A pity many children can’t speak their grandmother’s tongue
Practicalities of daily life make English expedient but the connection with history, heritage and collective memory is lost if dialects are forfeited in the drive towards modernity
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Singapore's immigrant heritage brings with it a rich tapestry of diverse traditions, practice and languages.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Josephine Chia
My Peranakan mother passed on in 2003 when she was 88. When she was alive, my nieces and nephews, who were in their 30s, could just about communicate with my mother in Teochew.
But they could not speak our Peranakan patois, as my brothers had married non-Peranakan wives. Worse, their own children could speak neither Teochew nor our patois.
