Also, it takes away the child's time and energy from mastering
English and Mandarin, he said In addition, English and Mandarin
differ in their vocabulary, phonetics and syntax and adding on dialects will cause
'negative interferences' in the learning of the two languages, he
added.
In defending the decision to promote Mandarin over dialects, he
also noted that the value of a language is
its usefulness.
With Mandarin, the reach is far greater than dialects: 'If you
speak Hokkien or Cantonese, you reach some 60 million in Fujian and
Taiwan, or about 100 million in Guangdong and Hong Kong. With
Mandarin, you can speak to 1,300 million Chinese from all provinces
in China,' he said.
Mr Lee was speaking at the launch of the annual Speak Mandarin
Campaign, which he introduced 30 years ago.
Since then, most Chinese Singaporeans have adopted Mandarin over
other dialects.
However, about a fortnight ago, the acting head of Nanyang
Technological University's (NTU) Division of Linguistics and
Multilingual Studies, Dr Ng Bee Chin, sparked a debate when she
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.'
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