2.1 Introduction
Chinese Singaporeans, identifying with an ‘imagined community’Footnote 1 of ethnic Chinese, initially believed that a common cultural heritage and a common language would make communication and cooperation with Chinese from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (as well as other Chinese communities around the globe) relatively easy. However, past discord in both political and economic spheres has proved otherwise. On-going cross-straits tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, conflicts involving the Singapore–China Suzhou Industrial Park and the unsuccessful bid of Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) to acquire Hong Kong Telecom were but a few jarring examples.
George Yeo, Singapore's former Minister for Trade and Industry, once said pointedly: ‘Our experience in Suzhou shows that we have become very different when compared to the mainland Chinese. The underlying problem we have in Suzhou is a cultural problem’ (Lianhe Zaobao, 19 June 1999). Chinese Singaporeans who, until recently, held mainland China in good regard and entertained positive expectations, began to realise, through successive setbacks in economic dealings with mainland China, that although most Chinese in Singapore and Taiwan traced their ancestry to China's south-eastern coastal region and, generally, shared commonalities in culture, language and religion, several centuries of divergence had created different community identities, value systems and varieties of language among them. Politically, mainland China had embraced a communist system of government, Taiwan had experienced 50 years of colonisation under Japanese rule, Hong Kong underwent 156 years of British colonial rule and Singapore developed from a British outpost into an independent nation. Such differences, along with contact with local cultures and languages, as well as with other Chinese dialects (fangyan, literally ‘regional languages’) contributed to differences among community identities, value systems and language among the Chinese of the four areas of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.Footnote 2
While on a large scale, Singapore Chinese communities can be regarded as distinct from those of mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, on a finer scale, the Chinese community in Singapore is itself not homogeneous and displays diverse cultural features. For example, Singapore has seen the emergence of an English-educated Chinese community that is unable or unwilling to speak Mandarin Chinese. In this community, it is descent, surname, Chinese customs and beliefs rather than the Chinese language that encapsulate the community's core values (Pakir Reference Pakir1993:85). This group converses mainly in Chinese dialects within the family domain, but is also proficient in spoken and written English. In sharp contrast to that group, the Chinese-educated Chinese Singaporeans regard use of the Chinese language as the most important factor in establishing and transmitting Chinese identity (Pakir Reference Pakir1993:85). To them, being Chinese is defined culturally, as the ability to speak, read and write the language and to be knowledgeable about Chinese history. In short, we can say that unlike Singapore's Chinese-educated community, who associate Chinese ethnicity primarily with the Chinese language, the English-educated Chinese base their identity more on anthropological factors, cultural heritage, shared history and so on (Huang Reference Huang1998:112).Footnote 3
This chapter begins with a description of the sociolinguistic status of Mandarin as spoken in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, then follows with concrete examples of lexical variation and code-mixing within the four regions. These examples will show that difficulties in cultural communication are rife even with a broadly shared language such as Mandarin Chinese.
2.2 The Status of the Chinese Language in the Four Regions
Beginning in the sixteenth century, European immigrants crossed the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the Americas. The colonial masters continued to exert significant military, economic and technological influence over these settlements, resulting in the transmission of government institutions and ideological systems to America. When these colonies grew into independent nations, they retained the colonial languages: Spanish and Portuguese in Latin and South America, English and French in North America.
By contrast, Chinese immigrants who uprooted themselves and moved to South-east Asia after the Ming and Qing Dynasties were politically alienated from the central Chinese government in Beijing. The majority of these immigrants were illiterate labourers who spoke mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects. Some Chinese who made their fortunes in the new settlements completely assimilated to their new homes, adopting the language and culture of their colonial masters (European or Japanese).
It could be said that, historically, an attitude of neglect on the part of the Chinese government towards Chinese emigrants was one of the factors that kept the Chinese language from obtaining a global spread comparable to that of English. The latter rode on the wings of European colonisation and emigration to attain the global dominance that it has today.Footnote 4
For historical reasons, the language generally called Mandarin Chinese in English is referred to by different names in different Chinese communities. In China it is called Putonghua, ‘the common language’, in Taiwan it is called Guoyu, ‘the national language’, in Hong Kong it is called Zhongwen, literally ‘the language of China’, and in Singapore, it is called Huayu, ‘the language of the Hua – the Chinese’. Each label carries different sociolinguistic connotations.
Since the late 1950s, China has been aggressively promoting the use of Putonghua.Footnote 5 In 1982 the Chinese constitution stipulated that ‘the state promotes the common language known as Putonghua’. Henceforth, Putonghua was to be not only the lingua franca for Han groups (Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and so on), but also the lingua franca across the different ethnic groups of China (Han, Zhuang, Bai, Tibetan etc.). In addition, Putonghua was designated the official language of China for international purposes.Footnote 6 In effect, Putonghua was to become the prestige (or ‘high’) language of the Chinese-speaking world across the domains of politics, economics, law, technology, education, academia, media and other official platforms. In schools, Putonghua was expected to be the key language of instruction.
The languages used by various minority and Chinese dialect groups were thus relegated to regional (or ‘low’) status, to be used mainly in informal domains such as family and markets. However, by calling the lingua franca Putonghua, the Chinese government was highlighting its unifying function as a common language rather than its prestige function as a ‘high’ language. The common language was not meant to devalue the status of other languages and Chinese dialects that were current at the local level.
When the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government took control of Taiwan in 1949, it strongly enforced the use of Mandarin Chinese in public domains (those dealing with law, technology and academia, for example) and on formal occasions. Mandarin Chinese was also adopted as the main language of instruction in schools, where students found conversing in Minnan dialect were severely punished. Calling the language Guoyu – the ‘national language’ – underscored the primacy of Mandarin Chinese over Minnan and other regional and local languages. It was not until political and economic developments made the expression of a Taiwan consciousness possible that indigenous Chinese dialects, particularly Minnan and Hakka, began to receive attention. Political factions in Taiwan recognised the political mileage to be gained from using local – dialect – speech when addressing the voting public. Now in Taiwan, the regional dialects are no longer restricted to informal occasions. They are used in parliament, mass media and other formal domains, though still not as extensively as Guoyu Mandarin.Footnote 7
In Hong Kong, during the long period of British rule, the only official language was English, which was dominant in administration and in the legal system, and widely utilised in commerce and education. The spoken language of most of the population was Cantonese Chinese; their written language was written Mandarin Chinese. After 1974, Chinese – meaning written Mandarin Chinese and, presumably, spoken Cantonese – was also given official status. Then, after the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the ideal language profile of Hong Kong residents was characterised by the phrase ‘biliterate and trilingual’ (liangwen-sanyu), that is to say, Chinese (meaning standard written Chinese) and English for written language, Cantonese, Mandarin and English for speech. (Public service announcements on the rapid transit system, for example, are given in Cantonese, Putonghua and English – in that order.) ‘Biliterate and trilingual’ does not recognise written Cantonese (with its non-standard characters) which has over the past several decades become more widely used in Hong Kong wherever there is a premium for having a verbatim record, i.e. in advertising, in Internet chat, in local newspapers and magazines, in law courts etc. Written Cantonese, despite an upsurge in popularity in recent decades, remains a low-status, unstandardised written language.
In terms of spoken language, Hong Kong remains diglossic in Cantonese and English, with English assuming the status of a high language and Hong Kong Cantonese the low language (Zou and You Reference Zou and You2001). (Hong Kong Cantonese has diverged from the mainland standard in some aspects of pronunciation and usage, in its receptiveness to borrowing from English and other languages, and in its propensity for Cantonese–English code-switching.) Since the transfer of sovereignty to China, there has been no significant increase in the number of Mandarin speakers in Hong Kong. Instead, from 1991 to 2001, there was a dip in the percentage of Mandarin users from 1.1 to 0.9 per cent (Zou and You Reference Zou and You2001).
In 1979, the Singapore government, which uses English as its language of administration, launched a Speak Mandarin Campaign targeted at those Chinese, mostly from the lower rungs of society, who could only converse comfortably in their respective Chinese dialects. Judging by the population censuses of 1990 and 2000, the campaign was notably successful: the proportion of Singaporeans who spoke varieties of Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka as their dominant home language fell dramatically, from 76.2 per cent in 1980 to 48.2 per cent in 1990 (Lau Reference Lau1993:6) and 30.7 per cent in 2000 (Leow Reference Leow2001:ix). In contrast, those who reported Mandarin Chinese (Huayu Mandarin) as their dominant home language increased sharply from 13.1 per cent in 1980 to 30 per cent in 1990 (Lau Reference Lau1993:6) and 45.1 per cent in 2000 (Leow Reference Leow2001:ix). These numbers are telling. Chinese dialects are losing ground even in the most conservative language fortress, that is, the home; Huayu Mandarin has become the common language within the Chinese community of Singapore.
In public domains, such as those involving politics, economics, law, education, technology and administration, English has remained the dominant language. It is still the working language in the workplace and in government agencies. The percentage of Chinese families that communicate in English at home rose steadily from 10.2 per cent in 1980 to 21.4 per cent in 1990 (Lau Reference Lau1993:6), and 23.9 per cent in 2000 (Leow Reference Leow2001:ix). Among the younger Chinese Singaporeans who were schooled using English as the primary language of instruction, there are proportionally more of them proficient in English. These trends suggest that English will eventually replace Huayu Mandarin as the dominant home language among Chinese in Singapore.
Within the Chinese community, English and Mandarin Chinese inhabit different social spheres. In other words, the Chinese community is diglossic. English is prized for its functional value and is widely used in daily work environments; it is regarded as the high language, serving as a bridge to the larger international community. Mandarin Chinese, on the other hand, is valued for its role in cultural transmission and is considered a low language. This is different from mainland China and Taiwan which are diglossic within the Chinese language system: in both regions, Mandarin Chinese is the high language, while the Chinese regional speeches – the dialects – are the low languages.
2.3 Lexical Differences in the Mandarin Chinese of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore
Within language, it is the lexicon that most readily reflects differences in the natural and cultural environment. Words may be adapted to new environments or new usages; words may also be adopted from other languages. As a result, in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, otherwise identical or similar words may have different meanings; and words of different origins may have the same meaning. Moreover, words may be found in one or more regions, but not in all.
2.3.1 Different Forms for a Single Meaning – A Sign of Identification with Native Culture
The words used to denote the Chinese language and traditional Chinese music are different across the four regions (see Table 2.1).
Table 2.1 Different nomenclature used in the four regions
| Mainland China | Taiwan | Hong Kong | Singapore | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese language | Hanyu Putonghua | Guoyu | Zhongwen | Huayu |
| Chinese music | Minyue | Guoyue | Zhongyue | Huayue |
The choice of words in each region reflects ideological differences. Mainland China often refers to the Chinese language as Hanyu (a term that includes Mandarin and regional dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien) in order to differentiate the language(s) of the Han ethnic group from those of minority ethnic groups such as the Zhuang, the Yi and the Jurchen. To stress the popular roots of Mandarin rather than its origin in Guanhua, the old lingua franca of officials, it is referred to as Putonghua, ‘the common language’. This is in line with communist ideology.
In Taiwan, the term Guoyu (the ‘national language’) dates back to the establishment of the Republic of China by the Kuomintang government when the term was first used to promote the status of Chinese as the national language. In Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, the term is Zhongwen, an abbreviation of Zhongguo Yuwen, literally ‘the language of China’. In multi-racial Singapore, where the different communities of Chinese, Malays and Indians are viewed as distinct ethnic groups, the term is simply Huayu ‘Chinese language’, with Hua signifying ‘Chinese’ (as in terms like Huayi ‘foreign citizen of Chinese origin’, Huashe ‘Chinese community’, Huaxiao ‘Chinese school’, and Huajiao ‘Chinese education’).
Similarly, the music played on traditional Chinese musical instruments is given different names in the four regions, reflecting different attitudes to traditional music: minyue ‘ethnic music’ in mainland China, guoyue ‘national music’ in Taiwan, zhongyue ‘Chinese music’ in Hong Kong, and huayue ‘music of the Hua – the Chinese community’ in Singapore.
The retention or replacement of old words or compounds with new coinages often reflects differences in social outlook in each region. For example, road cleaners are referred to as qingdaofu ‘clean-road-labourers’ in Taiwan and Hong Kong, qingjie-gongren ‘sanitation-workers’ in Singapore and either qingjie-gongren ‘sanitation-workers’ or huanwei-gongren ‘environmental-workers’ in mainland China. Both Singapore and mainland China have replaced the original term qingdaofu (literally ‘clean-road-labourers’) with new terms in line with shifts in societal values, while Taiwan retains the original term, reflecting its more traditional outlook.
Even words that are simply transcribed in Chinese according to their sounds are subject to some cultural reworking when selecting characters to represent them.Footnote 8 The German brand Mercedes-Benz, for example, is represented differently in each of the four regions: in mainland China, it is Benchi (a version of ‘Benz’), written with characters for ‘speed’ and ‘gallop’ (ben and chi); in Taiwan, it is Binshi (a version of ‘Benz’), with characters that mean ‘guest’ and ‘gentleman’ (bin and shi); in Hong Kong, it is Pingzhi (‘Benz’ again), written with characters for ‘flat’ and ‘manage’ (ping and zhi); in Singapore, it is Masaidi (representing Mercedes), with characters that mean ‘horse’, ‘race’ and ‘place’ (ma, sai and di). The differences suggest different associations of luxury in the four regions.
2.3.2 Shifts in Meaning – A Reflection of Cultural Divergence
Often words adjudged the same may turn out to be used differently in one region from another. A word may have come to have negative associations; it may be appropriated by a certain group; it may have narrowed or broadened its meaning. The term jiantao, for example, was originally neutral in connotation, with meanings comparable to English ‘reflect, review, discuss’. But during the Cultural Revolution, the term was applied to forced self-criticism. Now, in mainland China, the term jiantao tends to have negative connotations, in the sense of ‘re-examining one's mistakes’. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, however, jiantao can be used either positively (in the sense of ‘reflect on, discuss’) or negatively (in the sense of ‘self-criticise’).
Another example is tongzhi, whose etymological meaning is ‘of the same ambition or outlook’. It was originally coined as a form of address, corresponding to the Russian ‘tovarisch’, ‘comrade’. In mainland China, it was – and still is to some extent – used as a term of address between ordinary people. In Singapore, however, tongzhi is restricted to the internal ranks of political parties. In Taiwan, Hong Kong and, to some extent, on the mainland, it has been appropriated by homosexuals as a term of in-group address.
2.3.3 Words Unique to Each Region – A Reflection of the Indigenous Cultures
There are also many cases of words and phrases unique to one or more of the regions. These borrowings or coinages reflect a particular region or society and are often linked intricately to the political, economic and cultural milieu. In the early days of communist rule in mainland China, political ideology and social change resulted in a vast number of new coinages: jiti lingdao ‘collective leadership’, banbiantian ‘half the sky’ (used in reference to gender equality), hongweibing ‘Red Guards’, choulaojiu ‘smelly-old-nines’ (a derogatory term for scholars and learned men – ‘nine’ referring to the traditional ranking of professions that placed Confucians ninth), and wujiang-simei ‘the five civilities and the four beauties’ (a term coined for a campaign for civility and courtesy among the people). Later economic reforms produced coinages such as jingji-tequ ‘special economic zone’ and wanyuanhu ‘families with income or wealth amounting to ten-thousand yuan’ – originally a mark of considerable wealth. Nearer to the present, phrases such as the following, reflecting the recent social, economic and political changes, have also made their way into the lexicon: fanggai ‘housing policy review’, xiagang ‘to be laid off’, tuhao ‘nouveau riche’, weibo ‘microblog’, sange daibiao ‘The Three Represents’ (part of the ideological construction of the Communist Party of China initiated by Zemin Jiang, ex-Chinese President in 2002), and yidai-yilu ‘One Belt and One Road Initiative’, an abbreviation of sichou zhilu jingjidai ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and 21 shiji haishang sichou zhilu ‘Maritime Silk Road of the Twenty-first Century’.
Similarly, phrases unique to Guoyu Mandarin provide glimpses into Taiwan society. These include phrases originating in Taiwanese (Minnan dialect) and pronounced as if Mandarin, such as yingyingmeidaizi, describing a person who is unoccupied and has a lot of time on his/her hands; number phrases such as ‘119’, the phone number of the fire department, hence ‘a call for help’; and ‘520’, used to mean ‘I love you’ (by virtue of the vague similarity of the pronunciation of wu-er-ling ‘520’ to Mandarin Chinese Wo ai ni ‘I love you’); phrases borrowed from written Japanese and pronounced in Mandarin, such as xiudou (a Chinese pronunciation of the Japanese characters) ‘dumb witted’; derogatory phrases, such as sunü, abbreviated from suqi de nürenˇ, meaning ‘a crass woman’; and terms based on English, such as ‘BMW’ for ‘Big Mouth Woman’ (Shen Reference Shen1999).
Cantonese has been a source or a conduit for loan material to enter regional Mandarin and, in some cases, standard Mandarin. ‘Taxi’ is a well-known example. Borrowed into Cantonese from English as diksi, it was adopted by Mandarin speakers as simply di and is now the standard colloquial word, occurring in phrases such as Zanmen da ge di qu, hao bu hao? ‘Let's take a taxi, okay?’ In this case, the word seems to have passed through the spoken medium rather than the written. In many cases, however, it is clear that the novel form has been adopted from written material – characters. ‘Chocolate’, for example, was borrowed into Cantonese – again from English – as dzy-gu-lik. The Cantonese word was then adopted in some southern regional Mandarin speeches (as far away as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore) by converting the characters that represented the Cantonese into Mandarin, i.e. zhu-gu-li. Other words that fall into this category include zhishi ‘cheese’, boshi ‘boss’, sanwenzhi ‘sandwich’, all Mandarin readings of the characters used to write them in Cantonese.
Cantonese is also the original source of some novel Mandarin lexical material. The Cantonese expression gei si ‘at what time, when’ has entered southern Mandarin as ji shi (again, the characters converted to their Mandarin readings). The idiomatic expression chaoyouyu ‘dismissal from employment’ (literally ‘to fry squid’), now considered standard Mandarin, derives from a Mandarin reading of an expression that was originally Cantonese. Southern Mandarin variants such as guhan ‘stingy’, jieshi ‘street market’ and fan-gong ‘go to work’ all have Cantonese antecedents.
Since becoming an independent nation, Singapore has also developed a unique terminology for political and cultural institutions: Renmin-xiehui ‘People's Association’, Gongmin-zixun-weiyuanhui ‘Citizens’ Consultative Committee’, Jumin-weiyuanhui ‘Residents' Committee’, Shequ-fazhan-lishihui ‘Community Development Council’ and jixuanqu ‘group representation constituency’. There are also many words that have been coined for Singapore's unique styles of housing: zuwu ‘public housing’, dapai ‘block number’, xiaopai ‘unit number’, Jianwu-fazhanju ‘Housing and Development Board’, and terms for the traffic management system in Singapore, such as yongchezheng ‘certificate of entitlement’, xianzhiqu ‘restricted zones’, xianjinka ‘cashcard’ and yuekaqi ‘card reader’.
A string of terms derive from the Huayu Mandarin term leling ‘joyful age’, a euphemism for old age in Singapore that reflects the government's ‘care and share’ policy towards the aged. These include leling zhongxin ‘senior citizen centres’, leling-gongyu ‘flats/apartments for the elderly’, leling-cun ‘senior citizen village’, leling-wang ‘senior citizen network’, leling-julebu ‘senior citizen club’, leling-zhou ‘senior citizen week’, and, leling-zonghe-fuwu-zhongxin ‘senior citizen service organisations’.
2.4 Language Variety in Singapore: A Case Study
2.4.1 Singapore Chinese Typology
Chinese migrants who move overseas invariably experience several stages of adaptation as they come into contact with local language and culture, passing through initial adjustment to increasing integration and, in some cases, complete localisation. This process of gradual localisation usually requires a few generations to complete. Some overseas Chinese communities eventually develop unique language variants and customs.
Taking Singapore as an example, one can broadly sub-divide the local Chinese community into three groups, based on factors such as when they migrated to Singapore, their occupation, the degree of retention of their native language and the extent of integration in the local culture. These groups are the Peranakan, the Recent Guests (Xinke) and the New Immigrants (Xinyimin). As these groups differ in their degree of Chineseness, they are prone to feuds, with later immigrants criticising the more assimilated groups for being ‘ungrateful to their ancestors and roots’ or being too Westernised. These criticisms are interwoven with conflicts over the distribution of political, economic and educational resources in Singapore. Frequently, the disputes crystallise around issues of Chinese language.
2.4.1.1 Peranakans
With a long history of maritime trade, China's status as a maritime power was consolidated when, in 1405, Admiral Zheng He, with a large fleet of vessels, embarked on a series of seven naval expeditions to South-east Asia and beyond. From the early fifteenth century, encouraged by those voyages, many Chinese traders from Fujian and Guangdong provinces in eastern China migrated to the Malay Peninsula. There, they commonly intermarried with local Malay women, or women from other ethnic groups. The sons of such unions are called Baba; the daughters are called Nyonya. Collectively, the assimilated descendants of early immigrants to South-east Asia are called Peranakan (a Malay word meaning ‘locally born’). Chinese Peranakan speak their native Chinese dialects or Baba Malay (Malay, with an admixture of Hokkien). They may have striven to preserve traditional Chinese customs and practices in their daily life, but they also created unique cultural forms – clothing, cuisine and decoration – that incorporated elements of both Chinese and Malay culture.
From the mid Ming Dynasty onwards, in order to fend off attacks by pirates along its coasts, China prohibited maritime trade and the construction of large ocean-going vessels. Those who defied orders were severely punished. During the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government was wary of Han Chinese forming anti-government forces overseas, so in 1717 it too banned trading ships from sailing to South-east Asia, and required all Chinese traders in South-east Asia to return to China. If they failed to return, people who were close to them would be placed in a cangue for a month while a petition was sent abroad demanding that the foreign residents be deported and returned to their homeland (Zhuang Reference Zhuang1989:75). Although the prohibitions on maritime trade were relaxed by the mid Qing, the rulers of China continued to view overseas Chinese in South-east Asia with suspicion. Rules on migration were further tightened. The harsh stance adopted by the Qing rulers towards overseas Chinese, viewing them as bandits or rebels to be exterminated, forced Peranakans to sink their roots deeper into their South-east Asian homelands.
After Stamford Raffles established a British trading outpost in Singapore in 1819, Peranakans accustomed to the British system migrated from Malacca and Penang to Singapore. As they were educated in English-medium schools, they were proficient in the English language. They conformed to the values of their British colonial masters and found employment in the colonial government and in commercial companies, enjoying privileged social status and relatively high remuneration.
With the collapse of the British colonial empire, English-educated Chinese no longer felt subservient to their colonial masters and began to press for local self-government. With their political views becoming localised towards what was then Malaya, they played a key role in Singapore's nation-building process. Their affiliation to their ancestral home, China, was relatively weak and, at times, they were even hostile towards the communist government of that time. ‘Where you're from’ gave way to ‘where you're at’ (Ang Reference Ang2001:30).
Nowadays, only a small proportion of English-educated Chinese in Singapore speak Chinese dialects or Baba Malay at home. Most of them use English at home and at work, or localised Singapore English (Singlish). They usually have difficulty understanding or speaking Mandarin, and are much less able to read and write in Chinese, often relying on English to learn about Chinese culture.
After China's economy started to take off in the late 1980s, the Singapore government, which uses English as its language of administration, began to view knowledge of Chinese as an economic asset. Hitherto valued for its role in cultural transmission, Chinese started to be seen, additionally, as a tool to open up trade and investment opportunities in China. This led to a new debate within the Chinese community: do we learn the Chinese language for its economic value? Or for the retention of our cultural identity?
2.4.1.2 Recent Guests
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Qing Dynasty in China was in decline. After the Qing were defeated by the British in the Opium Wars, they were forced to sign treaties to allow, among other things, Western powers to recruit workers from China. In the ensuing period, a few million Chinese labourers were sent overseas to South-east Asia, America, Africa and Australia. These Chinese migrants, mostly labourers, craftsmen or retailers, were loosely termed Recent Guests (Xinke). They conversed mainly in their native Chinese dialects, including Hokkien, Teochew, Hainanese, Fuzhou, Cantonese and Hakka. These dialects belong to three main dialect groups in southern China: the Min group, the Yue group and the Hakka group, none of them readily understood by speakers of the others.
Most Recent Guests had limited education and were illiterate. They congregated together and formed clan or trade associations with fellow Recent Guests on the basis of blood ties, common ancestral hometown or occupation. They continued to maintain close personal and cultural ties to their motherland and these ‘overseas Chinese’ eventually became an important source of support for Sun Yat-sen's democratic revolution in China.
The descendants of Recent Guests mostly attended schools set up by the Chinese community with Mandarin as the medium of instruction. Although Singapore was a British trading post, there were already privately run Chinese schools as early as the first half of the nineteenth century. Subsequent Chinese community leaders and clan associations continued to build Chinese schools and to support education for the community. While these Chinese schools taught their students Chinese language and culture, and imbued in them moral and ethical values, they also trained them in practical skills and crafts.
In the early years after the Second World War, although the Chinese-educated community identified with local culture, they still hoped to maintain a link to the motherland – the place ‘where you're from’. As the South-east Asian countries and the Western powers joined hands to contain the spread of communism in the region, the political loyalty of the Chinese-educated community – with their self-professed stronger ‘Chineseness’ – was viewed with suspicion by the Peranakan and other ethnic groups in Singapore.
In Singapore's immigrant society, the Chinese language ranks below English on the prestige scale. In the early days of Singapore's independence, many Chinese-educated parents, not wanting their children to be marginalised in a society in which English language was dominant, sent their children to English-medium schools. Ironically, this also resulted in some members of the Chinese-educated community feeling ashamed and awkward at their offspring's impure and inadequate Chineseness. Herein lies the conflict: Chinese-educated Singaporeans are both ‘too Chinese’ and ‘not Chinese enough’.
2.4.1.3 New Immigrants
In line with the global quest for talent in the 1980s and 1990s, people from mainland China and Hong Kong who emigrated to Singapore were warmly welcomed. These late waves of Chinese immigrants, along with those from Taiwan, formed a local community of Chinese New Immigrants that had an impact on the Chinese community's sense of ‘Chineseness’.
Numerous letters and articles from New Immigrants, published in recent years in the local Chinese press, showed that they regarded their own Chinese culture as more orthodox or legitimate than that of their local, assimilated brethren. They were critical of the Westernised ways of Chinese Singaporeans and denigrated the local language as non-standard and contaminated by foreign influence. They were the strongest advocates for promoting standardised Mandarin (Goh Reference Goh2010).
The unhappiness expressed by these New Immigrants is a reflection of their complex emotions: although they are physically in Singapore, their hearts remain with their motherland, China. Identification with an imagined motherland is a symptom of their marginalisation in their adopted society. Through the connection with the motherland, they achieve happiness, dignity and a substituted sense of belonging.
2.4.2 The Evolution of Chinese Language Variants and Immigrant Culture
Prolonged contact with English and Malay, together with the influence of local political, economical, geographical and cultural factors, gave rise to a hybrid local variety of Chinese that is commonly used among Recent Guests and their descendants. Some of the New Immigrants also use it intermittently to communicate more intimately and naturally with the locals. An analysis of the variety of Mandarin spoken in Singapore provides a glimpse of the relationship between language and cultural evolution there.
Chinese migrants, like other migrants, naturally adjust their language in order to communicate with locals. The Baba language, for example, was a hybrid of Malay and Hokkien (as well as other dialects) (Yun Reference Yun and Yun1996). Similarly, the local Mandarin language variety used in Singapore and Malaysia was a product of their history. Its vocabulary reflects an adaptation by Chinese immigrants of different eras to new social and cultural patterns.
The most direct reflection of language contact is seen in the process of transliteration, which involves the adoption (and adaptation) of the sound and the meaning or foreign words (or phrases). Table 2.2 lists examples of terms borrowed from English.
Table 2.2 Loans from English into Singapore Mandarin
| English | Borrowed term in Singapore Mandarin | Source | Corresponding term in Hanyu Mandarin | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | percent | baxian | Min | [pa-sian] | baifenbi |
| 2. | upper | heba | Min | [aʔ-pa] | shangduan |
| 3. | lorry | luoli | Min | [lo-li] | kache |
| 4. | licence | lishen | Yue | [lɑi-ʃɑn] | zhizhao |
| 5. | tips | tieshi | Yue | [thip-ʃi] | xiaofei, tishi |
| 6. | coupon | guben | Yue | [ku-pun] | quan |
The terms shown in the table underwent two stages of borrowing: first, they were adopted by Chinese dialects (Min and Yue) current in Singapore's earlier history, with characters chosen for their sound value alone; then they were adapted to local Mandarin, presumably by giving Mandarin pronunciation to the original characters.
The early immigrants sometimes applied their native dialect words to features of the local landscape. But in many cases, they simply used the local term, adapting it to the sound system of their own Chinese speech. Table 2.3 shows terms borrowed from Malay describing the cuisine, plants, attire and landscape of the native people.
Table 2.3 Terms borrowed from Malay
| Malay | Borrowed term in Singapore Mandarin | Chinese dialects | Corresponding term in Hanyu Mandarin | Corresponding term in English | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | pasar | basha | Min | [pa-sat] | caishichang | market |
| 2. | sarong | shalong | Min | [sa-lɔŋ] | Nil | sarong |
| 3. | durian | liulian | Min | [liu-lian] | Nil | durian (fruit) |
| 4. | kampong | ganbang | Min | [kam-pɔŋ] | cunluo | village |
| 5. | satay | shadie | Min | [sa-te] | kaorouchuan | satay (meat or other food on skewers) |
| 6. | atap | yada | Min | [a-tap] | Nil | palm fronds |
Table 2.4 lists Mandarin terms used in Singapore that have been borrowed from Chinese dialects. These borrowed dialect words differed phonologically and lexically from the corresponding Mandarin terms and their adoption suggests the Chinese immigrants' nascent identification with local culture. Such borrowed terms, which reflect the lives of early Chinese immigrants, eventually found their way into the lexicon of the local variety of Mandarin.
Table 2.4 Singapore Mandarin terms borrowed from Chinese dialects
| Borrowed term in Singapore Mandarin | Chinese dialects | Corresponding term in Hanyu Mandarin | English glosses | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | diniu | Min | [te-gu] | jichayuan | inspector |
| 2. | jiaotou | Min | [kak-tau] | jiaoluo | corner |
| 3. | bawei | Min | [pa-ui] | zhanwei | occupied |
| 4. | shaoshui | Min | [sio-tsui] | reshui | hot water |
| 5. | geche | Min | [kua?-tshia] | chaoche | overtake |
| 6. | touxian | Min | [thau-siŋ] | gangcai | just now |
Given the fact that English has been the dominant working language of Singapore, it is not surprising to find that many local English coinages have been incorporated in Singapore Mandarin as well.
The English terms in Table 2.5, all coined after Singapore's independence in 1965, reflect the local environment and government policies. The shift from phonological transliteration to semantic translation or new coinage of local English terms in Singapore Mandarin indicates that Chinese immigrants or their descendants have moved away from an immigrant mind-set to a collective one and are well assimilated to the dominant language and culture.
Table 2.5 English terms for which local Chinese equivalents have been created (i.e. calques)
| English terms | Local Mandarin equivalents | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | HDB (Housing & Development Board) flats | zuwu |
| 2. | COE (Certificate of Entitlement) | yongchezheng |
| 3. | GST (Goods and Services Tax) | xiaofeishui |
| 4. | senior citizen | lelin renshi |
| 5. | detached house | dulishi yangfang |
| 6. | food court | shige |
From the transliteration or translation of borrowed terms into Chinese, the degree of linguistic mixing reflects the process of assimilation that leads eventually to the Recent Guests sinking their roots in Singapore. First generation immigrants may dream of returning to the motherland, but for second and third generation immigrants, the imagined motherland of their forefathers is foreign and distant.
Second and third generations of Recent Guests in Singapore strive to learn the dominant language while retaining the ability to select language appropriate to the context of discourse, whether that be markets, hawker centres, shops, department stores, restaurants, post offices, banks or government offices.
As they assimilate more completely to the dominant culture in Singapore, descendants of Recent Guests and new immigrants become more and more proficient in English. They retain remnants of their native Chinese dialects, or regional accents, but eventually it is difficult to differentiate their language from that of the Peranakans.
2.5 Code-Mixing Phenomena: From Intra-Sentence to Inter-Sentence
In 2000, the Singapore government initiated the Speak Good English Movement, targeting students and working adults below the age of forty who spoke Singlish or Singapore English, both of which are regarded as non-standard versions of English (Lianhe Zaobao, 10 March 2000).
In a bilingual or multilingual society, it is common for people to use elements from more than one language in their speech. This is known as code-mixing. Singlish, for example, mixes elements from Chinese, English and Malay. Code-mixing can also occur between language varieties or dialects. For example in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong KongFootnote 9 and Singapore, a conversation in Mandarin often contains words or phrases from dialects. Conversely, a conversation primarily in dialect may intersperse Mandarin words or phrases. Both types of code-mixing are common, but they possess different linguistic functions.
A case in point is the use of language in the 2008 Taiwan presidential elections. Ying-jeou Ma, Kuomintang nominee, who is not a native Taiwanese by descent, sprinkled Minnan and Hakka words and phrases in his speech in a bid to gain the support of native Taiwanese. On the other hand, Mandarin is still an important language in Taiwan and there are many new coinages in Mandarin for which there are no corresponding terms in Chinese dialects. So even though the then elected president, Shui-bian Chen, is a native Taiwanese, he would still intersperse his Minnan dialect speeches with Mandarin material. Such code-mixing between Mandarin and Chinese dialects is very common in mainland China too, but because the mixing involves types of Chinese, it is less apparent and the Chinese community do not view it as problematic or unnatural.
However, when elements of Chinese and non-Chinese languages are involved – Chinese and English, for example – the mix is more salient, and advocates of ‘pure’ language are more likely to object and characterise it as a reflection of linguistic incompetence. This is the reason for concerns about speaking ‘good’ English or ‘standard’ Mandarin in Singapore.
When immigrants reach their destination and encounter a new language, code-mixing is an obvious adaptive strategy. Example 1 illustrates code-mixing by a young mainland Chinese student studying in the United States (Qian Ning Reference Qian1996:152–3).
Example 1 The following letter was written to classmates in China by a twenty-four year-old graduate student from Beijing University of Iron and Steel Technology six months after arriving in the United States to pursue studies at the University of Minnesota:
Hei, ge wei, benren jingguo yi fan kuxue, hunle liang ge B, bian kaizhe xin mai de jiu Fengtian Huangguan che dong jin. Di-yi zhan Chicago, zai yi jia Big Boy de dian li chile yi dun zizhucan, yin service pocha, jueding bu gei tip, yi shi wuchan jieji de zhiqi. Ben xiang qu cheng zhong ting yi chang yinyuehui, jieguo guaijinle nali de 42 jie, wufei shi cong topless dao bottomless, yi kan jiu quan mingbai le. Di-er zhan dao le Pittsburgh, che park zai fanhua zhidi, xingli wei quchu, huilai shi faxian chechuang beiza, xingli beidao. Shit! Chubu gusuan, suanshi da 500 meiyuan.
(Hi, everyone, after studying really hard and scraping by with two ‘B's, I took my newly bought second-hand Toyota Crown and drove east. First stop was Chicago, where I had a buffet meal at a Big Boy restaurant. The service wasn't very good, so I decided, as a form of protest, not to leave a tip. I had wanted to attend a concert in town, but ended up on 42nd Street watching topless to bottomless striptease shows. At my second stop, in Pittsburgh, I parked my car in a well-traveled part of town, leaving my luggage in it. When I returned to the car, I found the car window smashed and my luggage stolen. Shit! I figured I lost about USD500.)
This example illustrates the way colloquial English terms are incorporated in Chinese text by a ‘new immigrant’. The incorporated words are mostly nouns or proper nouns (e.g., Chicago, Big Boy, service), but include one verb (park). Sentence structure remains completely Chinese. It is clear that the insertion of foreign words into the text is not random. The use of English proper nouns is no doubt related to the difficulty of finding a suitable Chinese equivalent; but the use of ‘service’, ‘park’ and ‘tip’ is more likely motivated by the writer's desire to show his familiarity with American life and culture.
In a multilingual society such as Singapore, code-mixing between Mandarin and English (or English and Mandarin) is common.Footnote 10 Example 2 is gleaned from a conversation between two Chinese women at an MRT station.
A: Miss Tan, weekend wo he Miss Ong yiqi dao Orchard Road Centre Point de Robinson shopping, then women you yiqi qu McDonald chi hamburger.
A: (Miss Tan, over the weekend Miss Ong and I went shopping at Robinson's department store in Centrepoint on Orchard Road. Then, we went on and had hamburgers at McDonald's.)
B: Aiya! Dou mei page wo, wo ye xiang qu McDonald mai Hello Kitty yongmaozheng.
B: (Oh, you didn't page me! I wanted to go to McDonald's too, to buy a Hello Kitty certificate.)
Despite the Chinese syntax, if visitors from mainland China or Taiwan heard this conversation, they might well think that the speakers were basically speaking English.
Initially, code-mixing in Singapore was a result of the importance of English in Singapore life. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese-educated Singaporeans, being less proficient in English, would deliberately inject English words into their conversations to appear trendy and to elevate their social status. Injecting English, Chinese dialects, Malay and so on into Mandarin speech gave rise to a style of speech that was unique to Singapore. However, most Mandarin speakers retain the ability to shift back to formal registers when the context calls for it, and where speaking the mixed dialect would be inappropriate.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Singapore instituted educational reform that involved switching from vernacular schools to a unified national school system with English as the main medium of instruction. In primary and secondary schools, students were required to take some courses in their ‘mother tongue’. The objective was to produce young Singaporeans competent in two languages, English and their mother tongue. In reality, many of the younger Chinese Singaporeans found themselves truly competent in neither English nor Chinese. Because in school they were more exposed to English than to Mandarin, their English proficiency gradually outstripped their ability to converse (or read) in Mandarin, regardless of their home language. When these ‘bilingual’ users did converse in Mandarin, they often found it easier to mix codes than to try to stick to one language. Code-mixing became entrenched and acceptable (at least among their peers). This was fundamentally different from the earlier generation of Mandarin speakers, whose use of English in Chinese conversation served to make them appear trendy.
The prevalence of code-mixing among current Singaporean students when they converse in Mandarin is primarily a product of limited Chinese vocabulary. The resultant linguistic mix sets Singapore Mandarin apart from versions found in other Chinese-speaking regions. The third example, below, represents a conversation between two Singaporean undergraduates discussing their course work on campus.Footnote 11
Example 3 Two students, overwhelmed by their homework assignment, are having a conversation in the university student cafeteria:
A: Zhege assignment de deadline shi ji shi huh?
A: (When is this assignment's deadline?)
B: Haoxiang shi xialibaiyi, ni hai meiyou start mie?
B: (Seems that it's next Monday, you still haven't started?)
A: Where got time? Zheyang duo dongxi zuo, zhege semester really like hell.
A: (Where got time? there are so many things to do, this semester is really like hell.)
B: Ai Tsai, hai you san ge libai, think about ni de fangmaozi lor, then got motivation.
B: (Hey, there are still three weeks, think about your mortarboard, then got motivation.)
There are significant differences in the type of code-mixing used in the third example (two students talking about their homework) on the one hand, and the first (Chinese student in America) and second (Chinese-educated Singaporean) on the other. The first and second examples involve code-mixing at the intra-sentential level – mainly the mixing of vocabulary; but the mix of Mandarin and English used in the third example, contains both intra-sentence mixing and inter-sentence mixing. For example, the utterance ‘Where got time? zheyang duo dongxi zuo, zhege semester really like hell’ contains a segment translated literally from the host language, Mandarin (Where got time), segments in Mandarin (zheyang duo dongxi zuo), and segments where English is the host language and Mandarin the embedded language (zhege semester really like hell).
When code-mixing occurs at the inter-sentential level, it is generally thought to be an indication that the user has difficulty finding the right vocabulary rather than a deliberate act to appear trendy. Such a phenomenon is usually seen as proof of a non-proficient semi-speaker being unable to use two languages effectively (Holmes Reference Holmes1992:40–53).
2.6 Concluding Remarks
Historical and cultural differences between mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have resulted in linguistic divergence and the appearance of regional varieties of Mandarin, each with a myriad of interesting lexical, phonological and even syntactic differences. Given the factors involved, this evolution is quite natural and should be treated as such. In a similar fashion, as the expansion of the British Empire and its colonial possessions in the nineteenth century and the economic and military expansion of the United States in the twentieth brought English to the farthest reaches of the world, English too came under local influence and diverged into the varieties we know today: American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English and even Singapore and Malaysian English (Crystal 1997).
There are inherent cultural identification values in regional language varieties. However, the varieties inevitably also lead to problems of communication that must be eased through localised learning channels and the publication of local dictionaries (such as Wang Reference Wang1999).Footnote 12 Advocating the adoption of an overseas standard (that of mainland China or Taiwan) and regarding the local language, Singapore Chinese, as deviant or sub-standard can only make matters worse by ignoring the ideologies defined by such varieties. A hard-line approach that regards one variety as correct or standard only hinders cultural exchange, causes rifts between the regions and hinders the spread of Chinese globally. It is time to acknowledge that varieties of Chinese have evolved in response to local conditions and seek to achieve a better balance between improving language communication across the regions while preserving local identities.
In Singapore, the proportion of Singaporeans using English as their main language of communication is set to increase steadily. The code-mixing language of younger generations of Singaporeans may be functional in informal contexts within Singapore, but it is quite inadequate for communication in professional settings with Mandarin speakers from mainland China, Taiwan or other Mandarin-speaking regions.
Following the opening up and rapid development of the late twentieth century, China's influence on global economics, politics and military development is set to expand even more in the twenty-first century. Along with the reach of the Internet and satellite television, the Chinese language is fast becoming an important global language. The biggest challenge faced by the Singapore education policy makers is how to nurture Chinese language professionals proactively and build up the competitive language advantage of Chinese in the Greater China market in the coming years.
