Many of those curbs remain in place today, even though English is now cited as the most comfortable language for nearly half of Singaporeans.<\/p>\n
Since the 1990s, the Speak Mandarin Campaign has shifted its focus to English-educated ethnic Chinese, and away from those who speak dialects.<\/p>\n
“The campaign has achieved what it set out to do – it has established Mandarin as the common language among Chinese Singaporeans and dismantled the dialect landscape,” reads a letter by two filmmakers published last week in local newspaper the Straits Times. “Screening a dialect film is now no different from screening a French or Malay film.”<\/p>\n
“What better way to confirm the success of the Speak Mandarin campaign than to relax this rule completely,” they asked, to “signal a maturity” in dealing with cultural diversity among Chinese Singaporeans?<\/p>\n
This has echoed across social media and commentaries over the past week, drawing even politicians into the conversation. In a post on Facebook, opposition MP Dennis Tan hailed dialects as “the living, breathing repositories of our forefathers’ journeys, customs, and identity”.<\/p>\n
The discussion looks set to continue, after two lawmakers said they had asked authorities about screening movies in their original dialect. <\/p>\n
“Actually a lot of people can’t speak dialect [anymore],” Wu says. “I think it’s time they revisit this policy. If they want to retain some of our culture, then I think it’s important.”<\/p>\n
It’s not just the dialects that are disappearing, but also the traditions that came with them. <\/p>\n
One of the things Wu was touched to see in Dear You is a Teochew ritual that she herself followed. When she turned 15, a culturally significant age in the community, her parents gave her a gift to mark her coming-of-age, known in Teochew as “leaving the garden”.<\/p>\n
When her niece turned 15 last year, Wu says there was no such celebration.<\/p>\n
Still, young Singaporeans have shown growing interest in connecting with their heritage, from learning the dwindling dialects of their grandparents to taking lessons and organising trips to ancestral hometowns in China.<\/p>\n
But Tan Ying Ying, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University who studies dialects, isn’t optimistic that this will reverse the trend. <\/p>\n
“Young people who are learning them now \u2026 You can learn it like a foreign language and learn it for fun. But if no-one is speaking it, you’re not going to be able to retain it,” she says.<\/p>\n
The uproar over Dear You, Tan says, is perhaps “like grieving a loss”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of those curbs remain in place today, even though English is now cited as the most comfortable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-658516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}