Speak Mandarin Campaign

[5][6] According to the government, for the bilingual policy to be effective, Mandarin should be spoken at home and should serve as the lingua franca among Chinese Singaporeans.

To meet the demands of globalisation and other economic challenges as a young nation, the government began to place greater emphasis on English.

[10] Those Singaporeans clung onto their dialect as part of an identity, refusing to register their children in schools with Mandarin names.

As a result, the PAP government switched its focus away from dialects, towards encouraging English-speaking and educated Chinese to speak more Mandarin.

It promoted the use of Mandarin, to keep their "links" to cultural roots, so as to better appreciate the "heritage and value" and, most importantly, complement the economical aspects as China began to rise in the business sector.

[14] The official speech during the launch of the Speak Mandarin Campaign 2000 was given by Mr. Mah Bow Tan, Minister for National Development.

Having a good command of Mandarin exposes people to culture and heritage, as well as facilitating dealings with Asia's potential economy powerhouse, China.

The Campaign uses a lifestyle-oriented approach, revolving around movies, music and metaphors, extending the theme of "华语 COOL".

Some examples of resources of the movies, music and metaphors include:[15] The theme song for the campaign for that year is 我想听你说 (wǒ xiǎng tīng nǐ shuō) by Singaporean singer, Joi Chua.

Some of the other partners include ComfortDelGro, Lianhe Zaobao, Mediacorp TV, STOMP, Tong Shui Café and the SAF Music & Drama Company.

For a period of 12 months, starting from 5 November 2007, the campaign featured a series of fun and engaging programmes and activities by its partners.

[18] Going for a fresher look, the SMC's promotional materials, from outdoor advertisements to posters and collateral, are designed with an edgy, vibrant and contemporary feel.

The campaign's theme song "挑战 (Challenge)" was created by two of the most sought-after talents in Asia's Mandarin Pop scene – Eric Ng (composer) and Xiaohan (lyrics).

Partners such as Night and Day – Bar+Gallery+Friends and 77th Street came together for the first time with some of Singapore's 'edgy' designers, to create an exciting initiative to promote SMC 07/08.

Instead, it reminded parents to create a learning environment for their children, to get to know Chinese via culture and knowledge, instead of seeing it as a tool to venture into the China market.

[21] In the following year, the SMC started a series of promotions on "The Chinese Challenge",[11] where it moved to a wider audience and became more general.

New initiatives, such as the Theme Song Contest and Short Video Clip Competition, were introduced and targeted at youths and students.

iHuayu offers 50,000 bilingual business and Singapore-related terms frequently used in the media, accompanied with sample sentences and scenarios.

Shuo is composed, arranged and produced by Iskandar Ismail and performed by Singaporean artiste, Tay Kewei.

Initially in 1979, where the campaign first started, use of Mandarin was promoted from all public domains; in the early years, there was some selective dialect suppression as well.

[28] However, these were hindered by the aggressive expansion of Hong Kong's Cantopop industry into Singapore, although state-owned television tried to simultaneously promote Mandarin by requiring subtitles in the standard language on dialect programming.

[10] The government proved more successful in limiting access TV3 from Malaysia, which carried Cantonese programming, by preventing people in government-built housing blocks from installing the special antennas required to receive the channel.

Therefore, he launched a television program, 华语!, in January 2005, in an attempt to attract young viewers to learn Mandarin.Following this, in June 2005, Lee published a book, Keeping My Mandarin Alive, documenting his decades of effort to master Mandarin—a language which he had to re-learn due to disuse: "...because I don't use it so much, therefore it gets disused and there's language loss.

In March 2009, when The Straits Times ran an article by Dr. Ng Bee Chin, who was quoted as saying that "40 years ago, we were even more multilingual.... All it takes is one generation for a language to die.

"[41] The article soon caught the attention of Mr Chee Hong Tat, the Principal Private Secretary of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

In the Singaporean and Malaysian version of Hokkien, one cannot deny the plethora of Malay loan words, and vice versa.

The move by the Ministry of Education to standardise Hanyu Pinyin names for schoolchildren also received widespread backlash among polarised parents.