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People still speak their non-Mandarin mother tongues at home and in general. Local dialects are still used at the bank, at government service centers, etc. Thi

People still speak their non-Mandarin mother tongues at home and in general. Local dialects are still used at the bank, at government service centers, etc. This isn't what actually happens in practice though. In practice, children speak the language their school tells them to speak. And generation by generation less and less people speak the other language, and in smaller and smaller areas. I'm somewhat familiar with the situation in Taiwan. No one is actively suppressing Hokkien (or Taiwanese or whatever you want to call it) anymore, but the language of instruction is still Mandarin and so Hokkien is dying rapidly. Even in cases where both parents speak it, often their children can just understand it and don't speak it, and there's zero chance their children - grandchildren of hokkien speakers - will. Used to work with some Chinese Malaysians from Penang. All under 30, all spoke Mandarin to each other because the level of Hokkien knowledge ranged from "fluent" to "none at all".

k_sze 5y ago
I don't know what you're talking about. My family-in-law is from Mainland China. My wife's sisters are married to different provinces. My nephews and nieces all pick up their non-Mandarin mother tongues.
mango7283 5y ago
I mean for Malaysia, schoolchildren of Chinese descent already have to pick up at least 3 standard languages Mandarin <- standard malaysian mandarin English <- duh Malay <- the official language of Malaysia On top of that, you add on the dialect, now there are practical considerations 1) Penang <- dominant dialect hokkien, and a penang kid who isn't even hokkien is going to need to figure out which dialect to use, hokkien, his native dialect or mandarain or english 2) KL <- cantonese in general, BUT certain places have certain stronger dialects etc etc etc For practical reasons alone most people are going to focus on those top 3. I know some people who are reasonably fluent in no less than 5 languages but it's not that common and you will obviously see at least two or 3 are passable at best. These are going to happen even if the schools could somehow teach 4-5 dialects + standard mandarin +_ english + malay!
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Right, but that's what I don't understand. Why introduce mandarin into the mix at all? Malay: National Language English: International langauge Hokkien: Mother tongue Mandarin: ??? I genuinely don't understand why a brand new language that wasn't traditionally spoken into the area was introduced.
  - mango7283 5y ago
    For starters, hokkien is only a majority dialect in Penang... In KL its Cantonese or Hakka, for example. Much like (British) English, if there was going to be formal education in a Chinese dialect it was going to be Mandarin in line with what both the ROC and PRC did, since the whole point is to eventually enable everyone of Chinese ethnicity to communicate in a common tongue ( that isn't English...) And in those days of the early 20th century when the foundations of formal education were laid if one was an educated person it would have been either in Mandarin or English (that said HK Cantonese is/was a huge pop culture influence but I don't think it ever was in an pan-sino educationist sense)
    - LAC-Tech 5y ago
      since the whole point is to eventually enable everyone of Chinese ethnicity to communicate in a common tongue ( that isn't English...) Yeah, the strong desire to do that is something I don't understand. But thanks for getting to the crux of it - it's all about having a chinese exclusive lingua franca.
      - mango7283 5y ago
        This really isn't that hard to understand, much the same way English was adopted as a lingua franca, Malaysia's Chinese population is itself heterogeneous and so at the national level the lingua franca of the Chinese nation, mandarin, is adopted over that of the disparate dialects that only had local superiority at city level. A unified Chinese identity takes precedence over the local one, this is even more so when you are at the mercy of divide and conquer techniques. The only other alternative was Cantonese but then why would the Hokkien buy into that and vice versa? Educational resources are thin enough as it is.

k_sze 5y ago

I don't know what you're talking about. My family-in-law is from Mainland China. My wife's sisters are married to different provinces. My nephews and nieces all pick up their non-Mandarin mother tongues.

mango7283 5y ago

I mean for Malaysia, schoolchildren of Chinese descent already have to pick up at least 3 standard languages Mandarin <- standard malaysian mandarin English <- duh Malay <- the official language of Malaysia On top of that, you add on the dialect, now there are practical considerations 1) Penang <- dominant dialect hokkien, and a penang kid who isn't even hokkien is going to need to figure out which dialect to use, hokkien, his native dialect or mandarain or english 2) KL <- cantonese in general, BUT certain places have certain stronger dialects etc etc etc For practical reasons alone most people are going to focus on those top 3. I know some people who are reasonably fluent in no less than 5 languages but it's not that common and you will obviously see at least two or 3 are passable at best. These are going to happen even if the schools could somehow teach 4-5 dialects + standard mandarin +_ english + malay!

LAC-Tech 5y ago
Right, but that's what I don't understand. Why introduce mandarin into the mix at all? Malay: National Language English: International langauge Hokkien: Mother tongue Mandarin: ??? I genuinely don't understand why a brand new language that wasn't traditionally spoken into the area was introduced.
- mango7283 5y ago
  For starters, hokkien is only a majority dialect in Penang... In KL its Cantonese or Hakka, for example. Much like (British) English, if there was going to be formal education in a Chinese dialect it was going to be Mandarin in line with what both the ROC and PRC did, since the whole point is to eventually enable everyone of Chinese ethnicity to communicate in a common tongue ( that isn't English...) And in those days of the early 20th century when the foundations of formal education were laid if one was an educated person it would have been either in Mandarin or English (that said HK Cantonese is/was a huge pop culture influence but I don't think it ever was in an pan-sino educationist sense)
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    since the whole point is to eventually enable everyone of Chinese ethnicity to communicate in a common tongue ( that isn't English...) Yeah, the strong desire to do that is something I don't understand. But thanks for getting to the crux of it - it's all about having a chinese exclusive lingua franca.
    - mango7283 5y ago
      This really isn't that hard to understand, much the same way English was adopted as a lingua franca, Malaysia's Chinese population is itself heterogeneous and so at the national level the lingua franca of the Chinese nation, mandarin, is adopted over that of the disparate dialects that only had local superiority at city level. A unified Chinese identity takes precedence over the local one, this is even more so when you are at the mercy of divide and conquer techniques. The only other alternative was Cantonese but then why would the Hokkien buy into that and vice versa? Educational resources are thin enough as it is.