Is Hokkien A Living Language?

[KCTan]

An Ex-Prime Minister of Singapore once said that unlike Hokkien, Cantonese is a living language. Does it mean that Hokkien is a non-living language and for that basic reason, Mandarin was chosen as an official language over Hokkien in Singapore?

[Sim Lee]

>> Does it mean that Hokkien is a non-living language and for that basic
>> reason, Mandarin was chosen as an official language over Hokkien in
>> Singapore?

No,

In fact it was precisely the other way around.

He (Lee Kuan Yew) can thank himself for the fact that Hokkien is no longer a living language in Singapore. It used to be a Hokkien-speaking city up to the 80's, but with his "speak Mandarin" campaign, he managed to successfully wipe it out.

I recognise that speaking Mandarin gives Chinese Singaporeans access to a wider world, and gives the Mandarin speaking world access to Singaporeans, which is a good thing, but I still lament the loss of Hokkien in Singapore.

Penang, the city I grew up in, is still largely a Hokkien-speaking city, but it is an unusual variant of Hokkien, not spoken anywhere else in peninsular Malaysia nor in Singapore.

Examples of this dialect can be seen on:

http://www.geocities.com/penangfile/

a monthly e-zine, under the column written by Raymond Kwok.

Sim Lee
Please remove the <removethis> and <antispam> parts of my email address if replying to me directly.

[ppk]

living as in the sense that it takes in new phrases and terms? if that is so, most dialects are not living in singapore. but in china, they are. ne terms were added into the dialects all the while. those teochews, cantonese and hokkiens i met have the latest catch phrases.

[Sim Lee]

You're right. As far as I can tell, all the dialects are dead in Singapore.

Sim Lee.

[pcpy]

How about Hokkien or Minnan dialect in Taiwan? It is widely used daily by the public including President Chen though surprisingly it is yet to be given official status unlike Cantonese in Hong Kong. It seems that most Taiwanese Hokkiens are not bothered about pressing for the official recognition of Hokkien in Taiwan being brainwashed to despise its own mother-tongue after years of indoctrination in Mandarin education imposed by the KMT regime and in some way perpetuated by the existing ruling DPP.

[ppk]

ppl only think of their best interests. this would mean the indoctrination of hokkien on the taiwanese aborigins, wads the difference? still violence on the minority groups.

[pcpy]

You're right. People are basically self-centred. If you can bring prosperity and help people become wealthy, you are popular. Typical example is the choice of Lee Kuan Yew as the most popular figure in Singapore according to a recent survey conducted by a newspaper probably because he brought prosperity to Singapore eventhough he was instrumental in imposing the Speak Mandarin campaign which has resulted in the gradual demise of Chinese dialects in Singapore, the greatest loser of which is Hokkien which was once most widely spoken there.

[ppk]

lee imposed mandarin in singapore to make the dialects obselete. in his theory this is to cut off ties of local chinese from mainland china, and make them recognise themselves as singaporeans, not overseas chinese nationals. so the implications of taiwanese following the same method is rather obvious. on the issue of preserving mother tongue in taiwan, please keep in mind that besides being the language of a person's race/birthplace most of the time, 'mother tongue' can oso mean the language(s) a person first learned in his childhood days. they might not coincide. while the mother tongue of a beijing-er in china is mandarin, the mother tongue of a chinese in indonesia could be bahasa indonesia, might not be mandarin or his dialects, and the mother tongue of an american chinese could be english, not mandarin or his dialects. so for ppl to preserve their mother tongue doesnt necessarily equals to preserving the language of their race/birthplace.

[James Campbell]

The difference between Singaporeans and Taiwanese is that Singaporeans viewed themselves speaking Minnan as overseas Chinese and a language that originated from China. Taiwanese on the other hand do not consider themselves overseas Chinese and speak Minnan as their own, not as if it came from China, although everybody knows that. For example, in Taiwan you'll never hear the word Hokkien as that refers to what is spoken in China, not Taiwan, even though it's the same language. They call it their own, that is, Taiwanese. I don't think Singaporeans call the Hokkien they speak Singaporean, do they? If they did call it that and think of it as their own language of Singapore before the importing of Mandarin imposition, then that would be the same situation as Taiwan. But I don't think that's true.

It's like Brazil. They speak the language of Brazil: Portuguese. They know the language came from Portugal long ago, but they consider themselves speaking a language of their own country, that is, Brazilian (Portuguese).

[pcpy]

I think most Singaporeans of Chinese descent especially the older generation find it rather odd to converse in Mandarin which is really an imported language from China unlike their own dialect or rather language which is an important part of their culture which diffentiates them from Mandarin-speaking Chinese. They just do not have any choice but to toe the policy of speaking more Mandarin imposed upon them by the Government especially the younger generation who will ultimately forget their own dialects and consider Mandarin as their own mother-tongue, which is what K.Y. Lee wanted. On Hokkien language being called Taiwanese in Taiwan rather than the word Hokkien, I think it is just a normal practice for the vast majority of Taiwanese whose forefathers originated from Hokkien Province to relate their language to the name of Taiwan to reflect their own identity. In any case, I understand that Taiwanese refers to Minnan or Hokkien in a narrow sense. Politically it is taken to cover all the local languages in Taiwan.