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Op-Ed: Speaking Mandarin, Silencing Dialects — Beautiful Harmonies or Dissonance?
- Mah Jia Min and Nicholas John Ng
- Apr 10
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 18
Language is not just a means for communication - it bridges culture, memory, and identity. In a diverse Singapore, the Speak Mandarin Campaign unified the Chinese Singaporeans with Mandarin and eliminated the various dialects, a spiraling issue that was in the community. However, unbeknownst to them, this would come at a cost of connection to their heritage for generations to come.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are the writer’s own and are not representative of MAJU’s views. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or corrections of errors.
Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Kautsar Aryana (Osa) for his unwavering support and dedication to this project even though he was unable to take part as a writer.
How many of us can actually speak our Mother Tongue fluently today? As JC students who barely took Chinese lessons seriously, the ability to speak fluent Mandarin is now a dying art in our generation.
Today, we see people lose affection, and together, their fluency, for Mandarin. The Speak “Good” Mandarin Campaign of 1979 has had a drastic impact on the language scene today. Ironically, the decline of fluent Mandarin speakers was not because of the rise of English as the primary language of instruction we use today. Instead, it was the prioritisation of Mandarin itself. As dialects were eliminated and the transition to Mandarin began, this meant that language would be transformed into an academic requirement, rather than a core part of Chinese culture.
After the establishment of the bilingual education policy, the Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) was launched in 1979 to encourage the Singaporean Chinese population to speak standard Mandarin Chinese. Organised by the Promote Mandarin Council and spearheaded by the Ministry of Information and Arts (now MDDI), the promotion of SMC involved grassroots organisations, annual campaigns and outreach programmes to replace dialect use across TV shows, public posters and schools.
In Part 1 of this Op-Ed, we discuss how the policy has, for better and for worse, completely altered the identities and daily lives of the Chinese community in Singapore.
Singing In Unison
From numbers alone, the effectiveness of the campaign in replacing dialects under a unified Mandarin language is evident. In 1980, just one year after the SMC was introduced, Mandarin-speaking households constituted a mere 13.1% of the total population. By 2020, Chinese is most frequently spoken in 40.2% of Singapore’s households, representing a momentous increase.
Foremostly, the SMC laid the foundation of a society that prioritises racial harmony and a shared identity. Prior to the formation of the SMC, Chinese dialect groups were notoriously involved in secret societies, instigating fights between differing dialect groups to protect their own interests, and creating the resultant communication barriers. This threatened national unity in the population, especially since Singapore was built upon the ethnically diverse population of migrants. With the eradication of dialect, it led to the elimination of societal factors that fostered ethnic tribalism.Today, we see that the SMC worked by uniting Chinese immigrants under Mandarin instead of the contentious dialect clans. As such, we can accommodate for shared national identity with greater ease.
With the coincidence of China’s Open Door policy, the SMC promoted Singapore’s economic growth by leveraging on regional business opportunities with China. In a 1985 speech by then-Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Ho Kah Leong,, he praised the positive increase in Mandarin speaking Singaporeans while encouraging more people not to “lag behind”. Evidently, Government officials angled the campaign towards economic aims. As a result, this initiative helped Singapore establish China as one of our largest trading partners. Without Singapore’s appeal as a Mandarin-speaking country, we would not be well positioned to reap the rewards of China’s rapid economic growth.
To give credit where credit is due, the SMC was crucial in laying the foundations for a harmoniously diverse multicultural society, undefined by ethnic chauvinism. It can also be credited for laying the foundations for Singapore’s rapid economic growth.
Creeping Dissonance
Nonetheless, we believe that the SMC was a demonstration of top-down policymaking that was implemented in an unnecessarily abrupt and blunt manner. Disregarding the social and economic benefits of the SMC, the interference of the Government in the Singaporean Chinese identity had an adverse impact. Particularly, implementing the SMC involved a very paternalistic approach towards dialect that was based on then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s own beliefs of it. Doing this disregarded the concerns of grassroots citizens.
In a speech at the Singapore Conference Hall in 1984, then-PM Lee described dialect as an “emotion”, calling parents who continue to register their children’s dialect names as a “[hindrance to] our complete acceptance of Mandarin”, and an inability to communicate with dialect-speaking elders in the family will be a “[problem] we have to live with”. In the speech, he continues to state language and culture as noninterchangeable, suggesting to reduce dialect-speaking at home for students to “lighten their load” when they are learning Mandarin in school. This sets a clear context, in our opinion, for Singaporean Chinese to perceive their dialects as impractical, and also undermining their cultural identities as a whole.
To claim that language is not a part of culture, in spite of the rich Singaporean Chinese clan histories, is a flawed approach. No doubt, the implementation of the SMC was very interventionist and extreme - it sought to redefine people’s cultural identities and historical memories without consent or civic participation.
For a policy that deeply influences people’s identities and everyday lives, we also feel that it is important for the Government to hear from the voices of the community. In then-PM Lee’s speech, upon the SMC’s implementation, many parents stubbornly clung onto registering dialect names for their children. This shows the friction generated by the policy, and underscored the Government’s lack of consultation with ordinary citizens prior to its implementation. Later in 1996 and 2003, the Advisory Committee for Chinese Programmes proposed the relaxation of the ban on dialect broadcasts, but despite gathering huge support from editorials and commentaries in both Mandarin and English media, the request was rejected on both occasions. At the 2010 Annual General Meeting of the Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, many others advocated for a unanimous proposal to relax the ban. That was met with another rejection. The PAP’s loss of four constituencies during the 1991 general elections, with opposition candidates reaching out to Chinese voters in dialect, reflected the disconnect between the Government and people’s desires. From these immediate and long-term public responses, it is safe to conclude that the SMC undermined the Chinese identity by ignoring civic concerns.
The extremity of the SMC resulted in three major consequences. Namely, it resulted in the decline of intergenerational communication. It also stripped the ethnic Chinese of their cultural identity and engendered a general lack of trust towards the Government. By dividing people from the sentimental value that came with their respective dialects, Mandarin was neither able to preserve Chinese cultural values nor the cultural sentiments the same way dialects can.
Today, we see students being unengaged in Mother Tongue Fortnight and barely taking their structured lessons seriously (including us). This stems from the declining affection for Chinese culture. Rather than focusing solely on nationwide benefits, we see that the implementation of the SMC has widely disregarded citizens’ valid concerns over their identity. Ultimately, it was dialects that were important to connect Singaporean Chinese to the clan histories, to our grandparents, and most importantly, to our self-identity.
The "Harm" In "Harmonies"
There is a large irony prevailing as a result of the implementation of the SMC. Namely, the Government expected a stronger Chinese identity from oversimplifying the Chinese identity through the use of Mandarin. However, diversity in dialects reflects the richness of the pan-Chinese culture in Singapore. The SMC, while successful in promoting Mandarin use, has fallen short of its broader cultural and social objectives of deepening appreciation of Chinese culture.
As mentioned, the inability of the younger generation to communicate with the older generations has led to a generation gap. This has weakened intergenerational bonds and eroded the preservation of cultural heritage. Over time, this linguistic disconnect can foster feelings of loneliness among the older generations, who may feel marginalised in a society that no longer fully accommodates their linguistic identities. In turn, this could deepen the generation gap and undermine social cohesion as seen in Canada and Wales. This disconnect between the younger and older generations of Singaporeans is a phenomenon visible in everyday spaces like hawker centres and void decks.
Similarly, elderly Singaporeans converse comfortably amongst each other in their dialects, while younger Singaporeans communicate almost entirely in English. Moreover, many of us find ourselves unable to hold meaningful conversations with our grandparents without switching awkwardly between broken Mandarin and English, turning intergenerational conversations into familial disconnect. This not only limits the depth of communication, but quietly accelerates cultural dilution when language barriers rise (a deep irony when we know what the initial purpose of SMC was for Chinese clans!).
An additional aim of SMC was to act as a bulwark against excessive westernisation. Yet paradoxically, the introduction of SMC has led to students losing affection for Chinese culture as a whole. Having experienced Mandarin lessons throughout our schooling years, we personally feel that there is an excessive emphasis placed on the academic aspects, at the expense of its cultural dimensions. While there are some attempts at sharing the cultural aspects of Mandarin, such as through the Mother Tongue Fortnight, those are mostly superficial, with the focus reverting back to being purely academic in nature. This results in students having limited appreciation of Singapore Chinese culture and heritage (already exacerbated by the relative lack of deep, intergenerational communication). Ironically, there is a famous Mandarin phrase which perfectly encapsulates students mindsets: “死记硬背” (sǐ jì yìng bèi). It means to mechanically memorise without comprehension, a mindset that we and many of my classmates have grown accustomed to throughout the years of Mandarin lessons.
This is further amplified through the introduction of the Mother Tongue B syllabus. A simplified Mother Tongue curriculum reflects the Government's recognition of the need for a more forgiving syllabus for students with a weaker Mother Tongue. The future of Mandarin is simple, academically-oriented, and clearly, not doing enough to preserve the already declining Chinese Culture and heritage.
The waning ethnic Chinese identity in Singapore is also seen through the dwindling appreciation of Chinese culture. Younger generations of Singaporeans today not only possess weaker Mandarin proficiency, but also demonstrate reduced appreciation for Chinese culture and heritage, instead idolising Western actors or Kpop idols. This problem is also compounded by the erosion of intergenerational communication. By simplifying the Chinese language and identity, it risks producing a generation that is barely functional linguistically. This generation may also become culturally detached, lacking deep engagement with Chinese heritage.
The Future Of The Choir
Despite our criticisms, we are not saying that the policy was completely unnecessary. Nonetheless, we argue that the implementation and the miscomprehension of the citizens’ depth of historical memory, is the reason why, now, so many youths have lost affection for Chinese culture. Consequently, these consequences have snowballed to the extent of affecting familial relationships and eroding Chinese culture today.
Fundamentally, the policy could have been improved in terms of implementation. By creating a streamlined bilingual education system where Chinese students speak Mandarin, it allowed for Mandarin to continue serving its economic and social purposes. However, discouraging dialect use is not the same as encouraging Mandarin use—those things did not have to happen concurrently. Going to the extreme of banning dialect TV programmes, heavily discouraging dialect use at the hawker centre, and disallowing culture, were indicative that the Government had lost sight of the immense social-cultural value of dialects.
I (Jia Min) remember deliberately skipping my J1 Mother Tongue Fortnight. Nonetheless, one activity that I genuinely enjoyed was when we were taught to speak the dominant dialects in Singapore. Whenever we mention a common dialect phrase used by our grandparents, it helps us to reconnect with our unique heritage and cultural identity. Additionally, it showed me that dialect does not just serve pragmatic purposes, but can be a meaningful way to forge affection towards culture. Turning the identity and everyday life of a Singaporean Chinese into a watered-down, oversimplified version will prevent others from fully appreciating the culture and heritage of being Singaporean Chinese. In retrospect, language and culture are not separate entities. We believe that language is, in fact, a large part of culture and everyday life.
After learning more about the history behind the Speak Mandarin Campaign, what does the future of Chinese language in Singapore look like? In Part 2, we want to share the improvements we would make to improve the SMC for years to come!
Read Part 2 of this Op-Ed on the Speak Mandarin Campaign
About the Authors:
Jiamin is a recent SAJC graduate with an interest in language and history. While waiting for university to start, she is interning as a teacher at a secondary school. When not stuck in the classroom, she is either at a thrift store looking for vintage jewellery, at home playing the guitar, or travelling to niche historical towns with her family.
Nicholas is a J2 student studying economics, history and geography, at SAJC. In his free time, he volunteers though on an irregular basis at several places like at the special Olympics held this June. The MAJU MME held in SAJC last year inspired him to collaborate with his groupmates to write this Op-Ed.
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