You Are What You Speak.

 

As someone who comments on the situation on the ground, I avoid identifying with any particular party for the simple reason that I will p*** everyone off equally (someone in the office called me an “opposition man” and every time I get picked up by TRemeritus, there will be plenty of people accusing me of being part of the ruling party’s internet brigade and making millions – which wouldn’t be such a bad accusation if I was actually making millions).

Having said what I’ve just said, I am going to post a lovely greeting from the Worker’s Party (our main opposition party or the only other party with seats in parliament), which I received from one of the chat groups that I am part of. This is a Chinese New Year greeting that comes in all the variations of Chinese spoken in Singapore – specifically Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese.

 

 This simple greeting is perhaps the most revolutionary stroke that any political party has come up with. It goes against one of the main unspoken rules of “Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore,” which was that the Chinese would be in the majority but the definition of Chinese would be defined by him.

The most visible sign of his efforts to mold the Chinese into his image was a war against dialects and the insistence that the only language that the Chinese could speak was Mandarin. I’m old enough to remember “Speak Mandarin Campaigns,” which had a slogan that roughly translates as “Speak Dialect Less and Speak More Mandarin.”

His paranoia against Chinese dialects was most visible in a series of interviews he gave in 2006 when the government was trying to open up the Arabic Market. Mr. Lee was going on about getting Singaporeans to learn Arabic as a third language. Suddenly he was asked about learning dialects and he began to ramble on about how the human brain didn’t have the capacity to learn dialects.

His obsession against Chinese dialects was based on a simple fact – he had come to power on the backs of Chinese workers who were primarily dialect speaking. The English educated Mr. Lee understood that English educated Chinese were not going to start revolutions and so he forced himself to speak Hokkien and Mandarin. Once in power, he became weary of the Chinese educated and so did his best to cut out their cultural affiliations with the streets.

In fairness to Mr. Lee, getting us to “Speak Mandarin” was a good move in as much as China did open up. China is a huge market and even America’s favorite “China-Bashing” president saw to it that his granddaughter could charm China’s president with her fluent Mandarin.

However, whilst getting us to know Mandarin was good from a business standpoint, there were two issues that came about from Mr. Lee’s policies on language.

Firstly, people became less capable with languages. My generation (gen-x) grew up not speaking either English or Mandarin terribly well. Instead of having “pure” English of the Englishman (something the late Mr. Lee took pride in), we brought Singlish to the next level and started merging both languages by using words both languages interchangeably. So, in addition to having a “Speak Mandarin” campaign, we also needed a “Speak Good English” campaign.

By comparison, the boomer generation and the generation before, were more capable with language. It’s not uncommon for people above 60 to speak a variety of dialects (and let’s not forget the number of our local Tamils who have proven adapt at learning Chinese dialects fluently). The rules were simple everyone mingled together and picked up each other’s language in edition to English.

You could argue that whilst Mr. Lee talked a lot about creating a “Singaporean Singapore” may have inadvertently created a more segregated society with his policies on language.

The second issue is perhaps more obvious – people remain attached to their dialects and the majority dialect remains Hokkien. Anyone who has served National Service will notice that Singapore’s national language is Malay (drill commands all in Malay), the overall language of instruction is English but the language of the people remains Hokkien (I remember struggling when I needed to get something from the MT line and the driver told, “Don’t mind Sargent – can you speak Hokkien.”). Our dialects are what connects us to things like family. Sure, I speak Cantonese very badly but at Chinese New Year, the greeting is inevitably “Gong Hei Fat Choy,” because that’s how I paid respects to parents and grandparents. When I married a Teochew Girl, it was “Gong Hei Fat Choy,” to my side and “Xing Jai Ju Yee” to hers.

This isn’t particular to the Chinese community. I remember talking to an Indian colleague from Bengal who explained that everyone in India speaks Hindi and English because they are the national and working languages respectively. However, for her speaking Bengali is from the heart.

So, the Worker’s Party has done something that the ruling party is has never dared to do. It reaches out to people in the setting they are most comfortable in rather than what they imagine people are most comfortable in. It’s shown up the fact that Mr. Lee’s attempts to eradicate Chinese dialects are a waste of time and money.

The ruling party should take note that the “other player” in the game is working harder to reach the voters. If it intends to keep its position of dominance, the ruling party will need to show that it is working hard for the voters and getting to know them on their home ground rather than what the party imagines that said home ground to be.