Speak Mandarin Campaign - Any Side Effect?
The 27th Annual Speak Mandarin Campaign kicked off on 30th October, 2006 with a message from our Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Wong Kan Seng, that it was intended for ethnic Chinese Singaporeans to use Mandarin in addition to English as it added so much to their cultural and personal enrichment and business effectiveness.
If my memory does not fail me, the campaign originally started in 1979 with the primary aim of replacing the various types of ethnic Chinese dialects with Mandarin as a tool for communication among the ethnic Chinese Singaporeans. It caught on like a conflagration at wet markets and hawker centres where Mandarin suddenly became the lingua franca among the ethnic Chinese stall holders. Those stall holders, who used to converse with me in dialects, began speaking Mandarin to me. I was taken by surprise because I was not mentally prepared for it then.
The print media has reported that Mandarin has overtaken over dialects as the predominant home language of ethnic Chinese homes here; and that the percentage of Mandarin speakers have also increased while dialect speakers have dropped over the same period.
The campaign has since switched its strategy to target at the English-educated ethnic Chinese, although its original aim remains intact. The Promote Mandarin Council must consider all the ramifications of its strategies. That more ethnic Chinese are now speaking Mandarin cannot be denied, but we must take note that it is only at conversational level. Ethnic Chinese children would likely grow up not knowing their ancestral roots. Tell tale signs are there.
At public places, it is not uncommon to overhear people rattling off Mandarin that is often peppered with English words. I shall call it pidgin Mandarin. To make matters worse, sometimes radio/TV hosts manning Mandarin programs and Chinese language teachers also speak in similar fashion. I cringed whenever I heard it.
Children of the ethnic Chinese Singaporeans, especially those born after 1975, would likely lose trace of the cultural heritage of their respective dialect groups. A good case in point would come from those families who use Mandarin exclusively at their homes. Mandarin polluted with English words would subconsciously become the native tongue of their children, and dialects would be Greek to them. They may not know where their forefathers came from.
I am not against the Speak Mandarin campaign, lest I be misunderstood. In fact I treasure its economic value that has surfaced. We may even have to build a reservoir of effective bilinguals in English/Chinese to compete globally for a slice of the cake dished out by the emerging economy of China.
I felt enlightened with the media release issued by the PMC on 23rd October that the campaign would continue to use the life-oriented approach revolving around movies, music and metaphors. More than 50 years ago, I supplemented my Mandarin lessons by watching Mandarin movies very often, although I am essentially an English-educated Chinese Singaporean.
We must make a concerted effort to speak standard Mandarin in order to raise the level of proficiency of the language. Those radio/TV hosts manning Mandarin programs and those Chinese language teachers, who have the habit of speaking in pidgin Mandarin, should set exemplary models by speaking in standard Mandarin. To this end, PMC can help.
If my memory does not fail me, the campaign originally started in 1979 with the primary aim of replacing the various types of ethnic Chinese dialects with Mandarin as a tool for communication among the ethnic Chinese Singaporeans. It caught on like a conflagration at wet markets and hawker centres where Mandarin suddenly became the lingua franca among the ethnic Chinese stall holders. Those stall holders, who used to converse with me in dialects, began speaking Mandarin to me. I was taken by surprise because I was not mentally prepared for it then.
The print media has reported that Mandarin has overtaken over dialects as the predominant home language of ethnic Chinese homes here; and that the percentage of Mandarin speakers have also increased while dialect speakers have dropped over the same period.
The campaign has since switched its strategy to target at the English-educated ethnic Chinese, although its original aim remains intact. The Promote Mandarin Council must consider all the ramifications of its strategies. That more ethnic Chinese are now speaking Mandarin cannot be denied, but we must take note that it is only at conversational level. Ethnic Chinese children would likely grow up not knowing their ancestral roots. Tell tale signs are there.
At public places, it is not uncommon to overhear people rattling off Mandarin that is often peppered with English words. I shall call it pidgin Mandarin. To make matters worse, sometimes radio/TV hosts manning Mandarin programs and Chinese language teachers also speak in similar fashion. I cringed whenever I heard it.
Children of the ethnic Chinese Singaporeans, especially those born after 1975, would likely lose trace of the cultural heritage of their respective dialect groups. A good case in point would come from those families who use Mandarin exclusively at their homes. Mandarin polluted with English words would subconsciously become the native tongue of their children, and dialects would be Greek to them. They may not know where their forefathers came from.
I am not against the Speak Mandarin campaign, lest I be misunderstood. In fact I treasure its economic value that has surfaced. We may even have to build a reservoir of effective bilinguals in English/Chinese to compete globally for a slice of the cake dished out by the emerging economy of China.
I felt enlightened with the media release issued by the PMC on 23rd October that the campaign would continue to use the life-oriented approach revolving around movies, music and metaphors. More than 50 years ago, I supplemented my Mandarin lessons by watching Mandarin movies very often, although I am essentially an English-educated Chinese Singaporean.
We must make a concerted effort to speak standard Mandarin in order to raise the level of proficiency of the language. Those radio/TV hosts manning Mandarin programs and those Chinese language teachers, who have the habit of speaking in pidgin Mandarin, should set exemplary models by speaking in standard Mandarin. To this end, PMC can help.
posted by Socaps at 12:29 AM
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