About Me

Who am I?

    I am 桂壱 (up to how you want to pronounce it XD), and I live in Singapore. I can barely speak Teochew and Hokkien despite hearing a good amount of it as a kid, and am on my "call of duty" to learn how to speak these languages well. 

    I set up this site to track my learning process, and also to share these insights with anyone who sees themselves in a similar position to myself. I really hope more young people can pick up these languages to keep them from dying out!

    I personally think this is a great platform to share information as a non-speaking heritage speaker, with most content written from this perspective being suitable for the many young Singaporeans in a similar situation.

    Since I speak Mandarin, I use it in comparing differences between dialects, and as an gateway into understanding them, flattening the learning curve. Most young Chinese Singaporeans should be able to understand a good amount of Mandarin, and can use this to their benefit in learning dialects. :D 

    Prepare youself for a long-winded, self-indulgent but possibly interesting story...

How did I get interested in Chinese Dialects?

    As a child, I was exposed to Singaporean Teochew on my father's side, and Singaporean Hokkien on my mother's side (although they are Teochew). With this, I recall instances of awkward conversations between myself and my maternal uncles that only spoke Hokkien. I was only able to converse to them in whatever limited Mandarin they knew, and I was always conscious of the fact that I could not speak Hokkien. Additionally, my late maternal grandmother also spoke Hokkien only.

    I had asked my mother on many instances to teach me Hokkien so I could understand and talk to them more normally, but she always rejected me with the typical retorts:

"Speak Hokkien for what? Want to become Ah Beng ah? You learn your Mandarin first then talk lah!"

    Because of this, I never really got to know how to speak Hokkien. 

    In retrospect, I realised that I had never actually talked directly to my late grandmother, or rather, I just could not talk to her. I never got to ask her about her life, or how her day was, or even what she ate that day. I knew nothing about her culture, her life, and most sadly, her person. All I can remember was the gentle, innocent smile that constantly marked her countenance. Dramatic, right?

    The story on my paternal side is not as drama. After all, all of my relatives on that side can speak Mandarin, and thus Teochew was never really needed for me to communicate. But, I could still feel a difference between me speaking Mandarin, and my father speaking Teochew to my paternal grandma (heck, I even call her 奶奶). I always had to ask him what they were talking about. Despite almost no exposure to the culture, I somehow knew from young that I was "Teochew", whatever it was...

    Any will of mine to pick dialects up was essentially beat to a pulp, and they became something akin to some sort of background noise, at best, to me.

    In secondary school I took the Malay Special Programme and learnt Malay as a third language. I loved it, and I think that it sparked my passion for languages in general (I even learnt the Jawi script for fun lol). I had also started looking into Japanese, taking an interest in Chinese characters. It was only then, when I heard Teochew and Hokkien, that the "background noise" started to turn into a puzzle. 

    I started hearing Malay words like "suka", "baru", "kacau", and Japanese words like "shinbun 新聞", "sekai 世界", and "kantan 簡単" in Hokkien and Teochew. It was like solving a 10000-piece puzzle with 5 or 6 individual pieces, none on the corners or edges. I was left rather stupefied at what I had stumbled upon. Surely these dialects were not as shallow as I had percieved them to be...

    It was only through Chinese characters where I made my "breakthrough". I remember stumbling across an article by LearnDialect.sg stating that the character for "to run" in Teochew and Hokkien, "zao", was written as 走.

    走? Doesn't this mean "to walk" in Mandarin? Mandarin "zou" vs Teochew "zao", wait... they sound familar... was it just a coincidence? Suddenly, I remembered the Japanese word for "to run", 走る... No way 走 meant the same thing in Japanese and Teochew, but not in Mandarin! This cannot be an isolated case! I was determined to rationalise my "findings". 

    Surely enough, I found other examples. 目 in Teochew and Japanese means "eyes", whereas it is 眼睛 in Mandarin. 卵 in Teochew and Japanese means "egg", whereas it is 蛋 in Mandarin. 兄 in Teochew and Japanese means "elder brother", whereas it is 哥哥 in Mandarin. It was like the planets and stars alligned perfectly that day. I had learnt that Teochew, Hokkien, and other dialects, similar to Japanese, had preserved ancient/literary Chinese vocabulary and pronouncations abandoned in Mandarin. I was mindblown. 

    Additionally, I had also learnt about the heavy impact that Malay had on Chinese dialects, and vice versa. I discovered countless words in Malay with origins in Chinese dialects, like "mi", noodles, from Hokkien/Teochew 面/麵, "kuih", cake, from Hokkien/Teochew 粿, and "tanglung", lantern, from Cantonese 灯笼/燈籠. I was charmed to see how Chinese dialects and Malay culture were so historically intertwined, and realised that the dialects we speak in Singapore are stand testament to this unique shared history.

    As a student who had faithfully completed around 10+ years of Singaporean Mandarin education, I was led to believe that my mother tongue was Mandarin, with Hokkien and Teochew being... mere "dialects". With my findings, I was convinced that it definitely was not as simple as that.

    I realised that actually Mandarin is not my "mother tongue", but rather my (very lousy) first language along with English. Instead, Teochew (or maybe even Hokkien too) was my heritage language (not dialect!) that deserved the title "mother tongue". It is spoken by my father as a first language, and was spoken by my ancestors generations before him and me. 

    I did not really know how to feel about this revelation. I felt somewhat indignant, but mostly confused. Why did my parents not teach me Teochew and Hokkien? Why did the government brainwash us that Mandarin was our mother tongue? What am I? Chinese or Teochew? Can I ever be Teochew? Typical adolescence...

    I knew that I had to learn Teochew and Hokkien, to make up for the language I felt was "stolen" from me. I wanted to understand what it truly meant to be part of this culture, as a Singaporean. 

Why did I start this site?

    Okay, learning dialects, where to start?

    Parents? There was always a certain level of animosity or awkwardness between me and my parents when it came to talking about dialects. Honestly, I have no idea why. It is probably because I am already used to speaking to them in English and Mandarin, and that they find dialects to be usless, antiquated, and a language used only for older folks. Not to mention the their strong hostility to it when I was younger. Very awkward vibes from them.

    Grandparents? Well, three out of four of my grandparents have passed away at the time of writing, leaving me with my paternal grandmother only. Unfortunately, I do not see her very often as she does not live with me. Furthermore, she already speaks Mandarin to me, making it somewhat hard to have myself exposed to dialects on a consistent basis.

    Damn it. What the hell can I do? I consulted Google. Textbooks, maybe? There were not too many public resources available, and most were in my view, incomprehensive for a total beginner like myself. To add on to that, resources on dialects in Singapore were few and far between. Maybe I was being too fussy, but I wanted to learn dialects as they were spoken by my parents. I just felt it was more "authentic". Imagine the looks I would get if I spoke Taiwanese Hokkien to my uncles...

    You then have the Huay Kuans and NGOs running lessons. Problem? They charged fees. Money. I had none. Essentially, I was in a pretty crappy environment to learn dialects in Singapore. As a total newbie, I could at best only count on some TV shows, complicated grammar guides and friends online for help. At worst, I was on my own. I had no idea how grammar, characters and anything worked. It was looking bleak. I was going to just give up.

    I thought about other kids like myself. So many other kids like myself cannot speak dialects, with some not even knowing what dialect group they belonged to. What if they suddenly wanted to learn them? I was sure they would face similar issues that I had. However, I did not want everyone to just give up. There must be some way to make information more accessible right? It is not too late yet, work can still be done! 

    Thus, this project was born. 

    Inspired by other sites like LearnDialect.sg, Learn Teochew, Writing in Hokkien, and Singapore Dialects, I was determined to make an impact, and to work with them to do something about the state of dialects in Singapore. A revival, perhaps, to a Singapore where various languages existed among each other, where people can take pride in their language and culture. I have to thank them for providing me with the inspiration and drive to even dare to start this project way out of my comfort zone.

    More information on the project can be found under About the Site. 

    I really, really hope this project does not fold, and can live up to its goals to help future generations of Singaporeans keep their unique heritage, culture, and language alive. 

~桂壱 🤨