SINGAPORE — The Tok and Teo families are a model of traditional harmony, with three generations gathered under one roof, enjoying each other’s company over slices of fruit and cups of tea on a Saturday afternoon in Singapore.
There is only one problem: The youngest and oldest generations can barely communicate with each other.
Lavell, 7, speaks fluent English and a smattering of Mandarin Chinese, while her grandmother, Law Ngoh Kiaw, prefers the Hokkien dialect of her ancestors’ home in southeastern China. That leaves grandmother and granddaughter looking together at a doll house on the floor, unable to exchange more than a few words.
7岁的拉韦尔(Lavell)说流利的英语和一点中文普通话，她的祖母、祖籍为中国东南部地区的刘娥娇(Law Ngoh Kiaw)，则喜欢说那里的福建方言。因此，这祖孙俩一起看着地板上的娃娃屋时，除了只言片语，几乎无法交谈。
“She can’t speak our Hokkien,” Mrs. Law said with a sigh, “and doesn’t really want to speak Mandarin, either.”
This struggle to communicate within families is one of the painful effects of the Singapore government’s large-scale, decades-long effort at linguistic engineering.
Starting with a series of measures in the late 1970s, the leaders of this city-state effectively banned Chinese dialects, the mother tongues of about three-quarters of its citizens, in favor of Mandarin, China’s official language.
A few years later, even Mandarin usage was cut back in favor of the global language of commerce, English.
“Singapore used to be like a linguistic tropical rain forest — overgrown, and a bit chaotic but very vibrant and thriving,” said Tan Dan Feng, a language historian in Singapore. “Now, after decades of pruning and cutting, it’s a garden focused on cash crops: learn English or Mandarin to get ahead and the rest is useless, so we cut it down.”
“新加坡以前就像一片语言的热带雨林——杂草丛生，有点混乱，但非常有活力，欣欣向荣，”新加坡的语言历史学者陈丹枫(Tan Dan Feng)说。“现今，经过几十年的修剪和扬弃，它成了一个以经济作物为重心的园子：为了力争上游而学习英语或普通话，其余的都没用，因此我们就将其舍弃。”
This linguistic repression, and the consequences for multigenerational families, has led to a widespread sense of resentment — and now a softening in the government’s policy.
For the first time since the late 1970s, a television series was recently broadcast in Hokkien, which in the 1970s was the first language of about 40 percent of Singaporeans. Many young people are also beginning to study dialects on their own, hoping to reconnect with their past, or their grandparents.
The government’s easing of restrictions amid public discontent makes Singapore something of case study for how people around the world are reacting against the rising cultural homogeneity that comes with globalization.
“I began to realize that Hokkien was my real mother tongue and Mandarin was my stepmother tongue,” said Lee Xuan Jin, 18, who started a Facebook page dedicated to preserving Hokkien. “And I wanted to get to know my real mother.”
“我开始意识到闽南语是我真正的母语，而普通话是我的后妈语言，”现年18岁、建了一个致力于保护闽南语的Facebook页面的李轩金（Lee Xuan Jin，音）说。“而我想要了解自己真正的母亲。”
For Singapore’s first generation of leaders, those sorts of ideas sounded like sentimentalism.
At the time of the founding of the Republic of Singapore in 1965, it was led by a charismatic and authoritarian prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who was a self-taught linguist. A product of the English-speaking elite who rarely spoke Chinese dialects, including Mandarin, Mr. Lee held the popular idea, discredited by linguists, that language was a zero-sum game: speaking more of one meant less mastery of another.
新加坡共和国于1965年成立时的领导者，是颇具感召力的威权人物李光耀(Lee Kuan Yew)总理，他通过自学掌握了数种语言。李光耀出身于平日说英语、甚少说中文方言乃至普通话的精英阶层，秉持一种受到语言学家否定的流行观点：语言是零和游戏，更多地使用一种语言，就无法那么精通另一种语言。
In short, he considered dialects a waste of the brain’s finite storage capacity when it should be filled with, above all else, English.
“He felt that since he couldn’t do it, the rest couldn’t do it,” said Prof. Lee Cher Leng, a language historian in the China studies department at the National University of Singapore, referring to Mr. Lee’s inability to fluently speak multiple languages. “He felt it would be too confusing for kids to learn the dialects.”
“他觉得既然他做不到，其他人就也做不到，”新加坡国立大学(National University of Singapore)中文系的语言历史学者李子玲(Lee Cher Leng)教授，谈及李光耀无法流利地说多种语言的情况时表示。“他觉得小孩子不宜学方言，因为那会让他们十分困惑。”
As the government considered which of Singapore’s many languages to focus on, Mandarin Chinese and English were the logical choices. China, although more than a thousand miles away, was the ancestral homeland of most Singaporeans and was embarking on economic reforms that captivated Mr. Lee. English, the language of Singapore’s elite since the British established a trading port here in 1819, was the dominant global language of culture and commerce.
But neither language had much to do with the people who lived in Singapore when the government launched its policy in the 1970s.
Then, as now, roughly 7 percent of Singaporeans came from southern India and most spoke Tamil. Another 15 percent spoke Malay. The ethnic Chinese, who then as now make up 75 percent of the population, had immigrated over the centuries from several mostly southern Chinese provinces, especially Fujian (where Hokkien is spoken) and Guangdong (home to Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka). Only 2 percent spoke Mandarin.
Although called “dialects” by the government, some of these Chinese tongues are at least as different as the various Romance languages. The government’s policy was something like ordering Spaniards, French and Italians to abandon the languages they grew up with in favor of Portuguese.
The policy was rolled out in waves. In 1979, the government launched a “Speak Mandarin” campaign. In some schools, pupils who spoke dialects were fined and made to write out hundreds of times, “I will not speak dialects.” The population was bombarded with messages that dialect speakers had no future.
By 1981, television and radio were banned from broadcasting almost all dialect shows, including popular music. That left many people cut off from society.
“老年人突然无法听懂广播里的任何东西，有一种失落感，”著有《成长在李光耀时代》(Growing Up in the Era of Lee Kuan Yew)的李慧敏详细讲述那几十年间的往事时表示。该书是她最著名的作品。
Then, in 1987, to foster unity across Singapore’s three major ethnic groups, Chinese, Indian and Malay, English became the main method of instruction in all schools. Today, almost all instruction is in English except for a class in the student’s native tongue: Tamil and Malay for ethnic Indians and Malays, and Mandarin for ethnic Chinese.
The dominance of English was captured in a recent government survey that showed English is the most widely spoken language at home, followed by Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Only 12 percent of Singaporeans speak a Chinese dialect at home, according to the survey, compared with an estimated 50 percent a generation ago.
“Sometimes people say the Singaporeans aren’t too expressive,” said Kuo Jian Hong, the artistic director of The Theater Practice, an influential theater founded by her father, the pioneering playwright and arts activist Kuo Pao Kun. “I feel this is partly because so many of us lost our mother tongue.”
But as Singapore has prospered, many are searching for their cultural roots, a trend that has picked up since the passing of former Prime Minister Lee in 2015. Some are trying to protect historical monuments, others challenging official versions of history, or passionately defending “Singlish,” a local patois of English, Chinese dialects and Malay.
For some, it means committing to learn their ancestral language.
One recent Friday evening, about 20 people sat in a small classroom learning phrases like “reunion meal,” “praying for blessings” and “dragon dance.” Three students were doctors specializing in geriatric care who wanted to understand older patients. Others were simply curious.
“I think it’s to understand our roots,” said Ivan Cheung, 34, who works in Singapore’s oil refining industry. “To know our roots you have to know dialect.”
The head of the community center, Perng Peck Seng, said that it, too, had seen the effects of the government policy. When he joined in the 1980s, all meetings were held in Hokkien and Mandarin. Now they are held in English and Mandarin because too few people, even in his organization, speak Hokkien fluently enough to conduct meetings.
福建会馆负责人方百成(Perng Peck Seng)说，这个会馆也见证了政府政策的影响。他在1980年代加入之际，所有会议使用的语言都是闽南语和普通话。现在的会议语言则是英语和普通话，因为就连他所在的组织中，也甚少有谁的闽南语流利到开会时足够用的程度。
But Mr. Perng stopped short of criticizing the government. Instead, he said Singaporeans themselves had to take responsibility for the loss of their language diversity.
“Sometimes I think we are too docile,” Mr. Perng said. “Leaders said if you speak too much dialect it’ll affect your success in life, so many people dropped it on their own accord. The biggest problem is our own consciousness.”