The Promote Mandarin Council is an organisation established in 1979 as part of then- PM

Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew (16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), born Harry Lee Kuan Yew, often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean lawyer and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990, and Secretary-General o ...

's programme to promote Mandarin as the preferred language amongst Chinese Singaporeans.

Background

In 1966 the

Singapore Government The Government of Singapore is defined by the Constitution of Singapore to mean the executive branch of the state, which is made up of the president and the Cabinet. Although the president acts in their personal discretion in the exercise ...

institutionalised a bilingual education policy, under which

Singaporean Singaporeans, or the Singaporean people, refers to citizens or people who identify with the sovereign island city-state of Singapore. Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual country. Singaporeans of Chinese, Malay, Ind ...

students were required to learn both

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

and their "designated mother-tongue". For ethnic- Chinese Singaporeans, the designated language was

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

, in line with the

national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...

policy pursued in both

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...

and Communist China. The ''Goh Report'', an evaluation of Singapore's education system by Dr. Goh Keng Swee, claimed that less than 40% of the student population managed to attain the minimum level of competency in two languages. The Government then alleged that learning of

amongst the Singapore Chinese was hindered by the home use of various

varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of ma ...

. These varieties included

Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...

, Teochew,

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

and

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

.Bokhorst-Heng, W.D. (1998). "Unpacking the Nation", in Allison D. et al (ed.), ''Text in Education and Society'', Singapore: Singapore University Press, pp. 202–204. . Since then, the

has pursued a hostile stance against these varieties, and has promoted the use of

as a universal mother-tongue amongst Singapore Chinese.

Establishment

In 1979, then- PM

decided to establish the Promote Mandarin Commission as an organisation focused entirely on the promotion of the

Mandarin language Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

, with the initial goal of eliminating all other Chinese varieties in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

within the next decade. In 1998, the Commission was officially renamed as the Promote Mandarin Council.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official site
Language policy in Singapore Chinese languages in Singapore Singapore government policies