The Rise and Fall of Hokkien in Singapore

Abstract

Hokkien, once the lingua franca of Chinese of Singapore, is still considered part of the linguistic repertoire of this city state. This chapter outlines its dominance in the pre-independence era and its swift decline after the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979. As a first language spoken by the largest population in the 1960s (over one fifth of all Singaporeans), Hokkien has suffered double language drain since the middle of the 20th century, when the home language started to shift to English and Mandarin. The case of Hokkien in Singapore shows that a language with a large number of speakers can still be subject to endangerment under a hostile language policy. Taking a direct participant approach, the investigator searched for the legacy of Hokkien in modern-day Singapore. Based on this first-hand information plus demographic data from other sources, language shift among Hokkien Singaporeans is analyzed using the Youngest Child Model.