Dialect Murderer - Fangyi Sha Sou

"If you speak Hokkien or Cantonese, you reach some 60 million in Fujian and Taiwan, or about 100 million in Guangdong and Hong Kong. With Mandarin, you can speak to 1,300 million Chinese from all provinces in China," - Lee Kuan Yew. [Link]

Yes, Sir!
We learn to be able to speak to 1,300 million Chinese in China while we make our grandparents mad because we cannot even communicate with them in our real mother tongue!

Yes, Sir!
We learn to be able to speak to 1,300 million strangers when we can't even say hello and be close with our fellow Singaporean living next door!

Call me stupid or lesser mortal, but just where is the opportunity for most Singaporeans to talk to 13,000 million Chinese?

Maybe promoting good neighbourliness and community care instead of language would have built a nation sooner. It is the same reason that the obscene salary of mintsters has marginalised the lesser and greater mortals in my country. It's a pity that one step forward is always two steps back where initiatives in "staying together moving ahead" are concerned.

"Hua wen, shei pa shei? [Chinese, who's afraid of who?]" is funny because I'm too dumb to understand their scare tactics. However, I find the tag line for 2009's Promote Mandarin Campaign ridiculously apt when converted to Hokkien in another way, "Hwa boon, si, kia si? [Chinese, die, scared to die?]".

In view of SPH's publishing and sale of the new book [Link], I'm no longer surprised by Chee Hong Tat (Principal Private Secretary to the Minister Mentor) saying, "It would be stupid for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin" [link]. I'm no advertising genius but promo breeds promo and nothing sells like controversy!

I have no complaint of making Mandarin the common dialect (putong hua) in Singapore but to dumb down the learning and use of other fangyi (regional language - dialect) by stopping radio and TV broadcasts was a little over the top. Many seniors were outraged by such high-handedness while younger ones were perplexed by their own different-from-father bastardised surname. Maybe it's only in Uniquely Singapore that a family named Tan can become Chen overnight. Weird!

I'm glad that my children still bear my ancestor's family name on their birth certificate and NRIC. They need not do a deed poll to change their family name or surname like some of the kids whose parents were tricked into changing. I still remember the 70's and 80's when school made my children feel bad because their surname was not what the teachers (due to instructions from decision makers & followers) expected. Yes, nurses in KK those days did ask me why I did not put Hanyu Pinyin surname on my children's birth certificate as if I was a criminal. It was 'kana sai' kind of 'seow'!!! ['Like faeces' kind of 'craziness'!!!]

Many rulers are remembered by their good or evil deeds. When the time comes, I will know of one who did his damned best to kill my real mother tongue!

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