The challenges of reintroducing Chinese dialects into Singapore

There has been much talk about reintroducing dialects back into Singapore in social media recently and being both a linguist and a fluent Hokkien speaker, I would like to offer my perspective on the issue. I have been asked earlier this year what my mother tongue is and I gave the answer as "Singaporean Hokkien" (ie. our version of Hokkien with a strong Malay influence, rather than a more pure form of Hokkien from Taiwan or Fujian province) rather than Mandarin.

After all, yes I am mostly Chinese (I am officially mixed), but Mandarin was not a language that my grandparents spoke at all. My grandparents spoke Hakka, Hokkien and Malay only - none of them spoke a word of Mandarin. My father is fluent in Mandarin, Malay, Cantonese, Hakka and Hokkien  whilst my mother has a decent grasp of Mandarin and is fluent in Hokkien, Malay and Singlish. By default, Hokkien is my mother tongue even if it is not my first language as that was the language I first spoke as a young child at home.

I recognize that there are a range of Chinese dialects spoken in Singapore - Hokkien, Teochew, Foochow, Hainanese, Hakka, Cantonese etc - but since I am a native Hokkien speaker, the focus of this article will be on Hokkien so my apologies to speakers of other Chinese dialects in Singapore. There are about 47 million speakers of Hokkien around the world today - that makes it more widely spoken than languages like Greek (13 million), Hebrew (5.3 million), Polish (40 million) and Dutch (28 million). However,  the form of Hokkien that I speak - Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien - characterized by a strong influence by Malay and to a lesser extent, Teochew, Cantonese, Mandarin and English - is spoken by only about 2 million people. Figures and estimates vary from 1.5 to 2 million and it is hard to come up with a reliable figure as we are talking about a language with unofficial status in an area which spans three countries (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) and depending on how you define a 'speaker' of Hokkien (ie. what level of competency), the statistics you end up with will vary - but it is probably in the region of 1.5 to 2 million speakers, mostly of the older generation. That figure is dropping as older speakers die and younger people in the region are not bothering to learn the language, opting to learn English, Mandarin, Malay and other languages instead.

Let me tell you a bit more about my relationship with Hokkien before we discuss the issue further. My dad is Hakka and he never ever bothered teaching me a word of Hakka - it wasn't useful in his opinion and as his relatives were all in Malaysia, we had nobody apart from him to use that language with. I grew up speaking Hokkien as a first language from a very young age as my grandmother took care of my siblings and I. Naturally, it was the first language that I learnt as an infant, but it was a very multilingual environment. I spoke in Mandarin to my dad, Hokkien and Malay to my grandmother and English/Singlish to my siblings and mother. I had little trouble distinguishing the four languages even from a young age. It was simple: don't use English words with grandma and pa as they don't understand English. Don't use Mandarin with mum as her Mandarin sucks. I knew exactly what language I had to use with each family member.

My siblings and I all have a really good grasp of Hokkien thanks to this upbringing and I would often deliberately choose to converse with them in Hokkien today instead of English just because we can and I relish every opportunity to speak Hokkien since I have moved away from Singapore in 1997. My late grandmother died several years ago and towards the final years of her life, she faded into a shadow of her former self. She used to be outgoing and independent, she had friends and would take the bus to go see her friends - but as she lost the ability to walk independently, even going to the local shops was a challenge. She spent much of her final years watching local Mandarin soaps on TV and I often wondered how much she actually understood. I thought it was really sad that she couldn't even access media in her own language despite having spent her entire life in Singapore.

I suppose the first question one has to answer when it comes to the issue of dialects in Singapore is this: which ones do you want to revive? Do you focus your efforts on the main one, ie. Hokkien? Do you focus on a few main ones: Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese and Hakka? Where do you draw the line - given the recent influx of migrants from China, they have brought with them a range of other regional dialects too. If Hokkien were to gain some kind of status, would you have to give every single Chinese dialect the same status even if there were just a few hundred speakers from some far flung remote corner of China?

In a generation, will they associate this dish with the Hokkiens?

One of my best friends in Singapore is Cantonese - I often speak in Singlish/Singdarin with him and would use a lot of Hokkien when we chat and he would reply in Cantonese. I would then say, "Woah, I am not fluent in Cantonese, slow down." And he would reply, "Aha, now you know how I feel when you Hokkien people jabber away in Hokkien and just assume that I must understand everything you say." You get the idea. So what about dialects like Hakka? My Hakka dad didn't even bother teaching me a single word of Hakka - so is that a dialect we are going to try to save?

Furthermore, even if we did agree to save Hokkien and Cantonese - what kind of Hokkien and Cantonese are we trying to save? The Hokkien and Cantonese that we speak in Malaysia and Singapore is quite different from the ones spoken in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Last year, I worked on a project with a Taiwanese academic who grew up speaking Taiwanese-Hokkien with her family. We had no problems conversing in English and Mandarin but we struggled to understand each other in Hokkien. The reason was simple: my brand of Southern-Malaysian Hokkien was heavily influenced by Malay (and to a lesser extent, English) and there were many Malay loanwords which were simply unintelligible to my Taiwanese friend.

Examples of foreign loanwords in Southern-Malaysian Hokkien include the following:

Potato - kan-tang (Malay, kentang)
Corn - ja-gong (Malay, jagung)
But - tapi (Malay, tetapi)
Just (as in "I have just returned") - Balu (Malay, baru) eg. "Gwa balu tng lai".
Like - su-kat (Malay, suka)
Market - ba-sat (Malay, pasar)
Please - tolong (Malay, tolong)
Wrong - salah (Malay, salah)
Estimate - agak-agak (Malay)
Brake- bu-lek (English)
Reverse - gostan (English: go astern)
Radio - lay-dio (English)

"Pasar malam" - a loanword from Malay used frequently in Hokkien

You get the idea, the list of loanwords is way too long for me to list here - but these would all have an equivalent in Taiwanese Hokkien where they would have a uniquely Taiwanese way to express the same word without using a loan word from another language. The influence of Malay on Southern-Malaysian Hokkien is so strong that it renders it virtually unintelligible with Taiwanese-Hokkien. Effectively, we're dealing with a language that is only understood by those who live in an area that stretches from Kuala Lumpur to the Riau Islands. I have encountered Penang Hokkien before and despite the fact that I do have a reasonably good grasp of Malay and am fluent in Singaporean Hokkien, I struggled to understand Penang Hokkien. A similar challenge exists for Singaporean and Malaysian Cantonese speakers for their brand of Cantonese differs greatly from the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Guangdong province. What are we trying to preserve here and do we risk importing a different form of Hokkien or Cantonese into Singapore if we are looking for a more authentic version of the dialect?

For me, this begs the question - do we even know what we are saving? Can somebody please define clearly what Southern-Malaysian Hokkien or Singaporean Hokkien is? What are the rules on loan words from Malay or English like pasar, kentang, tahan, gostan and tolong? Who gets to decide what these rules are? Do we default to what the older generation, do we try to capture the kind of Hokkien that my late grandmother spoke? (She was barely literate and couldn't speak Mandarin.) Or do we try to see Hokkien in a more contemporary context by looking at the way someone like myself (who speaks English as a first language) would speak Hokkien today? Certainly, my grandmother spoke a different blend of Hokkien which probably had stronger Malay influences - whilst my Hokkien would contain far more loanwords from Mandarin and English (languages that my late grandmother didn't speak). Is my brand of Hokkien less authentic? Or is it simply a product of living language evolving?

'Kuay Png' vs 'Ji Fan' - Hokkien is very different from Mandarin

Imagine if you were to make a TV programme with Hokkien speaking characters - what kind of Hokkien would you want them to speak? Would you insist on having some standards by ensuring that they spoke a purer form of Hokkien in order to uphold standards, to show how sincere you are in preserving the language? Or do you allow a more 'creolized' form of Hokkien with plenty of Mandarin, Malay and English loanwords to make it sound more contemporary and accesible to those who may not be able to speak Hokkien but would be able to pick up on the foreign loanwords? Where do you draw the line? Does at least half the sentence have to be in Hokkien or would that figure be 75%? Similar problems have arisen when Singaporeans have tried to define what Singlish is - unlike Mandarin or English, there isn't an official definition of what the rules of that language should be.

Perhaps all these arguments are putting the horse before the cart - are there enough Singaporeans to support the revival of dialects? I don't know (you tell me). Even when I was a child, Hokkien had always suffered low social status - the well educated tended to speak English, those less educated spoke Mandarin, Malay or Tamil whilst dialects were only spoken by those who couldn't speak any of the official languages. In light of the social tensions between indigenous Singaporeans and recent migrants from China, many Singaporeans are refusing to speak Mandarin and preferring to speak English to assert their identity. Could we get these same Singaporeans to speak Hokkien if they are already refusing to speak Mandarin? (Hey, Ah Tiongs won't understand your Singaporean-Hokkien...)

Would younger Singaporeans want to embrace Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese? Or would they be more keen to learn a language like Korean, French or Japanese? I suppose it will boil down to just how useful each language is. After all, just because your parents speak a dialect doesn't mean you will automatically inherit it.  Quite simply, if you want to learn a language, you would have to invest a lot of time and effort into learning the language. If you're going to spend that much time and effort learning a language, which language would younger Singaporeans pick? I suspect it would be more likely to be a useful foreign language that will look good on their CV, like Korean or Spanish.

Given the interest in K-pop and K-culture in general, would younger Singaporeans prefer to learn Korean instead? With the great interest in Korean culture at the moment, led by Psy (hey, I was so into K-pop way before Gangnam Style), the Korean language has a certain cool factor that Hokkien and Cantonese simply doesn't have. Well, maybe there will be a Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese equivalent of Psy one day, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Does this mean that Hokkien and other local dialects are doomed then? Not necessarily so - my regular readers will know that I speak Welsh fairly fluently. I have completed an advanced diploma in Welsh and I am amongst the 600,000 people in the world who do speak Welsh. There are two languages in Europe which have made a stunning revival despite almost having been wiped out - Irish gaelic and Welsh. Quite simply, when Ireland and Wales were conquered by the English, the local languages were systematically eradicated and wiped out to make sure that the locals were easily to rule by the invaders. It was cultural genocide that went on for centuries which almost led to both languages dying out by the last century. Only very small pockets of Welsh and Irish speakers survived in the most rural communities. Both languages came extremely close to being totally wiped out.

However, in the last 30 years, there was a real effort to revive these languages. Irish and Welsh were reintroduced into the schools in both countries (it is compulsory in both Wales and Ireland for all students to learn the local language) and there was a real desire by the parents who couldn't speak the language for their children to learn the language, in order to reclaim their language after it had been taken away from them by the English imperialists. It didn't help that both languages are ancient Celtic languages that bore little resemblance to English or French or any other modern European language. The fact that the languages were almost wiped out centuries ago meant that they never really evolved like other modern European languages. But hey, when there's a will, there's a way. It took about 30 years but both Welsh and Irish have gone from languages that were almost extinct to living, thriving languages today. It can be done and it has been done. Here's a video of me telling you a story in Welsh and other languages.

I know what my Singaporean readers are going to say, "Great for the Welsh and the Irish, but you know what the education system is like here. We are under so much pressure to perform, how can the kids find time to learn Hokkien or Cantonese when it is not part of the curriculum? We should focus on learning English and the second language and possibly a third language rather than these dialects - what are we learning dialects for?' I hear you. My dad didn't teach me Hakka for that very reason, so I can appreciate how you feel this way.

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but as a hyperglot who speaks more than ten languages, let me explain why being able to speak Hokkien has allowed me to learn other languages more easily. From a young age, I needed to discern the difference between Mandarin and Hokkien which were very different - take something as simple as the sentence, "I don't want". In Mandarin that would be 我不要 Wǒ bù yào but in Hokkien it would be expressed in two words, simply 'gwa mai'. Likewise, the phrase 'there isn't any' (to indicate the absence of something) in Mandrin would be 没有méiyǒu but in Hokkien it would be simply 'boh'. I got used to the idea that different rules applied in different languages which have different kinds of grammar and when you try to apply the grammar of one language to another, you end up with really awkward sounding sentences, like, "The room inside got people or not?"

Getting used to being flexible with grammar was important each time I approached a new language - I knew that I couldn't impose the grammar from another language onto another. That would be like trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole with terrible results. The more languages you speak, the more you are exposed to different kinds of grammar systems and the more adaptable your brain will become in adapting to new languages. By that token, that makes each subsequent language I learn easier because the grammar falls into place a lot more quickly for me than for someone who is monolingual and is only familiar with one kind of grammar system. Learning Hokkien (or another other Chinese dialect) is therefore very useful for training that aspect of you brain which unscrambles sentences in foreign languages. Here's a piece I wrote earlier about the similarities between Welsh and Chinese grammar.

The way I see it, I don't use a different part of my brain to speak Welsh, Hokkien, Spanish, English, French, German or Malay - it all comes from the same part of my brain which processes languages. The more I use that part of my brain, the stronger it becomes. When I speak English, I don't have to think very hard in order to get the right words to express myself - it comes naturally as it is my first language but I have to work a lot harder if I was speaking in a language I am not fluent in. Making Singaporeans express themselves in one more language will only strengthen the way they process languages, rather than confuse them, because the exercise will make them think harder about how they construct the sentences and this exercise will reinforce the way they handle grammar in the other languages that they do speak.

An analogy of how this works can be found in the field of sports. Say if you already do a sport which uses an arm intensively like badminton, you are building up the muscles in your right arm (if you're right handed) through badminton and when I put you in the tennis court and give you a tennis racquet, you will be using the same muscles in your right arm to play tennis. You are drawing upon a set of skills that you have already developed doing a different activity which is relevant. This is why I found Spanish very easy to learn having already become fluent in French, it was the equivalent of asking a good badminton player to try tennis or squash.

Hence in answer to the question, would learning Hokkien affect a student's ability to learn Mandarin? I don't think so - I hardly think it is possible to confuse the two languages. For younger Singaporeans, naturally they would be more confident in Mandarin because that is what they learn at school and if they have the chance to pick up some Hokkien on the way, it would only enhance their appreciation of the Chinese language as a whole when they can compare and contrast the difference between Hokkien and Mandarin. After all, Mandarin is a foreign language for us whilst Hokkien is indeed a mother tongue. Some people are going to pick up languages more quickly than others - that's life, so why not let those who can learn Chinese dialects just get on with it?

There is this irrational fear of Singaporeans confusing Hokkien and Mandarin. Well I have encountered plenty of monolingual British people who get awfully confused in English - the only language that they do speak.  (See the Vicky Pollard video below.) Why? Because being monolingual doesn't mean that you will be articulate in your language - if you want to avoid using the wrong word in a language you are learning, then you have to practice hard. But really, why worry about making a couple of mistakes along the way? Even if you do get confused and use a Hokkien word instead of a Mandarin word in a sentence, is it really such a big deal?

I don't know why Singaporeans are so paranoid about making a mistake like that - is it because they fear it may occur during an important exam and that one mistake could make a huge difference in such a competitive environment? Or is it more a simple matter of 'losing face' should you make a mistake when speaking to others? Let me give you an example of when I made a mistake like that - recently, I had been working in a very multilingual environment where I had the opportunity to use the various languages that I do speak including Spanish and Italian. Both languages are quite similar and I was trying to come up with the word for 'far' in Spanish (lejos) but for some reason, I said lontano instead. My Spanish friends corrected me, "Lontano is Italian, in Spanish we say lejos." I thanked them and we moved on. Would I make that same mistake again? No, it is unlikely as I had been corrected and now I remember that well enough to retell that story here on my blog. Making mistakes and being corrected is an integral part of learning a new language and one mustn't be afraid of being corrected like that.

Another reason why it is easy to learn Hokkien is that it is a spoken language - given that it has no official status (not even in Taiwan or Fujian Province, although in Taiwan it has de facto status), there has been little need for people to try to write Hokkien down formally since most official communication in Taiwan and Fujian province would be done in Mandarin-Chinese. There have been various attempts by various linguists over the years to come up with a writing system for Hokkien (including the most widely adopted Peh Oe Ji system) - but by and large, Hokkien remains a spoken language, rather than a written one. Now the main reason why many Singaporean students struggle with Chinese is because of the writing system - it is the only modern language today that is entirely logographic.  Other languages that use Chinese characters such as Japanese (Kanji) and to a lesser extent, Korean (Hanja, used far less in Korean than Kanji is in Japanese) also present the same challenges to learners of these languages.

Chinese is a very difficult language to read & write.

It is no wonder that younger Singaporeans would often express a preference for a much easier language (ie. English) in the school environment - indeed, many Singaporeans may wonder, "I am already struggling with Mandarin at school, how will I be able to cope with Hokkien or Cantonese?" The answer is easy - if it is learnt as a spoken language (with perhaps an adapted script based on Hanyupinyin for a writing system, without using any Chinese characters at all), suddenly, it becomes a lot easier and more approachable as a language to learn!  Heck, I'm sure most Singaporeans would find most other languages like Korean, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Danish, Bahasa Indonesia, Greek, Tagalog, Russian etc a lot easier than Chinese because these are languages with an alphabet system. If Hokkien can be taught the same way with a romanized writing system, it will be very accessible to learners.

Nonetheless, southern Chinese dialects like Hokkien and Cantonese are actually far less similar to Mandarin than say, French is to Italian. It is a complete fallacy actually to use the term "dialect" to refer to what are essentially languages that are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. 'Dialects' in English for example, are mutually intelligible! This term (dialects or 方言) was coined by the Chinese emperors over the centuries to try to foster a sense of a national Chinese identity, rather than allow the separate regions to start thinking of themselves as independent states. In perpetuating the notion that these are just dialects of Chinese rather than languages which are completely unintelligible, they have somehow managed to convinced over a billion people to believe in a national rather than regional identity.In bending (or even breaking) the rules of linguistics, they have archived an important political goal.  Linguists tend to prefer to use the word 'topolects' to reflect the very low level of mutual intelligibility between Chinese 'dialects' (or topolects). A young Singaporean who has no knowledge of Hokkien would struggle to pick up the language even if s/he spoke Mandarin fluently. So from a linguistic point of view, trying to bring new speakers into Hokkien or Cantonese is actually harder than you think. The Chinese language can be divided into seven major groups of 'dialects' - dialects within each group are mutually intelligible but it trying to understand a dialect from another group is nearly impossible. Interestingly, Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese all come from different groups in this context.

A major part of learning any new language is visual - for example, when I am in Singapore, I am very used to seeing signs on the MRT in English, Chinese, Mandarin and Tamil. What I would often do, just to pass the time and to improve my Malay, is to do a simple exercise of language mapping. I would read the sign in English and then figure out what each of the individual words in Malay would correspond to, based on the English translation. That makes Malay a very approachable and easy language to learn in a place like a Singapore - however, as Hokkien is primarily a spoken language with little written records, that makes it a lot harder for people to pick it up subconsciously by seeing it around them. Instead, they would have to make a concerted effort to learn the language and practice it with a fluent speaker.

In any case, we know the government's stance on the issue. It is unlikely that they will budge on the issue of Chinese dialects in the near future. Who knows, it may be a concession they throw in at the next election to boost their short term popularity, but I doubt it somehow. Perhaps this policy is really trying to find a scapegoat for the failures of their bilingual education system - it has not delivered the kind of success it has promised. Whilst the educated elite tend to speak very good English, the majority of Singaporeans still speak Singlish and are incapable of using standard English even in a business context when dealing with foreigners. When I worked in Singapore, I was amazed at the number of times I had walked out of meetings with my Angmoh boss who would confess, "I struggled to understand him/her, I know s/he is speaking English but that accent is really strong and I am obviously not a local."

Perhaps this is far less apparent to me as I can understand Singaporeans whether they choose to speak in English, Singlish, Mandarin, Singdarin, Malay or Hokkien and English with a strong Singaporean accent doesn't faze me in the slightest. However, foreigners who are not used to it will really struggle to understand it and it can be a major handicap in the business world. Of course, if you are working in Ang Mo Kio dealing only with Singaporeans, then this isn't an issue at all - but if you want to work in an industry that deals with foreigners, then there is a huge problem. Let me show you just how even a simple situation can end up with a misunderstanding.

I was with my Kiwi colleague in a department store in Singapore when he needed the toilet. So he went to the nearest sales assistant and asked her, "Excuse me, is there a toilet here please?" And her reply was, "Got, got." And with her Singaporean accent, she dropped the T at the end of the word "got" so it sounded more like "Gaw, gaw" (sounds like the number 5 in Hokkien). My Kiwi colleague shook his head and said, "I'm sorry?" The sales assistant then said, "Gaw, gaw - dere gaw one lah!" Again, she couldn't say the word 'there' as most Singaporeans are incapable of making the TH sound, and so it sounded more like 'dare' (with a silent R). It was at that point that I had to step in and translate, "Yes there is a toilet, it is over there." My Angmoh colleague then thanked the sales assistant and went to the toilet. When he was out of ear shot, she asked me, "Your Angmoh friend come from where one? Aiyoh. How come don't understand English one har?" To which I replied, "Actually he is from New Zealand."

My Kiwi colleague could have sworn she was speaking in Mandarin or Hokkien for he did not understand a word of what she said, but could you blame him? Do you expect a non-Singlish speaker to understand a sentence like, "Gaw gaw - dere gaw one lah!" Now the reason why this sales assistant speaks English like that is simple - she is surrounded by Singaporeans who all speak like that and she is understood perfectly by her peers. She rarely has to deal with foreigners and hence there is little need for her to try to speak standard English. Whether or not this auntie spoke Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese is irrelevant - her English is very Singlish because she has not had the opportunity (nor the motivation) to try to speak English with native speakers to improve her English.

Likewise, my PRC and Taiwanese friends who have worked in Singapore have the same complaint - that Chinese Singaporeans really suck at Mandarin, big time. Older Singaporeans like my dad have a very strong accent and their Mandarin (or Singdarin, really) is heavily influenced by Chinese dialects whilst younger Singaporeans who have only learnt it as a second language at school speak a form of Singdarin that is heavily influenced by English. Few in Singapore actually speak a very pure form of standard Mandarin and even those who have attained a very high standard in Chinese still have a very distinctive regional accent that often leads to mispronunciations in Mandarin. In fact, Singdarin is as distinctive as Singlish is to those of us who have spent time in both Singapore and China and can hear the difference right away. Perhaps with the influx of PRC migrants, the standard of Mandarin in Singapore will improve - do leave a comment below and let me know what you've observed.

Singlish and Singdarin - our two unofficial languages?

The root of the problem is the way languages like English and Mandarin (sorry, I cannot comment about Malay and Tamil) are taught in Singapore - they are taught usually by local teachers who have a strong local accent and the students pick up on all the mistakes that the teachers speak. That is the reason why we have ended up with a country that can speak Singlish and Singdarin rather than English and Mandarin. It has nothing to do with whether Chinese dialects like Hokkien and Cantonese are part of the equation or not. Even after excluding Chinese dialects from the system for the last 40 years, the results are still less than satisfactory - as epitomized by that sales assistant auntie's "Gaw gaw - dere gaw one lah". Is the Education Minster Heng Swee Keat the best person to advice on the issue? Has he looked at the methods used in other countries like Finland, Switzerland and Belgium where they have successfully produced generations of multi-lingual students from their schools? It is time to stop using Chinese dialects as a scapegoat for the failures of the education system and start finding new solutions.

I accidentally published a draft version of this last night before I had completed the article. Sorry about that! I hope you guys have not found the draft too tedious to read. I like to break down a long article with videos and photos to make it less of a 'wall of text'. Any comments, ideas, responses, don't be shy, leave a comment below. Kum siah!