Lao Lee should save dialects from being extinct.
He would be the last guy in Singapore that I would choose to
save dialects. He was the chief figure in suppressing dialects in
Singapore.
Somehow he has an irrational hatred of dialects. It is probably
due to the insecurity and inferiority that he feels as someone from
a minority group, an outsider, ruling over a majority dialect
speaking group. Their dialect languages had to be suppressed. They
must forget their mother tongues and speak english.
In this he is similar to Chiang Kai-shek, who also
suppressed dialects in Taiwan.
If Taiwan were a province of
China, long-time residents in Taiwan would speak Taiwanese. This
may seem counter-intuitive, but if you think about it, it would
also be true. I met a Taiwanese immigrant to the US when I arrived
in Princeton, and one day, he said something really interesting to
me. He told me, "I want to learn Taiwanese." I didn't attach much
importance to it at the time, though I was surprised that he didn't
know it, but now I think it's a reflection of the problems of
identity, history, and politics in Taiwan.
Of course, this Taiwanese friend
is descended from a "mainlander," those people who fled to Taiwan
after the the CCP soundly defeated the Nationalists. So some would
say it's understandable that he doesn't know Taiwanese.
Wrong. Let's look at my personal
history as a comparison. My father is from Hubei province, and my
mother comes from a Hakka family in Guangdong, so they spoke
Mandarin at home. I was born in Guangzhou and lived until I was 5
in a college campus, where everyone spoke the official dialect,
Mandarin. Yet even then, I understood Cantonese. After that, I
moved to Zhanjiang and went to a public school there. After one
month, I could speak Cantonese even though the official language in
school was Mandarin. My father never learned Cantonese because he
went to Switzerland and then immigrated to the US after a few years
in Guangzhou, but my mother, since she lived in Guangdong province
her whole life, even though Hakka is her native dialect, spoke
perfect Cantonese.
Now let's look at my Taiwanese
friend again. His GRANDPARENTS fled the Chinese mainland and went
to Taiwan. If we make the same comparison with my life, then we can
assume that it'd be at least reasonable if his grandparents never
learned Taiwanese, but he is a second generation already, and he
still doesn't know.
If Taiwan were a real province
and had been integrated into the mainland, Chiang
Kai-shek would never have needed to suppress the Taiwanese dialect
to such an extent. I mean, on the mainland,
a lot of TV, all movies, music, government communications, and all
schools use Mandarin, and yet people who live in a province that
speak another dialect would learn that dominant dialect naturally
in one generation.
The
fact that some "mainlander" Taiwanese still don't know Taiwanese is
a testament to Taiwan's legacy of suppression and Chiang's own
insecurity.
I hope that made as much sense
written as it did in my head.
https://blogs.princeton.edu/studyabroad/2007/10/if_taiwan_were_a_province_of_c.html
