27 Facts About Singaporean Mandarin

Singaporean Mandarin is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken natively in Singapore.

The standard is the register of Singaporean Mandarin used in more formal occasions in Singapore and can be heard on television and radio.

Singaporean Mandarin has many unique loanwords from other Chinese dialects as well as Singapore's other official languages of English, Malay and Tamil.

Singaporean Mandarin became widely spoken by the Chinese community in Singapore after the Speak Mandarin Campaign by the government in 1979.

Currently, Singaporean Mandarin continues to develop itself with major influences coming from Standard Chinese, Taiwanese Mandarin and English.

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Since the 2010s, the percentage of Singaporean Chinese speaking Mandarin at home has begun to decrease recently, in favour of Singaporean English.

In terms of colloquial spoken Mandarin, Singaporean Mandarin is subjected to influence from the local historical, cultural and social influences of Singapore.

Singaporean Mandarin has preserved the vocabulary and certain other features from Classical Chinese and early Vernacular Chinese, dating back from the early 20th century.

Since Singapore's Chinese medium schools adopted Chinese teaching materials from Republic of China in the early 20th century, Singapore's early Singaporean Mandarin pronunciations was based on the Zhuyin in the Dictionary of National Pronunciation and Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use.

Consequently, Singaporean Mandarin has been influenced by Taiwanese Mandarin to a certain degree.

Use of Singaporean Mandarin to serve as a lingua franca amongst the Chinese only began with the founding of Republic of China, which established Singaporean Mandarin as the official tongue.

Today's Singaporean Mandarin continues to be influenced from Putonghua, as well as Taiwanese Mandarin and Hong Kong's Cantonese.

Dictionary of Contemporary Singaporean Mandarin Vocabulary edited by Wang Huidi listed 1,560 uniquely local Singaporean Mandarin words, which are not used in Mainland China or Taiwan.

Some local Singaporean Mandarin writings do exhibit certain local Singaporean features.

When speaking of minutes, colloquial Singaporean Mandarin typically uses the word ?, which represents a unit of 5 minutes.

In colloquial Singaporean Mandarin, ?, referring to a "ten thousand" is often used, but ??, referring to "ten thousands" is occasionally used too.

In Singaporean Mandarin, there is a greater tendency to use the word cai "?" in lieu of Standard Mandarin zai "?", which indicates a future action after the completion of a prior action.

Phonology and tones of Singaporean Mandarin are generally similar to that of Standard Mandarin.

Just like any languages in Singapore, Singaporean Mandarin is subjected to influences from other languages spoken in Singapore.

The natural tendency of Hokkien-speakers to use the Hokkien way to speak Singaporean Mandarin has influenced to a large degree the colloquial Singaporean Mandarin spoken in Singapore.

The colloquial Hokkien-style Singaporean Mandarin is commonly heard in Singapore, and can differ from Putonghua in terms of vocabulary, phonology and grammar.

Locally-born and locally bred Singaporean Mandarin writers became the new writers in the stage of Singaporean Mandarin Chinese literature.

Some Chinese elites in Singapore had criticized that the Mandarin standard of Chinese Singaporean has dropped greatly due to the closure or subsequent conversion of Chinese-medium schools to English-medium schools in the 1980s.

The first language of Singapore was English, while Mandarin was chosen as the "mother tongue" of Chinese Singaporean.

Generally, most Chinese Singaporean can speak Mandarin fluently, but are usually weaker in writing Chinese.

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In recent years, with the subsequent economic rise of mainland China and a transition from a world factory to a world market, Singaporean Mandarin has become the 2nd most influential language after English.

Besides transmitting Chinese culture values, many people began to realize the economic values of Singaporean Mandarin, which has raised the interests of local and working professionals in learning Singaporean Mandarin.