Many of those curbs remain in place today, even though English is now cited as the most comfortable language for nearly half of Singaporeans.
Since the 1990s, the Speak Mandarin Campaign has shifted its focus to English-educated ethnic Chinese, and away from those who speak dialects.
“The campaign has achieved what it set out to do – it has established Mandarin as the common language among Chinese Singaporeans and dismantled the dialect landscape,” reads a letter by two filmmakers published last week in local newspaper the Straits Times. “Screening a dialect film is now no different from screening a French or Malay film.”
“What better way to confirm the success of the Speak Mandarin campaign than to relax this rule completely,” they asked, to “signal a maturity” in dealing with cultural diversity among Chinese Singaporeans?
This has echoed across social media and commentaries over the past week, drawing even politicians into the conversation. In a post on Facebook, opposition MP Dennis Tan hailed dialects as “the living, breathing repositories of our forefathers’ journeys, customs, and identity”.
The discussion looks set to continue, after two lawmakers said they had asked authorities about screening movies in their original dialect.
“Actually a lot of people can’t speak dialect [anymore],” Wu says. “I think it’s time they revisit this policy. If they want to retain some of our culture, then I think it’s important.”
It’s not just the dialects that are disappearing, but also the traditions that came with them.
One of the things Wu was touched to see in Dear You is a Teochew ritual that she herself followed. When she turned 15, a culturally significant age in the community, her parents gave her a gift to mark her coming-of-age, known in Teochew as “leaving the garden”.
When her niece turned 15 last year, Wu says there was no such celebration.
Still, young Singaporeans have shown growing interest in connecting with their heritage, from learning the dwindling dialects of their grandparents to taking lessons and organising trips to ancestral hometowns in China.
But Tan Ying Ying, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University who studies dialects, isn’t optimistic that this will reverse the trend.
“Young people who are learning them now … You can learn it like a foreign language and learn it for fun. But if no-one is speaking it, you’re not going to be able to retain it,” she says.
The uproar over Dear You, Tan says, is perhaps “like grieving a loss”.
