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Promote Mandarin Council
The Promote Mandarin Council is an organisation established in 1979 as part of then- PM Lee Kuan Yew's programme to promote Mandarin as the preferred language amongst Chinese Singaporeans. Background In 1966 the Singapore Government institutionalised a bilingual education policy, under which Singaporean students were required to learn both English and their "designated mother-tongue". For ethnic-Chinese Singaporeans, the designated language was Mandarin, in line with the national language policy pursued in both Nationalist 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 Mandarin amongst the Singapore Chinese was hindered by the home use of various varieties of Chinese. These varieties included Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka.Bokhorst-Heng, W.D. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Minister Of Singapore
The prime minister of Singapore is the head of government of the Republic of Singapore. The president appoints the prime minister, a Member of Parliament (MP) who in their opinion, is most likely to command the confidence of the majority of MPs. The incumbent prime minister is Lee Hsien Loong, who took office on 12 August 2004. As Singapore is modelled after the Westminster system, the prime minister only governs with the confidence of the majority in Parliament; as such, the prime minister typically sits as a Member of Parliament (MP) and leads the largest party or a coalition of parties. In practice, the prime minister is the leader of the political party with the majority number of elected MPs. History The office of Prime Minister succeeded the office of Chief Minister in 1959 after Singapore had attained self-governance from the United Kingdom, as the State of Singapore, with Lee Kuan Yew being sworn in as the first prime minister on 5 June 1959. The title of prime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Competence
In linguistics, linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice. In approaches to linguistics which adopt this distinction, competence would normally be considered responsible for the fact that "I like ice cream" is a possible sentence of English, the particular proposition that it denotes, and the particular sequence of phones that it consists of. Performance, on the other hand, would be responsible for the real-time processing required to produce or comprehend it, for the particular role it plays in a discourse, and for the particular sound wave one might produce while uttering it. The distinction is widely adopted in formal linguistics, where competence and performance are typically studied independently. However, it is not used in other approaches including functional linguistics and cog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Policy In Singapore
In Singapore, language planning is associated with government planning. In this top-down approach, the government influences the acquisition of languages and their respective functions within the speech community through the education system.Kaplan B., Robert, and Richard B. Baldauf Jr. ''Language Planning from Practice to Theory.'' Clevedon: Multilingual Matters ltd., 1997 Language planning aims to facilitate effective communication within the speech community, which can result in a language shift or language assimilation.Cobarrubias, Juan. "Ethical Issues in Status Planning." ''Progress in Language Planning: International Perspectives''. Eds. Juan Cobarrubias and Joshua Fishman. New York: Mouton Publishers, 1983 The goals of language planning are very much dependent on the political and social forces present in Singapore during two distinct periods: Colonisation by the British and the Post-Independence period after 1965. Background Singapore is a linguistically and ethnical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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, bordering the Strait of Malacca to the west, the Singapore Strait to the south, the South China Sea to the east, and the Straits of Johor to the north. The country's territory is composed of one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet; the combined area of these has increased by 25% since the country's independence as a result of extensive land reclamation projects. It has the third highest population density in the world. With a multicultural population and recognising the need to respect cultural identities of the major ethnic groups within the nation, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. English is the lingua franca and numerous public services are available only ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandarin Chinese
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 China. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese (). Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Mandarin is by far the largest of the seven or ten Chinese dialect groups; it is spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hakka Chinese
Hakka (, , ) forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people throughout Southern China and Taiwan and throughout the diaspora areas of East Asia, Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world. Due to its primary usage in scattered isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous Variety (linguistics), varieties or dialects, spoken in different provinces, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi and Guizhou, as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Hakka is not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible with Yue Chinese, Yue, Wu Chinese, Wu, Southern Min, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintelligible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan Chinese, Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties even being partiall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 area in Southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese dialect group, which has over 80 million native speakers. While the term ''Cantonese'' specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but largely mutually unintelligible languages and dialects such as Taishanese. Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of Southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas communities. In mainland China, it is the ''lingua franca'' of the province of Guangdong (being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as Gua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teochew Dialect
Teochew or Chaozhou (, , , Teochew endonym: , Shantou dialect: ) is a dialect of Chaoshan Min, a Southern Min language, that is spoken by the Teochew people in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong and by their diaspora around the world. It is sometimes referred to as ''Chiuchow'', its Cantonese rendering, due to the English romanisation by colonial officials and explorers. It is closely related to some dialects of Hokkien, as it shares some cognates and phonology with Hokkien. The two are mutually unintelligible, but it is possible to understand some words. Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern varieties of Chinese. As such, Teochew is described as one of the most conservative Chinese languages. Languages in contact Mandarin In China, Teochew children are introduced to Standard Chinese as early as in kindergarten; however, the Teochew language remains the primary medium of instruction. In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 in Taiwan, and it is also widely spoken within the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia; and by other overseas Chinese beyond Asia and all over the world. The Hokkien 'dialects' are not all mutually intelligible, but they are held together by ethnolinguistic identity. Taiwanese Hokkien is, however, mutually intelligible with the 2 to 3 million speakers in Xiamen and Singapore. In Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the '' lingua franca'' amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and some parts of Indochina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goh Keng Swee
Goh Keng Swee (; 6 October 1918 – 14 May 2010), born Robert Goh Keng Swee, was a Singaporean politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore between 1973 and 1985. Goh is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of Singapore.. He was also one of the founders of the People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed the country continuously since independence. Goh was a prominent member of the country's first generation of political leaders after Singapore became independent in 1965. He served as Minister for Finance between 1959 and 1965, and again between 1967 and 1970, Minister for Interior and Defence between 1965 and 1967, Minister for Defence between 1970 and 1979 and Minister for Education between 1979 and 1985. As Minister for Interior and Defence, Goh's main objective was to strengthen the country's military and domestic security capabilities after the British had withdrawn its troops from the former British Crown colony, which made the newly-ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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