\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMany see dialects as a cultural heritage worth preserving. I agree,\u201d Mr Wong said in his speech. But Singapore must protect the \u201chard-won gains\u201d of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, he added.<\/p>\n
The campaign was launched in 1979 by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to encourage Chinese Singaporeans to speak standard Mandarin, at a time when dialects were still widely spoken at home.<\/p>\n
Decades ago, Chinese Singaporeans spoke many dialects, with different accents even within the same dialect group, Mr Wong said.<\/p>\n
Mandarin has since become their common language, laying the foundation for Singapore’s bilingual policy and connecting the country to Chinese communities worldwide. This is why the government’s push to promote Mandarin must continue, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, the Speak Mandarin Campaign urged Chinese Singaporeans to \u2018Speak more Mandarin and less dialects.\u2019 The situation today is very different,\u201d said Mr Wong.<\/p>\n
\u201cFew families speak dialect at home. Most Chinese Singaporeans know Mandarin but use English more often. The challenge now is to encourage those comfortable in English to speak more Mandarin. The more we use Mandarin, the better we will get at it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
PROTECTING GAINS FROM MANDARIN CAMPAIGN \u201cMany see dialects as a cultural heritage worth preserving. I agree,\u201d Mr Wong said in his speech. But Singapore must…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--rRQXWxHl--\/c_crop,h_900,w_1600,x_0,y_0\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/06\/30\/dear_you_teochew_screenings.jpg?itok=he7LONxm","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15900,14298,28779,21489,1096,22,1209],"class_list":["post-78897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-dialects","tag-mandarin","tag-ndr","tag-promoting","tag-room","tag-singapore","tag-wong","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78897","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=78897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/78898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}