![Chee Hong Tat [left]](http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/chee-hong-tat.jpg)
Chee Hong Tat
[left]“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,” Mr Chee Hong Tat wrote in a letter to the
Straits Times Forum page in 2009. (See here: “Foolish
to advocate the learning of dialects“.)
Mr Chee was writing in his capacity as then Principal Private
Secretary to the late former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
Mr Chee was revealed on Wednesday as one of the People’s Action
Party (PAP) candidates for the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC in the upcoming
general election.
His last appointment was Second Permanent Secretary for
Trade and Industry.
In his 2009 letter, Mr Chee was responding to comments made by
the then acting head of Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU)
Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, Dr Ng Bee Chin,
who reportedly said at a language seminar:
“Although Singaporeans are still multilingual, 40
years ago, we were even more multilingual. Young children are not
speaking some of these languages at all any more.
“All it takes is one generation for a language to
die.”
In his letter, Mr Chee defended the government’s language
policy.
Straits
Times, Mar 2009
“We have achieved progress with our bilingual education in the
past few decades,” Mr Chee said. “Many Singaporeans are now fluent
in both English and Mandarin.”
He said the government “emphasised the learning of Mandarin, to
make it the mother tongue for all Chinese Singaporeans, regardless
of their dialect groups.”
“This is the common language of the 1.3 billion people in
China,” Mr Chee said. “To engage China, overseas Chinese and
foreigners are learning Mandarin and not the dialects of the
different Chinese provinces.”
He said that “Singapore’s experience over 50 years of
implementing the bilingual education policy has shown that most
people find it extremely difficult to cope with two languages when
they are as diverse as English and Mandarin.”
“This is why we have discouraged the use of dialects,” he
explained. “It interferes with the learning of Mandarin and
English. Singaporeans have to master English. It is our common
working language and the language which connects us with the
world.”
Mr Chee’s letter prompted more response from the public, many of
whom wrote to dispute his claims.
Read this: “A
response to MM Lee’s private secretary on
dialects“.
The Online
Citizen
Ironically, at
the press conference on Wednesday where he was
introduced as a PAP candidate, Mr Chee spoke in the Hokkien
dialect, along with English and Chinese.
“There is a Hokkien saying: you must be committed to what you
do,” Mr Chee said in Hokkien. “This is what I believe. I hope to
have the opportunity to serve everyone.”
