Forget about dialects, stick to Mandarin

I AGREE thoroughly with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's view in his speech on Tuesday at the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, which was reproduced in The Straits Times yesterday, 'Nurturing a key advantage'.

Chinese Singaporeans should forget about dialects and stick to Mandarin.

Language is a tool and we should use the best tool available.

Cultural and other values can be dissociated from languages. Mexicans use Spanish, but culturally, they are not exactly Spaniards.

Many Malays do not know Arabic, but they are Muslims. Most Christians do not read Hebrew or Latin.

One may not realise that most Chinese Singaporeans speak Chinese dialects at a very superficial conversational level. They have difficulty in expressing abstract terms or ideas with some depth in dialects.

Few Cantonese here can speak Cantonese as eloquently as people educated in Hong Kong, who have used Cantonese in school and at home - and paid the price of not being fluent in Mandarin,

Similarly, few Hokkiens in Singapore are able to make a formal speech or read a literary piece in the southern Hokkien dialect. Literary Hokkien and conversational Hokkien vary quite a great deal in the pronunciation of many words.

We do not lose much if we discard dialects. Learning dialects will affect the learning of English and Mandarin, as MM Lee has pointed out.

People from Chinese Peranakan families generally speak better English than others because they do not have to divert much of their energy and time to learning Chinese.

Most of us are not born with great linguistic talent and can do well in only one or two languages.

In spite of our claim of being bilingual, some of us are actually non-lingual, hovering between Singlish and substandard Mandarin.

We should concentrate on English and Mandarin and leave the talented ones to go beyond.

The Chinese have a saying that wide knowledge does not come with depth.

Ong Siew Chey

Mandarin useful but it may not be our mother tongue

I REFER to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's speech at Tuesday's launch of this year's Speak Mandarin Campaign. There is a need to differentiate between Mandarin as a mother tongue and as a useful language for communicating better with others.

As an example, MM Lee compares Mandarin to Cantonese, noting that Mandarin allows one to reach 1.3 billion people in China whereas Cantonese connects a speaker to only 100 million people in Guangdong and Hong Kong, thereby making Mandarin more 'useful' than a dialect like Cantonese.

He encourages the use of Mandarin over dialects, noting that there are 'strong emotional ties to one's mother tongue' and how in two generations, 'Mandarin will become our mother tongue'. Clearly, there is a distinction between today's mother tongue and Mandarin.

But the study of Mandarin here is categorised by the Education Ministry as the study of one's mother tongue, and not as a useful language to communicate with other cultures or communities.

In addition, this categorisation of mother tongue versus usefulness is ignored completely by the Speak Mandarin Campaign, whose aim, according to its website, is to encourage people to 'embrace speaking Mandarin and enjoy an appreciation for Chinese culture and language'. This clearly emphasises Mandarin as a mother tongue rather than as a useful language.

The problem with categorising Mandarin as a mother tongue is that no recognition is given to the fact that most Chinese Singaporean families today were born and bred in the Straits Settlements for more than 100 years and have developed their own culture, heritage, identity and language.

For example, the terms Peranakan, Baba and Nonya refer to people of Chinese descent who emigrated here in the 15th century and who have since been recognised as having their own culture.

It is well documented that this group retained much of their ethnic and religious origins, which is Chinese, but also assimilated much of the Malay language and culture. Since they are in fact of Chinese descent, should we now make Mandarin their mother tongue?

The classification of Mandarin, or any other language, as one's mother tongue touches the very heart of a person's culture, identity and history.

When I was growing up, I spoke Hokkien, watched Cantonese dramas and listened to my father converse in Hakka with the neighbours. Am I and my children supposed to ignore our roots and claim Mandarin as our mother tongue?

Patrick Khoo

This article was first published in The Straits Times.