The Promote Mandarin Council () is a

Singaporean Singaporeans are the citizens and nationals of the sovereign island city-state of Singapore. Singapore is home to a people of a variety of ethno-racial-religious origins, with the city-state itself being a multi-racial, multi-cultural, m ...

organisation established in 1979 as part of then- PM

Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew (born Harry Lee Kuan Yew; 16 September 1923 – 23 March 2015), often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean politician who ruled as the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. He is widely recognised ...

's programme to promote Mandarin as the preferred language amongst

Chinese Singaporeans Chinese Singaporeans, Singaporean Chinese or Sino-Singaporeans () are Singaporeans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Singaporeans constitute 75.9% of the Singaporean resident population according to the official census, making them the large ...

Background

In 1966 the

Singapore Government The government of Singapore is defined by the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore to consist of the President and the Executive. Executive authority of Singapore is vested in the President but exercised on the advice of the Cabinet le ...

institutionalised a bilingual education policy, under which

students were required to learn both

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and their "designated mother-tongue". For ethnic-

, 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. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languag ...

policy pursued in both

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...

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 There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...

. These varieties included

Hokkien Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...

, Teochew,

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

and

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...

.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 ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l= officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the ...

, with the initial goal of eliminating all other

Chinese varieties There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China ...

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

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