Singaporean Mandarin - Overview

Overview

Singaporean Mandarin had preserved the vocabulary and certain features of the Classical Chinese and early Vernacular Chinese (baihua) of early 20th century. Because Singapore's Chinese schools adopted Chinese teaching materials from Republic of China in the early 20th century, Singapore's early Mandarin pronunciations was based on the Zhuyin in the Dictionary of National Pronunciation (國音字典) and Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use (國音常用字彙). As such, it had preserved the older forms of pronunciations. In addition, during its initial development, Singaporean Mandarin was also influenced by Chinese dialects of Singapore such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese etc.

From 1949 to 1979, due to lack of contact between Singapore and People's Republic of China, Putonghua did not exert any form of influence on Singaporean Mandarin. On the contrary, the majority of Mandarin Chinese entertainment media, Chinese literature, books and reading materials in Singapore came mainly from Taiwan. Consequently, Singaporean Mandarin has been influenced by Taiwanese Mandarin to a certain degree. After the 1980s, along with China's Open Door Policy, there was increasing contact between Singapore and China, thus increasing Putonghua's gradual influence on Singaporean Mandarin. These influences included the adoption of pinyin and the shift from usage of Traditional Chinese characters to Simplified Chinese characters.

Today, Singaporean Mandarin continues to develop under its own local environment. Major influences continue to come from Putonghua, Taiwanese Mandarin and English.