03/07/2024

Bringing the Chinese Dialects back

How to speak to Grandma before her language dies
Keeping Dialects Alive: Grandfather's Language

Over the past two decades, there have been both academic and public discourse about how the loss of these languages have created problems for intergenerational communication between grandparents and their grandchildren. Young Singaporean Chinese have also reported a sense of identity loss in not being able to speak their “dialect” and are keen to search for their roots.

More crucially, older Singaporean Chinese who only speak “dialects” have problems navigating public services, and it is especially critical in hospitals and nursing homes. These issues have not gone unnoticed. There are online communities getting people together to learn these languages in order to revive them. Organisations are also running classes for healthcare workers so they can better look after patients. The prohibition of “dialects” in the media space has also since been less strict. Today, Mediacorp’s Channel 8 features “dialect” programmes on Friday mornings, and radio station Capital 95.8FM offers daily news bulletins. “Dialects” are also used to convey information and public policies to the elderly. Some escalators at MRT stations have safety announcements in Hokkien and Cantonese to remind commuters to hold on to the handrail.

Despite all these efforts however, one cannot revive the dead. These revival attempts are affective responses to our feelings of nostalgia, or maybe even wistful regret and anxiety that these “dialects” will no longer be in our linguistic space. However, the fact is, there is little space and need for them once our grandparents die. Research has shown that grandparents today have heeded the government policies well and pivoted to speaking Mandarin and/or English with their grandchildren. Our next generation of grandparents are the ones who have grown up in the era of post-independence language policies, and so they would have been educated in the official languages. Just like M and Amah in the movie, communication will still take place, just not in Amah’s language.


How about learning some dialect to bond with grandma?
The young founders of my Father Tongue: Melissa Goh, Fiona Seah and Cherie Lim

When author and blogger Grace Tan first met her boyfriend’s grandmother, she found herself tongue-tied. It’s not because the 29-year-old is shy; it’s because she couldn’t chat with the 85-year-old as the latter speaks only Teochew. “It was ridiculously difficult to communicate with her as she doesn’t speak Mandarin. So while she understands while I’m trying to say in Mandarin, she can’t respond to me at all,” said Tan.

But these days, Tan is able to use some conversational Teochew greetings such as “How are you feeling?” and “What would you like to eat?” thanks to the Teochew classes she attended at a community centre. Her efforts have been reciprocated by the older lady who would laugh and correct her pronunciation. Naturally, they’ve gotten closer.

Tan’s Teochew class was organised by a student initiative My Father Tongue, set up by Fiona Seah, Melissa Goh and Cherie Lim from Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information as part of their final year project. These free Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese classes are held in community centres around Singapore in partnership with Viriya Community Services, which provides the teachers and learning materials.



Are Chinese dialects at risk of dying out in Singapore?

Dialects are not just a form of communication but convey cultures, identity and family ties, proponents say. But with fewer Chinese Singaporeans speaking these languages, is there value in learning them?

For years, Brandon Seah had a nagging thought at the back of his mind – to learn Teochew properly one day. He had picked up simple phrases from his grandmother when he was young. But like most of his generation, the use of predominantly English and Mandarin in school and at home meant that he never quite mastered his dialect, as much as he wanted to.

“It’s the first language of your grandparents but because it’s not yours, it becomes hard to have proper conversations with your own grandparents or even within the family. If you think about it, it’s actually quite strange. “We think it’s ‘normal’ because we all grew up with this experience but if you go to other countries or communities, it’s not,” said the 36-year-old. “So for the longest time, I told myself that someday I will learn it properly.”

Chinese Dialects Revive After Decades of Restrictions
Tok Kim Kiok, left, and his wife, Law Ngoh Kiaw, both Hokkien speakers, look on as their English-speaking grandchildren play. Credit Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

The Tok and Teo families are a model of traditional harmony, with three generations gathered under one roof, enjoying each other’s company over slices of fruit and cups of tea on a Saturday afternoon in Singapore. There is only one problem: The youngest and oldest generations can barely communicate with each other.

Lavell, 7, speaks fluent English and a smattering of Mandarin Chinese, while her grandmother, Law Ngoh Kiaw, prefers the Hokkien dialect of her ancestors’ home in southeastern China. That leaves grandmother and granddaughter looking together at a doll house on the floor, unable to exchange more than a few words. “She can’t speak our Hokkien,” Mrs. Law said with a sigh, “and doesn’t really want to speak Mandarin, either.”

This struggle to communicate within families is one of the painful effects of the Singapore government’s large-scale, decades-long effort at linguistic engineering.

Chinese Dialects - Uniquely Singapore
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The Death of Dialects in Singapore

Singapore’s many Chinese dialects (Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka etc.) came about as a result of early settlers arriving from various provinces in China.

In the 1950s & 60s, Singapore, like many de-colonised countries, began a search for an independent national identity. The Chinese in particular, turned to the cultural products of film and music from Hong Kong as a source of inspiration. The fascination with Hong Kong was also seen as a reactionary and feudal ‘Yellow Culture’ that was set out to oppose the ‘Red’ culture still apparent in Communist China.

Canto-pop in particular, boomed because of its apparent lack of censorship and ‘sexy songstress’, and made its way to the hearts of Singapore with popular Hong Kong singers taking centrestage at the Republic’s newly established culture centre, the National Theatre.

Chinese Dialects - The Real Singapore
爱拼才会赢 (Ai Piah Cia Eh Yia)

All ethnic Chinese Singaporeans are born to parents who belong to one of several dialect groups here. There isn’t any ‘formal’ schooling or training (as in formal lessons conducted in a classroom) wherein our children are taught to speak the dialect of his or her parents, grandparents, and elders. Rather, it is quite literally by word of mouth that from birth we are inducted, nurtured, taught and ‘immersed’ by our parents into the cultural mores, values and habits of our respective dialect groups. Meaning, this comes about very naturally especially and particularly between mother and child (hence, the real origin of the term ‘mother tongue’ to describe this intimate nurturing relationship. Regrettably the term has been quite brazenly hijacked by the MOE to describe the compulsory learning of Mandarin by all ethnic-Chinese Singaporeans). 

In other words, dialects are the very essence of the conduit for the vital flow and direct transmission of our ancestors’ unique cultures, values, social and traditional mores, to descendants, in particular the younger generations. By extension and implication, the loss of the use of our dialects can therefore lead to an inexorable and irreversible dilution and eventual loss of our ethnic roots and cultural ballast over time. And on a timeline, after 30 years of govt sanctioned prohibition, I would say we are really almost on the precipice’s edge of dialects’ extinction – it is going the way of the dinosaurs. 

So the corollary (i.e. consequence and conclusion) must be that without a living and functional use of dialects, it is almost impossible for our ancestors to ‘speak’ to us through our elders in the most intimate way possible.


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