\n<\/p>\n
It seems that every time a film uses a Chinese \u201cdialect\u201d, it creates a buzz disproportionate to the occasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two years ago, How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, a Thai film with only a handful of lines in Teochew, touched a raw nerve across Singapore, mine included. Over two decades ago, Jack Neo’s Money No Enough, with its generous portions of Hokkien, was a home run at the local box office. Other films have drawn similar, if quieter, public fascination.<\/p>\n
What is it about films with \u201cdialect\u201d in them?<\/p>\n
Everyone has been quick to point to the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Launched in 1979, it aimed to make Mandarin the unifying language for Singaporean Chinese, sacrificing in the process Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and other non-Mandarin Chinese languages. (They are not actually \u201cdialects\u201d, which are variants of a single language.)<\/p>\n
In fact, the campaign was so successful that these languages no longer threaten Mandarin. It is English that does. The conditions that justified restricting \u201cdialect\u201d media in 1979 do not describe Singapore in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The policies speak of the ghost of a past anxiety. But the ghosts alone cannot explain how passionate the response has been.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
BUZZ OVER FILMS WITH DIALECT It seems that every time a film uses a Chinese \u201cdialect\u201d, it creates a buzz disproportionate to the occasion.\u00a0 Two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--5I0N5uws--\/c_crop,h_897,w_1595,x_3,y_73\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/17\/dear_you_singapore.jpg?itok=Z3Lcf3do","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1126,2653,15900,2130,2201,467],"class_list":["post-63548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-commentary","tag-dear","tag-dialects","tag-feelings","tag-hard","tag-hit","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}