5 reasons why Singaporeans should learn Hokkien

Hello everyone! In today's article, I shall be discussing why Singaporeans should learn Singaporean Hokkien. I have been talking a lot about learning foreign languages in my recent posts to celebrate the launch of my Eureka Languages project and I wanted to do an article specifically for my Singaporean readers in this series. I grew up in Singapore and up till the age of 8, it was my grandmother who took care of me. Now she spoke to me only in Hokkien and it was a language I was totally fluent in as a young child. My Hokkien is rather rusty today through lack of use after having spent almost all of my adult life in Europe, but it is what I consider my mother tongue.

Please note that I use the term 'Chinese 方言' to refer to Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, Shanghainese, Hakka etc because that is the term Singaporeans are most familiar with, but really, as a linguist, I must point that the commonly used term 'dialect' is totally wrong in this context.  A dialect implies a very high degree of mutual intelligibility - so for example, I could watch an Australian movie where the actors are speaking in the local Australian dialect, but I would not require subtitles to understand the movie. In contrast, a Mandarin speaker will not understand Hokkien unless s/he has made some effort to study it. The correct term would be either 'topolects' or in some cases: languages (if there's so little mutual intelligibility). I am singling out Hokkien because it just makes my argument a little easier and more straightforward to present, but in principle, I fully support the learning of any Chinese 方言 of your choice.

Please note that in this article, I am referring quite specifically to Singaporean or Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. The kind of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan and Fujian province in China is rather different and I had explored the differences between Singaporean Hokkien and Xiamen Hokkien in a previous vlog post which you can check out here.

Reason 1: Our version of Hokkien is relatively easy to learn

Given the number of loanwords Singaporean Hokkien has taken from Malay, Mandarin and English, it is not that difficult to learn Singaporean Hokkien if you already speak some Malay and Mandarin. Whilst there are virtually no loan words from Malay in Mandarin, Singaporean Hokkien is liberally peppered with plenty of Malay loan words: tapi, suka, sabun, kacau, pasar, mata, senang, tolong, loti, pun, agak-agak, botak - the list is endless given how long the Hokkiens have mingled with the Malays in Singapore. This makes Hokkien far more accessible for Malay (and Malay speakers) than Mandarin. Indeed, in my parents' generation, it was not uncommon for Malay Singaporeans to speak some Hokkien as a lingua franca to communicate with the Chinese - though this lingua franca has switched to English by my generation.

Angpow = red packet in Hokkien

Thus if you do speak Mandarin and/or Malay, then Hokkien becomes remarkably accessible compared to a language like Arabic, German or Russian. Besides, there are so many Hokkien words which are already commonly used in Singlish: kiasu, Ah Beng/Lian,. Angmoh, bohliao, chaokeng, chiobu, jialat, paiseh, swaku, Limpeh (my namesake) just to name a few - the list is very long indeed. Hokkien is not unfamiliar to most Singaporeans, even if a Singaporean has not ever studied Hokkien before, s/he probably has a fairly big Hokkien vocabulary via Singlish.

Reason 2: There are plenty of opportunities to use it in Singapore.

There are an estimated 1.2 million speakers of Hokkien in Singapore and our version of Hokkien is very similar to the Hokkien spoken as far south as the Riau Islands in Indonesia and as far north as Melaka in Malaysia. Penang Hokkien is somewhat different but still mutually intelligible with Singaporean Hokkien. That means that you will have plenty of opportunities to use your Hokkien in Singapore compared to a foreign language like French, Japanese or German where there are probably only a few thousand speakers at best and it is quite hard to find anyone to practice your language with. Simply pop down to your local hawker centre or Kopitiam and you will find plenty of opportunities to practice your Hokkien. I am currently studying Welsh and Korean in London and I am struggling to find anyone to speak those languages with - it can get disheartening at times as I really want to practice my Welsh and Korean.

There are plenty of chances for you to use your Hokkien.

It is not just the older Chinese-Singaporeans who are more than likely to be able to speak it, but it is also used as a lingua franca by non-Hokkien Singaporeans before English took over that role. There are also plenty of younger Singaporeans who have picked up that language from their parents and grandparents despite not having been taught that language at school. It is often used in the SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) and trust me, having a decent grasp of Hokkien will make your life a lot easier when you are serving your national service. There will be people who will speak Hokkien in Singapore and it would be useful to be able to understand them, particularly in social situations. The makes Singapore a very conducive environment to learn Hokkien.

Here's the thing: it's not that you're learning Hokkien to communicate with Hokkien speakers because they can't speak English or Mandarin - you're highly unlikely to find anyone in Singapore who can only speak Hokkien today (apart from some in their 80s and 90s). Rather, being able to converse with them in a language that they associate with their childhood, their family and cultural identity enables you to connect to them in a way which you can never if you converse with them in a language they associate with school, work and authority - it helps establish rapport quickly.

Do you want to speak to the heart or the mind?

Reason 3: It is a Creole, so feel free to mix it with other languages.

Singaporean Hokkien is very creolized - that means that is very different from a very pure form of Hokkien that is spoken in Fujian province in China because of the high volume of loanwords from other languages. My mother speaks Hokkien fluently as a mother tongue and first language, but her Hokkien still contains plenty of loanwords from English, Malay, Cantonese and Mandarin. This is not because my mother isn't fluent in Hokkien, but simply because there aren't strict rules rejecting loanwords in Hokkien. Given that Hokkien is not used in education in Singapore or Malaysia, there isn't that rigid formality attached to the way Hokkien is spoken or used, unlike English or Mandarin where we are conditioned by the way we have to speak it during a lesson or for an oral exam. This makes Hokkien a far more vibrant, expressive and colourful language, compared to Mandarin which always felt very formal and rigid to my ears.

Thus you don't need to be totally fluent in Hokkien in order to use it in your everyday conversations - feel free just to use a few words or phrases, blend it liberally with English, Mandarin, Singlish and/or Malay as long as it conveys what you want to say. What you may end up saying may sound more like Singlish or Sindarin but the bottom line is, it doesn't really matter - only knowing a little Hokkien should never stop you from trying to use it to express yourself.

Feel free to have fun with Hokkien!

Reason 4: Learning Hokkien will make it far easier for you to learn other languages.

Another good reason to learn Hokkien is because it will train your mind to think in another language - think of it as an academic exercise to train your mind to learn another language. The best part about Hokkien is that it is an informal, spoken language that is thriving in the community, rather than a formal language that you learn from books. As discussed in my previous article, finding the confidence to speak up in a foreign language is often one of the most daunting and challenging tasks for learners of a foreign language. Whilst you may think, oh what has Hokkien got to do with Russian or French, how is Hokkien going to help me learn French? Well you go through the same process with learning any new language and with each language you master, you gain a new level of confidence to approach the same kind of challenge.

Reason 5: Don't do as you're told - it will piss the PAP off.

The government in Singapore has tried really hard to wipe Hokkien off the face of Singapore with the Speak Mandarin Campaign, which was actually extremely successful in reducing the number of Singaporeans of my generation who speak any kind of Chinese 方言. I have always felt how it was incredibly unfair on older Singaporeans like my late grandmother who was unable to speak Mandarin and thus felt very isolated, unable to access TV and radio programmes in Hokkien. She struggled very hard to understand Mandarin and thus she suffered the social stigma of being labelled 'uneducated' for being a Hokkien speaker. Was it her fault that she grew up in the pre-WW2 Singapore and didn't have the chance to have a decent education then?  My grandmother was discriminated in her own country.

Tzeng hoo mai lr lang gong hokkien ueh, wa sibeh buay song tzeng hoo.

I have often wondered why the PAP were so vehemently anti-方言 and they made such a valiant effort to stamp it out back in the 1980s and how uncompromising their stance has been when it came to forcing us all to speak Mandarin instead of 方言. Regardless, it has given Hokkien this status of rebellion in Singapore, speaking any 方言 becomes an act of defiance to do precisely what you're told not to do by the government. I can think of many reasons why Singaporeans would be resentful against the PAP (don't get me started), hence contradicting the PAP through our choice of languages is one of many ways to show them that we will not do as we're told and that we don't trust them.

I am a triple scholar who is painfully over-educated, I speak ten languages and most of all, I speak English like an Angmoh. I'm hardly the typical Hokkien-speaking Ah Beng or older Ah Pek from Ang Mo Kio - quite the opposite. Mandarin is not even my second language - it is a distant third behind French, my second language. Mandarin is by no means by mother tongue. Just two generations ago, none of my four grandparents spoke any Mandarin at all - so why is Mandarin imposed on me as my 'mother tongue' through the Singaporean education system, when really, it is no more than a foreign language like French, Russian or Korean to me? I may be mostly Chinese (technically speaking, I am Eurasian, I am in fact mixed) but Mandarin is certainly not my mother tongue - Hokkien is my mother tongue.

Limpeh is actually Eurasian.

I have a pretty simple reason why I embrace Hokkien as my rightful mother tongue: my grandmother. My late grandmother took care of me as a child whilst my parents worked hard. My grandmother would be there waiting for me when I got home from school and she would have lunch waiting for me. She would ask me about what I did in school and we would joke, laugh and chat in Hokkien. I have many precious memories of that time with her. Whenever I hear people speaking Hokkien, I would think of the precious moments I have shared with my late grandmother and how much I miss her. She is now gone, but the Hokkien language is my link to her, it is something that will always remind me of her and is a part of whom I am, where I am from and I don't want to lose that. 

So there you go, that's my take on the issue. Do you speak Hokkien or any other 方言? Would you like to learn Hokkien? Do you use Hokkien to converse with other Singaporeans? How can we get more Singaporeans to speak 方言? Do let me know what you think, please leave me a comment below. Thank you very much for reading, kum siah!

The Eureka Languages project now features 6 Asian languages including Hokkien and Cantonese amongst its 12 languages on the programme. How well do you understand Hokkien and Cantonese? How would you fare in our Eurkea Language Challenge with Hokkien and Cantonese?  Take the challenge today by visitng our website!