Speak Dialects, you feel tribal ! Speak mandarin, it will break unity!

[Man in the streets]

Speaking dialects in Singapore will bond local people together, in addition, you feel tribal among the local tribe.

Keep your dialects, teach your children and learn mandarin only when necessary.

Dont be conned to speaking Mandarin, it will break up local unity.

Please speak dialects at home, you child will learn more about his or her roots as local singaporeans.

 

[lancheowman]

no you philistine,

dialects are not tribal languages. all major dialects are descended from extinct official chinese langugages spoken by the ancients like confucius.

Old chinese was the form of spoken chinese from ancient times right to the time of the 3 kingdoms. this language is lost or has morphed into middle chinese after the influx of the moadic tribes or hu people like the xianbei who controlled china between 300 to 600 AD. The only clue as to what it sounds like lies in confucius' book of poems or shijing which recorded 300 pieces of folk songs and poems that would have rhythm and rhymn in old chinese. if you read this in mandarin, it just does not sound poetic or even right.It is said that old chinese sounds like what we call hokkien today or the hokkien dialect preserves most of the sounds and tones of old chinese. this could be because of the flight of the chinese from the north after the fall of the jin dynasty to coastal areas of sothern china during those days and the tongue is preserved in the dialects of their descenants lving there today.

because of the influence of nomadic languages which were probably altaic languages like Korean or mongolian for 300 years, middle chinese was evolved and that was the official spoken chinese language of the Tang dynasty (600 AD) when it reunified china. Cantonese is the dialect that preserves most of the sounds and tones of middle chinese because there was a massive immigration of chinese from northern china to southern china (canton today) during this time. just read any of the tang poems in cantonese and you will see.

as for other reginalects like shanghainese, these can traced back to an even earlier time when the areas where these were spoken were not even part of a unified china. i.e. to the time of the zhou or even shang dynasty well before qin shi huang

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

no you philistine,

dialects are not tribal languages. all major dialects are descended from extinct official chinese langugages spoken by the ancients like confucius.

Old chinese was the form of spoken chinese from ancient times right to the time of the 3 kingdoms. this language is lost or has morphed into middle chinese after the influx of the moadic tribes or hu people like the xianbei who controlled china between 300 to 600 AD. The only clue as to what it sounds like lies in confucius' book of poems or shijing which recorded 300 pieces of folk songs and poems that would have rhythm and rhymn in old chinese. if you read this in mandarin, it just does not sound poetic or even right.It is said that old chinese sounds like what we call hokkien today or the hokkien dialect preserves most of the sounds and tones of old chinese. this could be because of the flight of the chinese from the north after the fall of the jin dynasty to coastal areas of sothern china during those days and the tongue is preserved in the dialects of their descenants lving there today.

because of the influence of nomadic languages which were probably altaic languages like Korean or mongolian for 300 years, middle chinese was evolved and that was the official spoken chinese language of the Tang dynasty (600 AD) when it reunified china. Cantonese is the dialect that preserves most of the sounds and tones of middle chinese because there was a massive immigration of chinese from northern china to southern china (canton today) during this time. just read any of the tang poems in cantonese and you will see.

as for other reginalects like shanghainese, these can traced back to an even earlier time when the areas where these were spoken were not even part of a unified china. i.e. to the time of the zhou or even shang dynasty well before qin shi huang

so what u mean is hokkien sounds like old chinese,

cantonese = middle chinese

shanghainese = chinese with outside influences???



How to read canto with tang poem when dunno how to speak canto?

SOmemore get tang poem from where?

How to read traditional chinese characters?

 

[lancheowman]

so what u mean is hokkien sounds like old chinese,

cantonese = middle chinese

shanghainese = chinese with outside influences???



How to read canto with tang poem when dunno how to speak canto?

SOmemore get tang poem from where?

How to read traditional chinese characters?

two things, the chinese characters in its written form did not change since the time of confucius, only the sounds changed.

and many regional dialects were remnants of spoken languages of political and cultrual entities that have cased to exist., e.g. shanghai dialect from the language of the wu or chu kingdom.

 

[denzuko1]

Dialects are not just tribal, it is an identity. What LKY is trying to do is to rub away our identity, with this gone, our own culture will be gone, too.

I am a Cantonese and I am proud to be one. In fact, I have insisted my children to know Cantonese first. When the nursery noted that I spoke to my kids in Cantonese, they held me with high regards. They were complaining that many children had lost their mother tongue and only know Mandarin and English. I ever have worry that my daughter would have problem learning Mandarin. The teacher told me that there is no need to worry because once the kid join the nursery, they can pick up the language very quickly. True enough she is also speaking Mandarin at 4.

I find LKY's mindset too narrow and can't think out of the box ( probably of his age, which means that he needs to retire). The statistic shown by him and his minions aren't true and aim to misguide. I myself have no problem switching from Cantonese to Mandarin, English and even some Malay. I really find it hard to believe that one will be in deep trouble if he or she learn dialect first.

LKY's words on language cannot be trusted.

 

[denzuko1]

so what u mean is hokkien sounds like old chinese,

cantonese = middle chinese

shanghainese = chinese with outside influences???



How to read canto with tang poem when dunno how to speak canto?

SOmemore get tang poem from where?

How to read traditional chinese characters?

Just watch the Cantonese series and you will learn.....

 

[char_jig_kar]

I just wonder... Say, the swiss. They are multi racial society right? So how do they deal with their dialect? No more dialect allowed in their radio station and tv station? Switzerland, do they eradicate dialect like we do? I doubt thats the case...

 

[cowbehcowbu]

Bros and sis
The correct stand should be that all chinese decendents shall be encouraged to learn mandarine to a proficient level while they can also master their own dialets,,,like in china.. now in china,, they also start to become proficient in English..
If you do business in china,,,you will be so surprised that when you speak the local dialet..your are already half way past to success...BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER..

 

[char_jig_kar]

If Swiss, a multi racial society, they could respect their dialect, and doing real fine, why cant we spore do that? Why must we eradicate dialect?

 

[denzuko1]

Bros and sis
The correct stand should be that all chinese decendents shall be encouraged to learn mandarine to a proficient level while they can also master their own dialets,,,like in china.. now in china,, they also start to become proficient in English..
If you do business in china,,,you will be so surprised that when you speak the local dialet..your are already half way past to success...BLOOD is THICKER THAN WATER..

This is true, especially when you claim to be the descendent of the area and returning from oversea. We got very good reception at the hotel and restaurants when we not only speak the dialect and we know where our ancestors live.

What LKY has done so far is up-rooting our roots.

 

[eeoror88]

"Dew Gow Lei" sound better than "Diow ni"!!

 

[travelbug]

Dialects are not just tribal, it is an identity. What LKY is trying to do is to rub away our identity, with this gone, our own culture will be gone, too.

I find LKY's mindset too narrow and can't think out of the box ( probably of his age, which means that he needs to retire). The statistic shown by him and his minions aren't true and aim to misguide. I myself have no problem switching from Cantonese to Mandarin, English and even some Malay. I really find it hard to believe that one will be in deep trouble if he or she learn dialect first.

LKY's words on language cannot be trusted.

True NEVER trust that Old Fart Lee. Trust your own guts. Dialects is your heritage NOT Mandarin lah. Mandarin is also a DIALECT, a northern one.

I am a proud Hokkien. But I think whether old Chinese is Hokkien or not is often disputed. Becos the Foochow aka Hokchew from mid-Fujian province claims that old Chinese is very similar to their dialect. Foochow or Hokchew is Not mutually intelligble with Hokkien, in other words you will not understand one another unless you learn the language. I know cos I have a former classmate who is Foochow.

 

[Ramseth]

If Swiss, a multi racial society, they could respect their dialect, and doing real fine, why cant we spore do that? Why must we eradicate dialect?

Switzerland had German, French, Italian and English multi-media. No trouble, no racial riot and no civil war for centuries. However, Singapore isn't Switzerland. Switzerland's multi-racial proportion is rougly balanced, no German-, French- or Italian-Swiss felt slighted. Whereas, Singapore has 75% Chinese, and like you've always said, why couldn't the language of a 75%-majority be the national language? That'd cause understandable problems with the minorities. Democracy and civility shouldn't be tyranny of the majority over the minorities, especially when it's a overwhelming majority. Witness southern Thailand.

 

[po2wq]

"Dew Gow Lei" sound better than "Diow ni"!!

tis nt mandarin ...

 

[rainnix]

I speak dialects at home too, I know English and Mandarin from school, know Hokkien and Cantonese from my parents and from drama serials and songs.

This is all Lee Con You mistake, if he let half of the nation's school to teach in Mandarin and another half to teach in English, we will still have talents in both of the languages now. What will happens if another language gains dominance in the next 15 years later?

It takes a generation to kill the use of dialects and it is reversible!!! when you put efforts to it. Lee con you is using trying to con us again (with no u-turn syndrome). There is no way I'll listen to his advice (it is the correct use here Sam lol), I'm sticking to my culture thanks.

 

[char_jig_kar]

Switzerland had German, French, Italian and English multi-media. No trouble, no racial riot and no civil war for centuries. However, Singapore isn't Switzerland. Switzerland's multi-racial proportion is rougly balanced, no German-, French- or Italian-Swiss felt slighted. Whereas, Singapore has 75% Chinese, and like you've always said, why couldn't the language of a 75%-majority be the national language? That'd cause understandable problems with the minorities. Democracy and civility shouldn't be tyranny of the majority over the minorities, especially when it's a overwhelming majority. Witness southern Thailand.

You got it the other way round.

Imposing English a non asian language on a 97% asian population, thats tyranny.

Anyway, this thread is about dialect. If Switzerland as a multi racial society, they could have dialect, and they are doing fine, so why do we Singaporean Chinese have to eradicate dialect?

 

[lancheowman]

pls do not look down on dialects and pls dun think that mandarin is the mother tongue of all chinese.

mandarin as a language only took shape during the time of the Qing Dynasty between 1600 to 1700s. before that, nobody spoke mandarin because it did not exist. And it is a simplified, coarse and rudimentary dialect or version of spoken chinese adapted for the use of northern barbarians esp. the manchu rulers and mandarins. manchus spoke an altaic language and hence mandarin was meant to make it easier for them to communicate and assimilate with their chinese subjects.

 

[char_jig_kar]

dialect and mandarin is not a zero sum game.

but as usual, that pea brain, narrow sighted despot Lee Kuan Yew see it that way, a zero sum game between mandarin and dialect.

 

[HTOLAS]

I am very glad that many people are beginning to see LKY's Speak Mandarin Campaign for what it is - an effort NOT to link us to our roots but to UPROOT us from our culture and when that has succeeded to replace that culture with a manufactured reality, a vision of Chinese culture according to the PAPzis. It is in fact LANGUAGE CLEANSING, learnt no doubt from the earlier (failed) attempts by the Communists in China and the KMT in Taiwan.

I am confident it will fail here too. What are the indications? The increasing volume of his assertions that dialects will die suggests he is trying desperately to will it to happen. Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese will outlive this pathetic fool.

pls do not look down on dialects and pls dun think that mandarin is the mother tongue of all chinese.

mandarin as a language only took shape during the time of the Qing Dynasty between 1600 to 1700s. before that, nobody spoke mandarin because it did not exist. And it is a simplified, coarse and rudimentary dialect or version of spoken chinese adapted for the use of northern barbarians esp. the manchu rulers and mandarins. manchus spoke an altaic language and hence mandarin was meant to make it easier for them to communicate and assimilate with their chinese subjects.

 

[lancheowman]

dialect and mandarin is not a zero sum game.

but as usual, that pea brain, narrow sighted despot Lee Kuan Yew see it that way, a zero sum game between mandarin and dialect.

its politics la... mandarin gives them a way to control the chinese populace