By Koh Shin Robbie (26A01A) and Tok Kai Xue Traven (26A01B)

In 1959, Singapore saw the first of many key developments to its education system: a bilingualism policy. Its premise was simple—English, as the language of international business, would be mandated to be taught in all schools. Alongside this, the study of one’s mother tongue (namely Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil) would also be made compulsory to ensure students did not lose touch with their cultural roots.

In an instant, dialect languages were taken out of official usage. Radio stations switched to purely official languages, and an entire Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched with vigorous dissuasion of dialect use.

For Mandarin, however, this line of reasoning proved rather ironic. In the face of institutional pressures to adopt Mandarin as their home language, what would happen to the dialect-speaking households which relied heavily on Hokkien, Teochew or Hakka to communicate on a daily basis? How would the precious, dialectal tongues which served generations upon generations of ancestors manage to maintain their relevance?