from the straits times interactive
Dec 14, 2004
Good Mandarin starts at home, says MM Lee
If parents don't keep speaking it at home, kids will find it hard to learn, he warns
By Laurel Teo
AS MORE Singaporean Chinese parents switch to speaking English at home, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has this advice for them: Don't.
Stick with Mandarin as the home language to give the children a strong foundation in it, he said yesterday, at the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign.
He assured those who worry that this may cause their children to lag behind in English that schools will take care of it.
The Government may even consider using Mandarin to help children master English in Primary 1 and 2, said Mr Lee, tossing up a new suggestion for the teaching of languages here.
As the Speak Mandarin Campaign turns 25 this year, the man who started it - Mr Lee - explained the change in its focus.
He began the annual drive in 1979, to wean Chinese Singaporeans off dialects.
Since most used dialects at home at the time, it was an extra burden for students to learn two more languages - English and Mandarin - neither of which they spoke at home.
The campaign succeeded. The percentage of dialect-speaking families fell from 76.2 per cent in 1980 to 46.2 per cent in 1990, and 30.6 per cent in 2000.
Over those decades, those speaking Mandarin rose from 13.1 per cent to 32.8 per cent, and then 45.1 per cent.
But with the closure of vernacular schools and the growing dominance of English in the workplace, a new problem has emerged.
'As more parents are tertiary-educated in English, at universities and polytechnics, they will tend to speak English at home,' he told the 550 people at the NTUC Centre at Marina Boulevard.
Indeed, the figures point to this trend. This year, almost half - 49.8 per cent - the Chinese children entering Primary 1 spoke English at home, overtaking the number who spoke Mandarin.
'We must stem this drift from Mandarin to English at home,' said Mr Lee, warning that children from English-speaking families will find it hard to learn Mandarin.
'My advice is: those parents who use Mandarin at home should continue to do so,' he said.
As for those who speak English to their children, he had this suggestion: 'Consider sending them to Chinese-speaking kindergartens in the HDB heartlands where their fellow students speak Mandarin at home.'
'Your children will pick up English without difficulty.'
He said he sent his three children to Chinese kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. At home, he spoke to them in Mandarin until they were teenagers, but his wife spoke to them in English.
They turned out 'comfortably bilingual', he said.
And contrary to his earlier fears that their English might suffer, it became their stronger language 'because they used it intensively at university and at work'.
'Their experience showed me how valuable it is to have a good foundation in Mandarin early in life,' he said.
To adapt to the changing language landscape, the Speak Mandarin Campaign has changed its focus in recent years.
From aiming to make Mandarin more popular among English-speaking Chinese, it will now also encourage parents and students not to switch to English at home.
This year, it is making a special effort to reach out to those born after 1965.
This year's campaign slogan is 'Huayu Cool' - 'Mandarin is cool' - and the drive will tap popular culture and technology.
The organisers want Mandarin to be viewed as an exciting and useful everyday language - a point that Mr Lee also stressed.
To keep it alive, he said, Mandarin cannot be confined to bilingualists, biculturalists or HDB heartlanders whose parents are not educated in English.
It - and other mother tongues - should be used widely in markets, shopping malls, hawker centres and 'whenever we can'.
His parting advice: 'Let me add this simple truth: if you don't use a language, it will get rusty. My advice is use it, or lose it.'
