In Singapore, Chinese Dialects Revive After Decades of Restrictions

Date: August 21. 2017

Source: The New York Times

The article tell us the periodical language change in Singapore since the policy launched in 1970, that made a restriction in the dialects that were spoken in the country during that time. Those dialect speakers were the Singaporean majority, taking in account that the city-state was basically made due the immigration of some Asian countries such as China and India.

The ones who came from those countries were dialect speakers of essentially Hokkien (which was a southern-Chinese dialect of the 75% of the Singaporean population), Tamil (which was the 15%) and Malay (which was a 7% of the originally Indian population). 

This data also helps us to think about the impact that the policy made in the country for all this people, that as I said, they were the majority of the population. The dialect citizens weren’t able to learn the new imposed languages, English and Mandarin, on the other hand the new generations were taught in English or Mandarin, causing a poor communication among the different generations, even being relatives.

The reason of this news being now showed up comes from the fact that those dialects that once were cut off are newly being recognized from the youth as their mother tongue.

The main reason why I decided to chose this article is because of the different points of view that the people involved have about this matter and the causes and consequences of it.

LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/world/asia/singapore-language-hokkien-mandarin.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fasia&action=click&contentCollection=asia&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=search&contentPlacement=122&pgtype=sectionfront