Did you know that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew likes to listen to Mandarin conversation tapes while brushing his teeth? Or that he reads Chinese newspapers for at least 10-15 minutes every day, and sits down with a tutor to maintain his conversational skills once a week?
Reading Keeping My Mandarin Alive - a collection of quotes and long interviews with the founding father of modern Singapore and his tutors - will not teach you how to speak Mandarin, but it will provide an insight into the iron will of the man, and his decisions and motivations behind language policy in the city state.
In the book, Mr Lee shares the difficulties he faced as an adult student (he started learning Mandarin at 32) and how and why he overcame them and has continued to study for the past 50 years.
The book is peppered with his philosophy on learning: 'Learn Mandarin when you are young, and it will be with you for life', and, 'We must know what our limits are and try to keep our Mandarin alive. If you aim for unrealistic standards, you'll be demoralised and turned off'. He also says that young Singaporeans should preserve their Mandarin ability because it makes good economic sense. Admittedly, Mr Lee's initial motivation for learning languages (he speaks six) was political. Educated in English, the future prime minister realised early in his political career that to convince voters he would have to speak their language: not only Mandarin, but also Hokkien, the majority dialect.
'It was life or death. If I did not master that [learning Hokkien], I could not have won the referendum in 1962 [on whether to merge with Malaysia]; I could not have gone throughout Singapore in 1963 to fang wen [visit the people]; I could not have won the elections.'
But why would he devote an entire book to his views on learning Mandarin now? Because the debate over the difficulties of learning Mandarin, and the toll the bilingual policy has had on two generations, has increased in recent years.