122-570: Songjiang , from the Chinese for " Pine River" and formerly romanized as Sungkiang , usually refers to one of the following areas within the municipal limits of Shanghai : It may also refer to the following locations in China: Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
244-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
366-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
488-555: A 2018 study by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), only 8% of Singaporeans identify with Singlish as their primary language, compared to the one-third that identify with English and another 2% with their official mother tongue. Both survey waves, in 2013 and 2018, conducted showed that about half of all respondents reported being able to speak Singlish "well" or "very well". Younger respondents (18–25 years old) reported greater proficiency than older respondents (65+ years old). Over
610-594: A Board chaired by the Singapore's Minister of Education , Mr Heng Swee Keat and advised by an International Advisory Panel of Experts. The impact of the bilingual policy differs amongst students from the various ethnic groups. For the Chinese, when the policy was first implemented, many students found themselves struggling with two foreign languages: English and Mandarin. Even though several different Chinese varieties were widely spoken at home, they were excluded from
732-455: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
854-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
976-422: A broader shift in Singapore, with English replacing Malay as the lingua franca throughout the late 20th century. Other varieties that are still spoken in Singapore include Bazaar Malay ( Melayu Pasar ), a Malay-lexified pidgin , which was once an interethnic lingua franca when Singapore was under British rule. Another is Baba Malay , a variety of Malay Creole influenced by Hokkien and Bazaar Malay and
1098-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
1220-555: A centre for Malay literature and Malay culture. However, after independence, this cultural role declined. Singapore is an observer to the Language Council for Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia which works to standardise Malay spelling, however it has not applied to be a member. It nonetheless applies standardisations agreed to in this forum, and follows the Malaysian standard when there are disagreements. Standards within
1342-609: A common Chinese cultural identity . China's economic rise in the 21st century has also encouraged a greater use of Mandarin. Other Chinese varieties such as Hokkien, Teochew , Hakka , Hainanese and Cantonese have been classified by the Government as " dialects ", and language policies and language attitudes based on this classification and discouragement of usage in Non-Mandarin Chinese or "Chinese dialects" in official settings and television media have led to
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#17327725701981464-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1586-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1708-464: A decrease in the number of speakers of these varieties. In particular, Singapore has its own lect of Mandarin; Singaporean Mandarin , itself with two varieties, Standard and Colloquial or spoken . While Tamil is one of Singapore's official and the most spoken Indian language, other Indian languages are also frequently used by minorities. Almost all Singaporeans are bilingual since Singapore's bilingual language education policy promotes
1830-417: A dual-language learning system. Learning a second language has been compulsory in primary schools since 1960 and secondary schools since 1966. English is used as the main medium of instruction. On top of this, most children learn one of the three official languages (or, occasionally, another approved language) as a second language, according to their official registered ethnic group. Since 1 January 2011, if
1952-1342: A flap rhotic consonant (/ ɾ /). Historically Malay was written in the Jawi script , based on Arabic. Under the British and Dutch Malay began to be written in Rumi. Efforts to create a standardised spelling for Malaya and Singapore emerged in 1904 by colonial officer Richard Wilkinson. In 1910, the Malay of the Riau Islands was chosen by the Dutchman van Ophuijsen as the dialect for his book "Malay Grammar", intended for Dutch officials, standardising Rumi usage in Dutch territories. In 1933, grammarian Zainal Abidin bin Ahmad made further changes to Rumi as used in Malaya and Singapore. Many Chinese immigrants who spoke Malay were supporters of British rule, and purposely used Rumi when writing newspapers or translating Chinese literature. Printing presses used by colonial officials and Christian missionaries further spread Rumi, while Jawi
2074-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
2196-515: A person is of more than one ethnicity and their race is registered in the hyphenated format, the race chosen will be the one that precedes the hyphen in their registered race. Although Malay is de jure national language , Singapore English is regarded de facto as the main language in Singapore, and is officially the main language of instruction in all school subjects except for Mother Tongue lessons in Singapore's education system . It
2318-537: A result, students from such schools will attend Tamil language classes at the Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre (UPTLC). On the other hand, Indian students who speak non-Dravidian languages can choose from Hindi , Bengali , Punjabi , Gujarati and Urdu . However, as with Tamil, only certain schools offer these non-Dravidian languages. Thus, students will attend their respective language classes at designated language centres, held by
2440-523: A rich linguistic diversity in the city. Singapore's historical roots as a trading settlement gave rise to an influx of foreign traders, and their languages were slowly embedded in Singapore's modern day linguistic repertoire. In the early years, the lingua franca of the island was Bazaar Malay ( Melayu Pasar ), a creole of Malay and Chinese, the language of trade in the Malay Archipelago . While it continues to be used among many on
2562-540: A second language called their " Mother Tongue " by the Ministry of Education, where they are either taught Mandarin , Malay , or Tamil . English is the main language of instruction for most subjects, while Mother Tongue is used in Mother Tongue lessons and moral education classes. This is because Singapore's "bilingualism" policy of teaching and learning English and Mother Tongue in primary and secondary schools
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#17327725701982684-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
2806-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2928-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
3050-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
3172-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
3294-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3416-655: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
3538-625: Is also spoken near the Johor Strait , between Singapore and the state of Johor , Malaysia . Tamil is one of the official languages of Singapore and written Tamil uses the Tamil script . According to the population census of 2010, 9.2% of the Singaporean population were of Indian origins, with approximately 36.7% who spoke Tamil most frequently as their home language. It is a drop from 2000, where Tamil-speaking homes comprised 42.9%. On
3660-495: Is also the ceremonial national language and used in the national anthem of Singapore , in citations for Singapore orders and decorations and military foot drill commands, mottos of several organisations, and is the variety taught in Singapore's language education system . Linguistically, the vernacular Malay dialect of Singapore is similar to even derived from that of Johore , but with a possible Javanese substrate "much influenced by its proximity to Java ", as well as having
3782-420: Is also the common language of the administration and is promoted as an important language for international business . Spelling in Singapore largely follows British conventions , owing to the country's status as a former Crown Colony . English is the country's default lingua franca despite the fact that four languages have official status. Under the British colonial government, English gained prestige as
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3904-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
4026-418: Is closer to Indonesian than it is to Johor-Riau. There has also been cultural resistance, with accent differences between older and younger generations leading to questions surrounding Malay cultural identity. This question was further sharpened by Malaysia dropping sebutan baku in 2000, returning to the traditional use of Johor-Riau. While the official Mandarin and Tamil mother tongues often do not reflect
4148-411: Is generally seen as a way to maintain a link to Chinese culture . Other Chinese varieties also have a presence in Singapore. Amongst them, Hokkien used to be an unofficial language of business until the 1980s. Hokkien was also used as a lingua franca among Chinese Singaporeans, and also among Malays and Indians to communicate with the Chinese majority. As of 2012, according to demographic figures,
4270-558: Is largely spoken by the elderly. While Singapore Sign Language (SgSL) has not been recognised as a national sign language, the local deaf community recognises it as Singapore's native sign language, developed over six decades since the setting up of the first school for local deaf in 1954. Singapore Sign Language is closely related to American Sign Language and is influenced by Shanghainese Sign Language (SSL) , Signing Exact English (SEE-II) , Pidgin Signed English (PSE) . In
4392-424: Is now limited mainly to the elderly . From 2010, the number of Mandarin speakers has also declined in favour of English. English is starting to displace Mandarin among the new generation of Singapore Chinese due to long term effects of the dominant usage of English in most official settings over Mandarin, the dominant usage of English as the medium of instruction in Singapore schools, colleges and universities, and
4514-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
4636-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
4758-402: Is registered in the hyphenated format, the race chosen will be the one that precedes the hyphen in their registered race. The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism was set up on 28 November 2011. The Fund aims to promote bilingualism amongst young children in Singapore, is set up to supplement existing English and Mother Tongue language programmes in teaching and language learning. It is managed by
4880-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
5002-434: Is taught at a level lower than the mainstream standard. In the case of Mandarin, Chinese students would study Chinese "B". The Malay-speaking community also faced similar problems after the implementation of the policy. In Singapore, Malay, not its non-standard dialects, is valued as a means of transmitting familial and religious values. For instance, " Madrasahs ", or religious schools, mosques and religious classes all employ
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5124-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
5246-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
5368-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
5490-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
5612-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
5734-400: Is viewed as a "cultural ballast" to safeguard Asian cultural identities and values against Western influence. While "Mother Tongue" generally refers to the first language (L1) elsewhere, it is used to denote the "ethnic language" or the second language (L2) in Singapore. Prior to 1 January 2011, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore defined "Mother Tongue" not as the home language or
5856-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
5978-496: The Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of the People's Republic of China had 40 differences. In 1974 a new Table was published, and this second table was revised in 1976 to remove all differences between simplified Chinese characters in Singapore and China. Although simplified characters are currently used in official documents, the government does not officially discourage or prohibit
6100-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
6222-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
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#17327725701986344-523: The Ministry of Education Curriculum Planning and Development Division restricts language development, disallowing loanwords. However, the language policy is supported by Tamils, likely due to contrast with that of neighbouring Malaysia where Tamil has no status. Tamil names are commonly used in countries like India, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. In these countries, Tamil people preserve their heritage and culture through their names. Apart from Tamil, some of
6466-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
6588-517: The education system , we adopted a common working language in English." Hokkien (Min Nan) briefly emerged as a lingua franca among the Chinese, but by the late 20th century it had been eclipsed by Mandarin . The Government promotes Mandarin among Singaporean Chinese people , since it views the language as a bridge between Singapore's diverse non-Mandarin speaking groups, and as a tool for forging
6710-466: The lingua franca between Singaporeans being English , the de facto main language. Singaporeans often speak Singlish among themselves, an English creole arising from centuries of contact between Singapore's internationalised society and its legacy of being a British colony . Linguists formally define it as Singapore Colloquial English. A multitude of other languages are also used in Singapore . They consist of several varieties of languages under
6832-511: The major ethnic groups present in Singapore at the time: Mandarin had gained status since the introduction of Chinese-medium schools; Malay was deemed the "most obvious choice" for the Malay community; and Tamil for the largest Indian ethnic group in Singapore, in addition to being "the language with the longest history of education in Malaysia and Singapore". In 2009, more than 20 languages were identified as being spoken in Singapore, reflecting
6954-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
7076-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
7198-713: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Languages of Singapore The languages of Singapore are English , Chinese , Malay and Tamil , with
7320-650: The 1824 census of Singapore, 18% of the population were identified as ethnic Bugis , speaking the Buginese language , counted separately from the Malays. Over the centuries, the Bugis community dwindled and became assimilated into the Malay demographic. In 1990, only 0.4% of Singaporeans were identified as Bugis. Today the term Malay is used in Singapore as an umbrella term for all peoples of the Malay Archipelago . The majority of Singaporeans are bilingual in English and one of
7442-571: The Board for the Teaching and Testing of South Asian Languages (BTTSAL). In 2007, in a bid to enhance the linguistic experience of students, the Ministry of Education strongly encouraged schools to offer Conversational Malay and Chinese to those who do not take either of these languages as their Mother Tongue. By providing the schools with the resources needed to implement the programme, the Ministry of Education has succeeded in significantly increasing
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#17327725701987564-537: The Chinese community. There has been a steep increase in the use of the English language over the years. Singapore is currently one of the most proficient English-speaking countries in Asia. Then Education Minister , Ng Eng Hen , noted a rising number of Singaporeans using English as their home language in December 2009. Of children enrolled in primary school in 2009, 60% of the Chinese and Indian pupils and 35% of
7686-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
7808-437: The Malay language. However, Malay in turn is facing competition from the increased popularity of English. In contrast to the language policy for Mandarin and Malay, Indian students are given a wider variety of Indian languages to choose from. For example, Indian students speaking Dravidian languages study Tamil as a Mother Tongue. However, schools with low numbers of Tamil students might not provide Tamil language classes. As
7930-402: The Malay pupils spoke predominantly English at home. Singlish is an English-based creole language with its own consistent rules and phonology widely used in Singapore. However, usage of this language is discouraged by the local government, which favours Standard English . The Media Development Authority does not support using Singlish in television and radio advertising. According to
8052-433: The Singaporean population has dwindled, they continue to be used in election rallies as of the 2011 parliamentary election . For instance, both Low Thia Khiang and Chan Chun Sing were noted for their usage of different Chinese varieties during election rallies. There has been a continuous debate between the general Singaporean population and the Government with regard to the status of Singlish in local domains. While
8174-490: The Straits Times reported that from July 2010, foreigners working in service sectors would have to pass an English test before they can obtain their work permits. Language plays an important role in Singapore's politics. Even until today, it is important for politicians in Singapore to be able to speak fluent English along with their Mother Tongue (including different varieties of Chinese ) in order to reach out to
8296-542: The actual language spoken at home for many, Malay is often the language spoken at home in Singaporean Malay households. Due to this, and strong links between the language and cultural identity, the Singaporean Malay community has retained stronger usage of their mother tongue than others in the country. Nonetheless, there has been some shift towards English, with use of Malay as the primary language at home dropping from 92% to 83% between 2000 and 2010. This reflects
8418-401: The classroom as it was felt that they would be an "impediment to learning Chinese". Today, although Mandarin is widely spoken, proficiency in second languages has declined. In response to these falling standards, several revisions have been made to the education system. These include the introduction of the Mother Tongue "B" syllabus and the now-defunct EM3 stream, in both of which Mother Tongue
8540-607: The country are set by the Malay Language Council of Singapore. There are some differences between the official standard and colloquial usage. While the historical standard was the Johor-Riau dialect, a new standard known as sebutan baku (or bahasa melayu baku ) was adopted in 1956 by the Third Malay language and Literary Congress. This variation was chosen to create consistency between the written word and
8662-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
8784-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
8906-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
9028-607: The establishment of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) by the government in November 2009. The SCCL's stated purpose is to enhance the effectiveness of teaching Mandarin as a second language in a bilingual environment as well as to meet the learning needs of students from non-Mandarin speaking homes. Despite government efforts to promote Mandarin through the Speak Mandarin Campaign ,
9150-509: The families of the Austronesian , Dravidian , Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Constitution of Singapore states that the national language of Singapore is Malay . This plays a symbolic role, as Malays are constitutionally recognised as the indigenous peoples of Singapore, and it is the government's duty to protect their language and heritage. The three languages other than English were chosen to correspond with
9272-402: The first language acquired by the student but by their father's ethnicity. For example, a child born to a Tamil-speaking Indian father and Hokkien-speaking Chinese mother would automatically be assigned to take Tamil as the Mother Tongue language. Since 1 January 2011, Mother Tongue is defined solely by a person's official registered race. If a person is of more than one ethnicity and their race
9394-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
9516-440: The five main Chinese linguistic groups in Singapore are Hokkien (41.1%), Teochew (21.0%), Cantonese (15.4%), Hakka (7.9%) and Hainanese (6.7%), while Hokchew/Hokchia ( Fuzhou dialect ), Henghua ( Puxian Min ), and Shanghainese have smaller speaker bases. Other than Mandarin, the two most commonly spoken varieties of Chinese are Hokkien which is the dominant dialect and Cantonese , both of which are mainly spoken among
9638-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
9760-540: The government fears that the prevalence of Singlish would affect Singapore's overall image as a world class financial and business hub, most Singaporeans on the other hand have chosen to embrace Singlish as an identity marker and as a language of solidarity. In an attempt to eradicate the usage of Singlish, the government then began the Speak Good English Movement , encouraging people to use Standard Singaporean English in all contexts instead. Despite
9882-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
10004-470: The island, especially Singaporean Malays, Malay has now been displaced by English . English became the lingua franca due to British rule of Singapore , and was made the main language upon Singaporean independence . Thus, English is the medium of instruction in schools, and is also the main language used in formal settings such as in government departments and the courts. According to Singaporean President Halimah Yacob during her 2018 speech, "Through
10126-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
10248-410: The language of administration, law and business in Singapore. As government administration increased, infrastructure and commerce developed, and access to education further catalysed the spread of English among Singaporeans. When Singapore gained self-government in 1959 and independence in 1965, the local government decided to keep English as the main language to maximise economic benefits. Since English
10370-494: The late 1970s, the number of students registering for primarily English-medium schools leapt from 50% to 90% as more parents elected to send their children to English-medium schools. Attendance in Mandarin, Malay and Tamil-medium schools consequently dropped and schools began to close down. The Chinese-medium Nanyang University also made the switch to English as the medium of instruction despite meeting resistance, especially from
10492-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
10614-429: The limited and lower standards of local mother education system over the years in Singapore. Standard Mandarin , often simply known as Chinese, is the designated mother tongue or ' ethnic language ' of Chinese Singaporeans , at the expense of the other Chinese varieties. In 1979, the government heavily promoted Mandarin through its " Speak Mandarin " campaign. The Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew stated that Mandarin
10736-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
10858-571: The mother tongue of the Peranakans , which is still spoken today by approximately 10,000 Peranakans in Singapore. Other Austronesian languages , such as Javanese , Buginese , Minangkabau , Batak , Sundanese , Boyanese (which is a dialect of Madurese ) and Banjarese , are also spoken in Singapore, but their use has declined. Orang Seletar , the language of the Orang Seletar, the first people of Singapore and closely related to Malay
10980-634: The multilingual community in Singapore. This is evident in Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong 's annual National Day Rally speech, which is communicated through the use of English, Malay and Mandarin. Before the 1980s, it was common for politicians to broadcast their speech in Malay , English , Singaporean Hokkien , Singaporean Mandarin and other Chinese varieties. For instance, during the 1960s, Lee Kuan Yew learned and used Hokkien frequently in his political or rally speeches, as it
11102-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
11224-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
11346-533: The number of participating schools. More importantly, the programme was also well received by students. The teaching of Mother Tongue (especially Mandarin) in schools has encountered challenges due to more Singaporeans speaking and using English at home. The declining standards and command of Mandarin amongst younger generations of Chinese Singaporeans continue to be of concern to the older generations of Chinese Singaporeans, as they perceive it to be an erosion of Chinese culture and heritage. This concern has led to
11468-472: The older generation. Teochew is being replaced by Hokkien , while other Chinese varieties are increasingly less commonly heard nowadays. Traditional Chinese characters were used in Singapore until 1969, when the Ministry of Education promulgated the Table of Simplified Characters ( simplified Chinese : 简体字表 ; traditional Chinese : 簡體字表 ; pinyin : jiǎntǐzìbiǎo ), which while similar to
11590-525: The other Indian languages spoken by minorities in Singapore include Malayalam , Telugu , Punjabi , Bengali , Hindi , and Gujarati . Kristang is a creole spoken by Portuguese Eurasians in Singapore and Malaysia. It developed when Portuguese colonisers incorporated borrowings from Malay, Chinese, Indian and Arab languages. When the British took over Singapore, Kristang declined as the Portuguese Eurasians learned English instead. Today, it
11712-577: The other hand, the percentage of Indian Singaporeans speaking languages categorised under "others" have increased from 9.7% in 2005 to 13.8% in 2010. Meanwhile, the percentage of the total population speaking Tamil at home has remained steady, or has even slightly risen over the years, to just above 4%, due to immigration from India and Sri Lanka. There are a few reasons that contribute to Tamil's declining usage. Historically, Tamil immigrants came from different communities, such as Indian Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils which spoke very different dialects, dividing
11834-496: The other three official languages. For instance, most Chinese Singaporeans can speak English and Mandarin. Some, especially the older generations, can speak Malay and additional Chinese varieties such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese. Singapore has a bilingual education policy, where all students in government schools are taught English as their first language. Students in Primary and Secondary schools also learn
11956-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
12078-417: The population of non-English speaking foreigners in Singapore offers new challenges to the concept of language proficiency in the country. Foreigners in Singapore constitute 36% of the population and they dominate 50% of Singapore's service sectors. Thus, it is not uncommon to encounter service staff who are not fluent in English, especially those who do not use English regularly. In response to this situation,
12200-415: The population. The table below shows the change in distribution of Mandarin and other Chinese varieties, as well as English, as home languages of the resident Chinese population of Singapore over the decades. From 1990 to 2010, it can be observed that the percentage of the population which speaks English and Mandarin increased, while the percentage of those who speak other Chinese varieties has collapsed and
12322-515: The potential community of Tamil speakers. The housing policy of Singapore, with ethnic quotas that reflect national demographics, has prevented the formation of large Tamil communities. The Tamil taught in education is a deliberately pure form, that does not reflect and therefore does not reinforce Tamil as it is used in everyday life. Tamil is usually replaced by English, which is seen as providing children with greater opportunities in Singapore and abroad. The top-down Tamil language purism as dictated by
12444-410: The propagation of Mandarin and Chinese culture amongst Chinese Singaporeans continues to be a challenge because Mandarin faces stiff competition from the strong presence of English. However, this situation is not only limited to Mandarin, but also Malay and Tamil, where rising statistics show that English is progressively taking over as the home language of Singaporeans. With the influx of foreigners,
12566-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
12688-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
12810-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
12932-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
13054-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
13176-412: The spoken pronunciation. However, implementation was slow, with Malaysia only fully adopting it in the educational system in 1988, with Singapore introducing it at the primary school level in 1993. Despite expanding use in formal education, it has not replaced the Johor-Riau pronunciation for most speakers. The artificial creation of the accent means there are no truly native speakers, and the pronunciation
13298-421: The success of the campaign, most Singaporeans surveyed still preferred the use of Singlish to communicate with fellow Singaporeans, and they also believed that they had the ability to code switch between Singlish and Standard Singaporean English, depending on the requirements of the particular situation. Most recently, Singlish came into the limelight when Republic of Singapore Air Force pilots supposedly used
13420-568: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
13542-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
13664-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
13786-465: The use of traditional characters. Hence, traditional characters are still used in signs, advertisements and Chinese calligraphy, while books in both character sets are available in Singapore. Malay is the national language of Singapore and one of its official languages. It is written using a version of the Roman script known as Rumi . It is the home language of 13% of the Singaporean population. Malay
13908-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
14030-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
14152-399: The years, the use of Singlish has become more widespread, with a greater number of people adopting the language both out of a sense of identity and cultural importance. Some even view that it identifies them as uniquely Singaporean. According to the 2020 population census, Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese are the second most common languages spoken at home. They are used by 38.6% of
14274-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
14396-462: Was chosen to unify the Chinese community with a single language. With the rising prominence of Mandarin in Singapore at that time, politicians such as Lee theorised that it might overtake English, despite strong evidence to the contrary. From the 1990s, with the perceived increase in commerce and trade possibilities with Mainland China , the Singaporean government promoted Mandarin as a language with high economic advantage and value. Today, Mandarin
14518-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
14640-402: Was mostly written by hand. The transition to Rumi changed the Malay language due to the influence of English grammar. In 1972, Malaysia and Indonesia reached an agreement to standardise Rumi Malay spelling. Singaporean Malays still learn some Jawi as children alongside Rumi, and Jawi is considered an ethnic script for use on Singaporean Identity Cards. Prior to independence, Singapore was
14762-412: Was rising as the global language for commerce, technology and science, promotion of its use in Singapore would expedite Singapore's development and integration into the global economy. Furthermore, the switch to English as the only medium of instruction in schools aided in bridging the social distance between the various groups of ethnic language speakers in the country. Between the early 1960s to
14884-686: Was vital for him to secure votes in elections from the Hokkien-speaking community. Similarly, Lim Chin Siong , who was charismatic in the use of Hokkien , was able to secure opposition votes. Facing competition and difficulty in securing votes from the Chinese-educated, Lee Kuan Yew also had to learn Mandarin, in order to win the votes from the Mandarin-speaking community. Although the use of other Chinese varieties among
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