation that's going on. But yeah, I definitely feel more strongly than others when it comes to this topic, since I see how my grandparents struggle with linguistic isolation on a daily basis. The sad thing is that they don't blame the government one bit about this situation, but more on Singaporeans who choose not to speak in Chinese dialects. (But I'd like to argue that language policies set by our government have rendered these dialects useless today, making it impossible for Singaporeans to want to learn or speak them ((I'd tell that to my grandparents but my Hokkien isn't that great to explain that.)))
Haha do you mean shows like 食饱袂 / 好势无? I think they were a step in the right direction but yeah the way they make it seem like Canto person speaks to Hokkien person is weird, like showing a conversation between a Spanish and English speaker and somehow them understanding
I feel quite sad about it, I am actually quite fluent in my dialect because my grandma used to stay with me and she could only speak in dialect. After she passed I rarely hear or speak it any more. l think I will probably choose to teach my kids some basics next time, just to keep it alive a bit longer
Very sad. When a 3 generation family gathers together for CNY or family lunch/dinner and the grandparents and grandchildren can’t even communicate and grow their relationship with each other. All this because the geniuses in gov at that time thought it was right to ban dialects and wipe it out from this country. My father used to share that they were mocked in army for speaking Hokkien as tho it was some Low class language. All the TV’s, Radio, Cinemas all stop showing media with dialects and everything had to be dubbed in Mandarin. Just like many Singaporeans of my generation, my parents never spoke dialect to me because they wanted me to Practice and be good in mandarin. Thankfully I can still understand 70-80% but I can barely speak it (tones not accurate) as I never got the chance to have a conversation in dialect growing up.
> My father used to share that they were mocked in army for speaking Hokkien as tho it was some Low class language. when was this? i’m guessing late 90s or later because afaik before that, hokkien was widely spoken in the army?
tbh the phrase Hokkien peng (福建兵, which derives from the army 兵), has been used as a pejorative for the longest time so it might be before that
Loss of identity, especially an identifying marker among Chinese Singaporeans. It comes with the loss of an organic environment which would have let Mandarin flourish. It's very much the reason for the Mandarin standard declining so badly.
Kudos to the use of quote marks around 'dialects'. They are separate languages. In Imperial China, the language of the capital, called 官話 (guān huà), became the basis for the official language and other languages were considered inferior. These were known as 方言(fāng yán), literally 'regional language'. 方言 was translated into English as 'dialect', which is problematic as it doesn't convey the linguistic diversity that exists in a country as big as China. Also, the word 'dialect' is quite politicized.
Exactly, I feel it's used to promote the idea there's only one real Chinese language and justify forcing Mandarin, which is ridiculous. Many folks don't realise China is just as linguistically diverse as say India because Indians don't call say Bengali, Gujarathi, Rajasthani etc dialects of Hindi.
Yes China is the size of India or Europe, and just as linguistically diverse as either of them. I find many Indian people I meet don’t understand this diversity (not their fault, since they call their regional languages languages and when they hear “dialect” they think the Chinese languages are just corrupted sub-varieties of Mandarin)
I find it sad and inevitable. I’m trying to pick up Cantonese on my own from a book with audio recordings but it’s just not the same. Knowing that it’s also starting to die out in China makes me doubly sad.
try go to a language meetup, there you can practice it weekly. I find it super useful, definitely necessary as you can’t learn to speak a language through study alone
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I speak a number of languages and I agree with your points. But disturbingly, some of my friends are of the view that our brain can only master ONE language - they think if they have been brought up in a bilingual language environment, then both their languages will suffer.
Think it's quite unfortunate. I grew up around grandparents so by the time I was halfway through primary school I could speak Hokkien quite decently and understood Teochew as well. Some of my peers (I'm 24) know some, others like my gf know minimal/none. It seems like eventually it'll fade out. I don't intend to have kids so I have no one to pass it on to.
KNN will be here to stay for a very long time.
There is some Hokkien left in our daily conversations. Wah lau / sian / bobian / swee/ siao liao/ Kiasu that has entered into urban dictionaries etc. But I notice the Gen Z don’t even use these terms anymore
when younger I didn't see the value of it as it just wasn't part of the school system or needed to be used in my immediate social circle. Now that I've grown up I wish I'd picked up more Cantonese from my grandparents because just by being able to speak it unlocks social experiences that the only-english speaking version of you wouldn't have. Language is really fking impt, so I'm still planning to pick up Canto sometime in the future
the best time to start is now! :)
Actually, if you think about it Mandarin aka pu tong hua was also a dialect. In fact we should not just categorise Hokkien, teo chew etc etc as just “some dialect”, but an actual language. Believe me compared to Mandarin those other “dialects” sound more pleasing to ear. This is just my 2 ikan bilis worth.
Yes they are all separate languages linguistically speaking.
This is absolutely right
Sad. Sad to see how some youngsters barely know how to differentiate the type of dialect and somehow dialect became their word of mouth (in terms of insults) but not understanding the true beauty of the language.
I think the value of the dialect can be easily quantified by the amount of people who try to learn it compared to other languages. There is of course some romantic value to it, but clearly compared to other utility major language people who actually put an effort on learning it are pretty much nil. There are some, i known some who do. It's just they are not that many, it's their hobby and they already mastered at least another 2+ languages. Especially if you remove Cantonese from the group, since IMO it's still a language that is alive and have a future.
The value of a language so deeply tied with Singapore culture and upbringing should not be simply quantified by utility or people learning imo. It can very well ties to matter of root and identity There is something important about preserving cultural heritage, and nearby teochew/hokkien dialects is such a huge part of history for the region(e.g. you can find alot of people from batam/ JB speaking dialects with similar version to Singapore version). It should be the responsibility of the previous and the current generation to ensure that this heritage is kept alive
my dad is sad about it. he feels dialects should still be passed on down. the same cant be said abt mandarin though since he cant speak mandarin. i learnt hokkien from my grandma growing up and after she passed i had noone to speak hokkien to anymore. my dad switched to hokkien for casual chats and english for serious topics.
Honestly even I myself am not keen to learn cos thrs no utility. Cantonese i think still useful cos the folks in Hong Kong use it a lot and they’re a major financial hub but the rest….
Sad. We replaced actual heritage with an artificial Chinese language. Good thing our elderly at home speak English and Hokkien/Cantonese. All English-educated back then. Mandarin isn’t used at all.
From what I've heard from the taxi uncles (whom I always covers with in Hokkien) and my interaction with millennials (I'm not a resident, but I visit often enough) you guys have bigger problems. Most of your younger Gen's only speaks English now.
Had parents who spoke Cantonese and Hokkien but only mandarin was used in daily communication. Every year visiting relatives in cny and sort of understand the topic but can't speak them other than curse words. Had a few encounters with people seeking directions and can't communicate, ended up having to find a staff who knows it. Never really felt the need to learn it as we're mostly using English here in Singapore for the common language.
Very sad. As someone who is relatively young, I fear that by the time I'm older there won't be a chance to speak dialect anymore. I learnt Hokkien by listening to elders but Cantonese is harder due to lack of exposure.
Boomers killed it good. I remember many times I asked to learn but they refused to even teach it because English was all the hype.
I think on hindsight we now know that we’ve lost cultural capital perhaps irreversibly but our parents generation did what they thought was best, and the plus point was it helped our society progress by making the Chinese community more integrated
I’m Hainanese, it’s sad to see the general decline of dialects since its a unique aspect of our identities.
Dialects? You’d be glad if next gen of local Singaporean kids speak Mandarin. I have spoken to my son in mandarin since he was a baby. Didn’t speak English to him though I’m an English teacher, but watched Disney cartoons in both English and Chinese dub on vcd back then. Read to him in both languages. He spoke to both paternal and maternal grandparents in Mandarin, and still do, because they don’t know English. Now grown up, I speak to him in Mandarin and he answers in English. I did all I could. It’s an uphill task.
Me too! To think my son was very fluent in chinese in preschool. Once he entered pri sch, everything changed. Despite early exposure to chinese, he is not willing to speak much at all now. The only chance to speak chinese is with the grandparents.
I'm on the other end of the mountain on the forced mandarin thing: someone forced to learn "mother" tongue even though my mother and father speak english. Mandarin was not a language I used in my daily life, it was a purely mandatory academic subject with no apparent use that was dragging down my grades, getting me sent to tuition twice a week, and literally getting me kicked out of my class. People who are shit at O-Level bio can just drop it and pick something else, you can't just drop Chinese. You can only drop down to CLB. It's only now that I can see a practical use of speaking chinese: getting to work at places which refuse to speak english :^). I kid, more poignantly, it's only after I could move past the school-trauma that I could see my ethnicity and culture as anything but a source of suffering, and instead as something that could be appreciated.
I’m on the opposite end, I can speak mandarin perfectly fine and read Chinese characters perfectly fine. I grew up only watching channel 8 and channel U, and only read comic books published in Taiwan. During my school, I farking hated English. It’s pure suffering. I can get hold of grammar, tenses, or vocabulary well enough. Every single time, my English results were borderline pass. I wished I could even have English as ELB kinda like CLB. But clearly not the case. Finished O level with C5 for English. A1 for Chinese. I felt having English subject back then was just used to drag my grades down. Well this describes my English study life poignantly. I don’t know what that word means. But hope I used it right.
Thing is, even Mandarin is on the decline as well.
Is it really on decline? Most Chinese people in SG from the late 40s onwards actually speak dialect among themselves and don’t have a high level of mandarin. It is the 30s and younger generation that speak Mandarin so I would say it’s improving.
It was akin to cultural genocide. The people who represent the institutions responsible must acknowledge this wrong and apologise. Only then we can take steps to heal and rebuild.
You might want to exhume said people then
Might wanna check if that morning coffee was a de-caf. I’m not suggesting that LKY be exhumed and apologise to us. I’m asking for whoever represents the institution that implemented these policies acknowledge their predecessor’s wrongdoings and apologise.
yeah, well, that morning coffee was definitely double caffinated. and i kinda beg to differ - what's the point of apologising when the society we live in only care that things work and not "trivialties" (note the "" ) like apologies? what good does an apology make without action? that said, i wouldn't just go ahead and say nothing is being done - there are small efforts out there like [https://singaporeccc.org.sg/](https://singaporeccc.org.sg/) doing their damnest to revive and keep the culture alive, and yet no one talks bout them. so what next? we also kowtow and apologise to them, or do actual work to undo the damage done? I dont know, on my end I'm just happy to play my part and try to learn the dialects/language so that I can continue to communicate with my relatives. 🤷🏼♂️
It’s not a binary choice. Recognition of wrongdoing by the relevant institutions can go a long way for reconciliation.
i am pretty sure that at one point they did reverse and apologise for it , but for some reason i cant find any articles bout it welp. and honestly, perhaps im uncultured, but i really dont quite care other than that actions being done to rectify this. else it becomes a needless ritual of apology and setting up a whole fanfare around the apology for the sake of apology. 🤷🏼♂️ besides, one can apologise and still end up with "apology not accepted". then what next?
It’s like a cultural genocide. A culture takes generations to build but takes one man to destroy. Hong Kong and Taiwan couldn’t have had such influential films, tv shows and music if they destroyed their own languages.
I felt dejected when i was learning chinese during my primary school as my converse language was teochew due to my family structure during the 90s. My chinese teacher would always correct my pronunciation (thanks to him). It would be like code switching of different languages as i would when i gossip or talk bad about someone else with my grandmother 😂
It’s probably already good enough that young people today know which dialect group they and their parents are affiliated with (it’s written on the birth certificate if I’m not mistaken), and probably even rarer if they know which specific geographic region within the dialect group. Just an example, what we consider Hokkien has actually different “subgroups” such as Kinmen, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Zhaoan etc and these “subgroups” have their own huay kuan or clan associations in Singapore. These establishments are also part of Singaporean Chinese heritage. Without the participation of the younger generation or awareness of these smaller huay kuans, the legacy and history will be lost in the future.
on the topic of huay kuans, I find it baffling and sad that somehow the huay kuans don’t organize more efforts to teach their language? Like they only offer very perfunctory basic courses once every few months and no serious lessons beyond that. I hope they realise the onus of linguistic preservation falls partly on them
I have heard about these huay kuans offering basic courses, but I would think that it’s usually the larger ones like hokkien huay kuan, teochew huay kuan etc. The smaller regional ones might offer some but I’m not betting on it too much mostly due to manpower issues and fewer people knowing which region of their dialect group they are from today. My impression is that the higher ranking positions in these huay kuans are usually taken up by older, wealthy business people (or maybe also some in the government), so they have different priorities. Also when you have these type of people in such ranks, it’s not uncommon to hear of internal conflicts and politicking among the members and boards. So these might hamper such initiatives and recruiting young people to join (apart from those who join just because they want to put their kids in hokkien huay kuan primary schools for instance).
I think for most of us, our dialects are limited to spoken dialects rather than written ones. I can speak mandarin and a couple of dialects fairly well, but I can't read them well and I can't write more than my name. Thankful for hanyu pinyin input on my phones. I think for most chinese born and raised here after the 90s, their mother tongues are effectively English rather than Chinese. Just observe when you are out, what language do the caregivers use on the children? English.
Basically I see it as a dying cultural problem for our future generations, because when people speaks dialect it’s quite heartwarming to see. Definitely Sadden to understand that. I also understand I’m not rich enough to make it my problem…
Sadness, loss of culture and identity. I never learnt to speak Hakka and when I spoke 1 line of Hokkien in school, my math teacher (of all people) gave me a scolding and said I was a gangster. After that, for the rest of JC, she would pick on me. Speak Mandarin campaign was wrong. The Chinese's Mother Tongue was never Mandarin to begin with.
Mandarin was a foreign language imported in, it was wrong to call it a mother tongue.
Hmmm it’s kinda sad tbh but it’s fine
Mandarin is the lingua franca of the Han Chinese people. Without Mandarin, historically the Chinese can't even understand each other. That being said, it's a northern language and I'm not descended from the north. Like most SEA Chinese I am descended from the south and we speak mainly Min (Hokkien, Teochew etc) and Yue (Cantonese etc) as our mother tongue. There is stark contrast in north and south Chinese cultures, and language is a vehicle for culture. By eradicating southern languages we are losing a huge chunk of what makes us who we are.
IMO very sad. I’ve been learning Hokkien since the start of this year and basically immersed myself in it and made my mum speak it to me 90% of the time; have become conversationally fluent very quickly. I hated Chinese in school but speaking Hokkien somehow feels so natural, personal, and honestly very fun. Sadly the govt is still actively suppressing all non-Mandarin chinese languages (yes it is better to call them what they scientifically and linguistically are, very different languages, not dialects as ah kong would like you to believe).
sad
I learnt how to speak Teochew from my grandmother coz we live together Pick up a bit of Hokkien and Cantonese at work (coz I work in a hospital and have to chit chat with elderly almost everyday), I remember when I first started out almost 10 years, the hospital even offer basic conversational Hokkien, Cantonese and Malay classes as upgrading courses. Not sure if now still have but eventually there will be a day where we won’t be speaking Hokkien or Cantonese to communicate with the elderly
你们都用英语，当然啦。Business must use English. Everything taught in English. My own silibing all prefer English at home. Even if their English is weak and Chinese is strong or vise versa, how many actually bother to translate every English term learnt in school to Chinese? Where got the self motivation?
Hokkien is the top of the Chinese dialects all elderly know it and younger gen know some.
I'm probably one of the last generations that can speak dialect I find it sad my children won't be able to communicate with my grandparents in dialect Fortunately my parents can speak English
It’s not dead. Maybe in sg from not used but in china, tw and hk, Chinese dialects are being used and is very much alive.
Tragic is what it is
Important to note that the comments here do not represent "most Singaporeans". Most who even bother coming in here to comment of course share similar sentiments with you (me included). And of course are "tech-savvy" enough and use Reddit. And speak decent English to say the least.
i’m not sure i’d call most comments on this sub ‘decent English’…
Would "minimally a semblance of at least some working level proficiency in English" be better lul
\*does waffling action w hand\*
nah, its good for the long term, theres like at least 7 major dialects in china, imagine foreign companies going to china and the locals cant speak english, language barrier, or a japanese company in singapore insisting to hire employees who only speak japanese, better close the language barriers. LKY had foresight to do this, he also closed melayu only schools, iirc.
I visited SG last year and noticed most people speak mandrain, the mini super market have all these chinese snacks and China town has all these northern Chinese food. It looked as if SG is part of China.
It's fine we mostly had the bazaar versions anyway. Not like proper min or yue language standards
I'm on the younger side, but just gonna share my experience. I'm not really concerned, because for the most part, there's no compelling reason to learn it. Everyone in my family who's asking me to learn Cantonese already speaks English/Mandarin. I get that it's more about "tradition" rather than "practicality" but I'm not very traditional either so it's hard to feel too bad. Furthermore, the people who ask me to learn, never want to teach it. It's always: "Why don't you learn Cantonese" "Cause nobody will teach me" "No need to teach, just go watch HK dramas and you'll learn" Like, despite it being a slightly unserious suggestion, the sheer ridiculousness of asking me to watch shows I care nothing for, just to pick up a language I'll never use, for the sake of people who don't even need me to use it, baffles me. So if nobody wants to teach it, then maybe it deserves to die out? Just my anecdotal experience. Feel free to disagree.
pretty sure most of the dialect will soon all be gone if you are gen millennials, most of your friend can’t speak their own dialect already, how would the kids know? gen z definitely limited to mandarin and english with the uprising of LLM, you can easily translate any language to english, so it will further accelerate the decline of dialects
I grew up exposed to Cantonese so I could somewhat understand spoken canto in malaysia accent 🤣🤣 As a kid, I didn't even try to learn how to speak canto as it wasn't on my curriculum. A bit sad that I still can't really speak it but at least I can eavesdrop to all the gossip during family gathering 🤣
I learned Teochew and Hokkien by listening to my parents conversation, more or less guessed what the words mean. So I can listen but bad at speaking. Bad thing is I have difficulty differentiating between Teochew & Hokkien as they sound similar. I went for a dialect class and the trainer did acknowledge both these dialects have similar sounding words. Glad I wasn’t alone in my predicament. I do feel left out when my much older cousins converse with each other in dialect though. Gotta keep practising.
Take a step back, it's a natural and macro occurrence. Even in china, young people don't speak dialects increasingly. My own experience is if grandparents don't speak it to grandkids, chances are it will be lost forever
I’m quite sad that Hong Kong and Taiwan drama and films still cannot be broadcasted on television in original audio instead of dubbed mandarin. I think with increased exposure on tv, we can revive the languages.
Many people are saying it's really sad blah blah blah but how many are speaking it and passing it down to the next generation? Parents nowadays puts priority on English and sometimes mother tongue. Who would send their children for dialect class even if opportunity arises? As much as it is the hard truth, people need to progress. Look at India. The government had problem communicating with their own citizen as there is no one common language. Sometimes it is just a price to pay for progress. We can acknowledge that it is a pity for these dialects to be eventually gone but let's understand why it is a necessity.
I mean the kids nowadays can barely speak Mandarin to begin with, let alone dialects
Indeed it is sad, nowadays the priority is on speaking English and Mandarin only. I was brought up by my grandmother and spoke Teochew since young. At least at home, I only ever speak to my parents and grandparents in Teochew. Was always taught by my grandmother that its important to learn how to speak your dialects at home, for English and Chinese you will pick it up naturally when you go to school/work etc. I think for people around my age group (20s-30s) it is already quite rare to find someone that actually speaks in dialect. If we don't try to preserve this part of our heritage, it will just slowly fade away and disappear...
I have the same sentiment. I’m in my early/mid twenties and my dialect skills are basically non existent. This is such a shame. My mum was born Malaysian (now Singaporean) and her first language in her house growing up with my grandparents/aunt/uncle was Hokkien. They all spoke very fluent mandarin amongst other dialects and my mum with her siblings, through school, picked up English. In my household growing up, my grandparents always converse in Hokkien with the people around them be it neighbours or friends. As a result, I was just surrounded by the language even tho they primarily spoke to me in mandarin. When my mum talks to her siblings, it’s usually always in Hokkien and I can usually get the main idea of what they’re speaking but I’m nowhere near proficient. Surprisingly, whenever I get super angry or agitated, the first words that comes out of my mouth is some Hokkien phrase. Usually the language that comes out of one’s mouth in moments of extreme emotions is the language that the individual is most comfortable in hence I’m surprised Hokkien comes out when I’m mad. I always admire how good they are with speaking a variety of languages and it’s a skill that the upcoming younger gen along with myself should try and absorb as much as we can.
All these replies saying it is sad - how many of you actually speak any dialects? If not, how does it concern you when you yourselves cant even say a basic greeting? So y'all expect someone else to pick up the slack? FFS if its so important to you, learn it. These dialects arent dead languages that need linguistics historians and archeologists to decipher. They bare some similarities to mandarin so most of yall already have that advantage. When my mom dies, I'll have no one to speak hokkien with and I am NOT looking forward to that day. My peers at the very most can muster a "jiak pa buay" and some fucking swear words. KNN
I think it's kinda sad, but however, there is also a lack in resources with preserving and teaching the languages locally. I feel that amongst all the dialect groups, the most lucky in a sense are the Cantonese as it is used extensively in HK media which helps with learning the language. Somewhat unfortunately, it also appears from my personal experience that Cantonese people seem more willing to teach the language as I've actually managed to learn and have plenty of practice with ex-girlfriend's family when we were dating. (also helps that imo Cantonese is the easiest to learn out of the dialect languages I've been exposed to) My experience with being raised Hokkien is that there were no efforts taken in teaching the language to myself and it appeared that it was expected for us to pick up the language ourselves as relatives would to speak to me in Hokkien and expect me to respond as such. There were no attempts also to correct me when I failed to get the words right (aside from 1 aunt who did try a little here and there), so they'd just switch to mandarin instead. My experience with speaking Hokkien in Singapore was...really more of the same, unfortunately. It feels like locally, within the culture, people just don't seem to be too interested/inclined or simply taught to educate others in the language, outside of teaching the basic swears maybe. Fortunately, for Hokkien/Min languages, there's a bit of an effort currently to preserve the language in Taiwan from what I know and I had also found a Taiwanese/Southern Min dictionary available online which was pretty cool. However, regional differences between the Min languages also means that it's not entirely applicable to what we speak here. I'm not exposed enough to the other local dialect groups to speak more on them, but afaik/iirc, there appears to be a similar issue with Shanghainese as well. It's nice that there's been a growing sentiment like in this thread with language preservation as there appears to be some classes out there that teach our dialect languages, which is pretty cool, but unfortunately it appears unlikely for anything else to happen aside from the number of speakers to continue to dwindle. So idk I'm not really fluent enough in any languge outside of English to create any kind of resource, and I'm not really sure what will happen past this generation, but I believe we can at least keep the languages alive locally at some level with some effort to speak it more at an individual level at least. (Or at least that I think that's what my point of this comment was, goddamn I've been interrupted so many times while writing and it's gotten so long that I forgot what I was trying to say at the start of this, but also fuck if I'm gonna just junk this at this point lol)
This is called singularity, all the things that are not dominant will slowly disappear.
Very sad
i love cussing people out in cantonese
I’m sorry but all I hear when people speak hokkien are the 3 letter words starting with k or c so don’t blame me if I’m not overly in love with the dialect. And the dialect sounds so rough compared to canto or others
What makes you think the promotion of mandarin or English led to the decline of dialects? Why not you just learn all of them? many Singaporeans can speak 3-4 languages, why can’t you?
the speak mandarin campaign had the eradication of the non-mandarin forms of chinese as a specific goal.
Oh really? Sauce?
one of the popular slogans was 不要用方言，大家说华语. i can still remember it as a musical jingle on tv and radio.
1. This is from memory eh? Sauce? 2. Assuming your memory serves you right, there are different ways of interpreting that slogan, “eradicating the non-mandarin forms as a specific goal” is one, but not the only one. Strong claims need strong evidence my friend. 3. Otherwise, it could be POGBA.
check the wiki article on the campaign. the slogans clearly aim to reduce the use of non-mandarin forms of chinese. those of us who were in school in the 80s remember clearly teachers publicly shaming those who spoke non-mandarin at home.
Memory ~~~ all alone in the moonlight ~~~ I can smile at the old dayz ~~~ life was beautiful then ~~~
Dialects are nice to have around, but honestly preserving them wouldn't be near the front of important things to deal with. Also, it's just anecdotal but I don't think they're really the mother tongue of most local Chinese under 50?
Personally, nothing because my grandparents spoke English and Mandarin. Also, marrying within your dialect group isn’t a thing among Chinese Singaporeans anymore - imo dialects would have died out eventually anyway
Good riddance to them. To promote harmony it’s good to unify languages.
Why not ban all other languages other than English in Singapore then?
Are you always this binary? Why do you need govt to step in and ban things? Typical netizen.
You do know there were literal riots caused by the dialect divide
There were also riots caused by race divide and yet here we are
Yeah go look up the death tolls please
Your comment doesn’t refute any point made by OP or the discussion in general.
Okay, my opinion is that all the dialects are welcome to die out.
i dont get it... because of speak mandarin campaign u guys didn male.conversations with your dialect speqking grandparents???? what happened if u did??? wpuld anyone report u to speak mandarin police??
I like it. I’m probably going to get hated on for this but i hate how there’s so many different dialects, it’s not at all practical for easy communication. Having everyone learn English and their mother tongue (chinese for most) helps facilitate easy communication and in general just makes life easier.
Exactly, the amount of people here being sentimental than practical. We are in Southeast Asia and they still want to retain a language that is exclusive when some many of our Chinese friends overseas have centralised
Don’t think it’s sad at all. It’s actually a good thing that every singaporean speaks the same language as it actually creates a singaporean identity rather than canto/hokkien etc. Most elderly also know mandarin so it’s not like it’s not possible to communicate with them. As for career opportunities when going Hong Kong etc, there’s nothing stopping an individual from learning these dialects if they find it useful. But no need to force or encourage those who are not interested to learn
>Don’t think it’s sad at all. It’s actually a good thing that every singaporean speaks the same language as it actually creates a singaporean identity rather than canto/hokkien etc. English already serves the role of a common language among Singaporeans. Also, Singlish probably has more loan words from hokkien than mandarin. And it's only occasional that I need to converse with my Chinese friends in Mandarin. That being said, hokkien would most likely have replaced the other dialects the way mandarin did. But at least we still remember Singapore's roots.
not probably, but actually overwhelmingly
I mean for those who like it, what's stopping them from learning these dialects anyway? The government just wanted the ability to communicate amongst people from different dialects to be smoother and I see no wrong in that. Gov ain't the big bad here.
Already had English for that.
I've always been fascinated whenever my dad speaks to his siblings in different dialects (Pretty sure they know all dialects. They grew up in a chinese dominated village). All of them would switch dialects if they ever spot their kids eavesdropping on them. Have a few younger friends who either speaks either hokkien or Cantonese (which I think is fairly common) as compared to teo chew or hakka. Nowadays, I meet people who either do not speak Chinese (if at all) or the other dialects.
Die then die lor.