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Keeping the mother tongues alive: Speak Mandarin Campaign faces new issues
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A performance illustrating the use of local Mandarin terms during the Speak Mandarin Campaign’s 40th anniversary celebrations at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre on Oct 22.
ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE
Tee Zhuo
The Speak Mandarin Campaign has definitely fulfilled its original aim of replacing other dialects with Mandarin as the mother tongue of Chinese Singaporeans, observers say. But what is less certain is how well the campaign has fared in making Mandarin widely used, and how it will meet today's challenges, they add.
National census data shows the use of dialect as the main language plummeting from 76.2 per cent of Chinese households in 1980 to 19.2 per cent in 2010, with Mandarin use increasing from 13.1 to 47.7 per cent in the same period. But much of this increase happened in the 1980s and 1990s; Mandarin as the main language used in Chinese families inched up by only 2.6 percentage points in the 10 years to 2010.
