In ancient China, an emperor enforced the Chinese language to strengthen his state, what is Singapore’s reasoning?
In Singapore, Chinese Singaporean schoolchildren must learn Mandarin as a second language. As people of Chinese ancestry, do they have a moral obligation to speak the language?
A young Chinese Singaporean recently posted on social media that a mainland Chinese tourist he was trying to help in Singapore verbally shamed him for not being able to speak Mandarin properly. In retaliation for her rudeness, he gave her the wrong directions, which isn’t a nice thing to do to a guest, no matter how nasty she was. The attitude that informed her scolding of the young man is typical of many Chinese, as well as a segment of Chinese Singaporeans: that people of Chinese ancestry have a moral obligation to know the language.
Even though the argument isn’t very convincing (we don’t expect Irish-Americans to know Irish, for example, nor British people of German ancestry the German language), all Chinese Singaporean schoolchildren must learn Mandarin as a second language for about 10 years. Just how successful this form of bilingual education is depends on who you ask.
Singapore’s regulation of language education policies in schools isn’t exceptional – all governments do the same. What makes it unique is the multilingual country’s strict enforcement of the learning of “mother tongues” (whatever that means) along ethnic lines. Chinese Singaporeans can’t study Malay, Tamil or any other language, even if they want to. The same applies to Singaporean schoolchildren of other ethnicities; only in rare cases are exceptions made.
One of the most drastic attempts to prescribe a nation’s linguistic milieu occurred in the Northern Wei dynasty founded by the Xianbei people. In the late 5th century, some 60 years after the Northern Wei had unified northern China, Emperor Xiaowen initiated a series of reforms aimed at strengthening his state. Besides agricultural, political and legal reforms, he also launched a radical and far-reaching sinicisation programme.
He also decreed that his people could no longer wear Xianbei dress and even made them change their family names into Chinese ones. He led by example and changed his own from Tuoba to Yuan.
Just as contrived and problematic as Xiaowen’s forced deculturation of his own Xianbei people through the championing of the Chinese language over 1,500 years ago, are the Singapore government’s attempts at the “re-culturation” of Chinese Singaporeans by making them learn Mandarin, a foreign language to the older Chinese Singaporeans whose mother tongues are Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and other southern Chinese languages, as well as to those from younger generations whose first languages are Singapore English and “Singlish”.
I’m among the minority of Chinese Singaporeans of my generation who love the Chinese language. I appreciate its ability to be expressive and succinct in equal measure. I like the cadence of its tone, especially Mandarin, and I even like the way it looks, whether written or printed. Much as I like it, however, I can’t demand that other Chinese Singaporeans learn it, or judge them if they can’t master it well. The country uses English for the very good reason of fostering unity in a multi-ethnic society. How much stronger would that unity be if schoolchildren were allowed to learn one another’s tongue as their second language.
