Commentary: How to speak to Grandma before her language dies
As Thai hit movie How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies illustrates, the waning use of “dialects” can make it hard for grandchildren to communicate with their grandparents, says linguistics expert Associate Professor Tan Ying Ying from NTU.

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SINGAPORE: Like many others in Singapore and the region, I too caught the Thai hit movie How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies. The movie tells the story of the grandson, M, who volunteers to move in and take care of his dying grandmother in the hopes of inheriting her estate.
While the movie is primarily in Thai, grandmother Amah would occasionally speak Teochew, a language M struggled to understand. Teochew was also used strategically in a heart-wrenching moment nearing the end of the movie, when M held Amah’s hand and attempted a Teochew lullaby as Amah took her last breath.
The fact that young people like M are unable to understand Teochew or any of the other Chinese “dialects” is not a unique problem. We are facing the same, if not a worse situation in Singapore. According to the 2020 census, only 1.4 per cent of Singaporean Chinese aged 5 to 34 used Chinese “dialects” as their most or second most frequent language at home, compared with 31.6 per cent of older Singaporean Chinese aged 60 and above.
What led to this language loss in Singapore, and what are we losing as a result?
LANGUAGE LOSS AND DEATH
Like all living things, languages also go through life and death. We say that a language dies when this language is no longer spoken or understood by speakers in any given community.
Some languages naturally fade away, for example, when a very small, isolated community of speakers die of old age, taking the language with them. However, more often than not, languages die because they are pushed out by more powerful and dominant languages in the community. Powerful languages are usually the ones that have been endorsed and implemented by the government as national or official languages. We call this process “status planning”.
In Singapore, our language and education policies prioritise English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, therefore raising their status in society. Other Chinese languages such as Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese are labelled “dialects”, even when they are not.
HOKKIEN, TEOCHEW ARE LANGUAGES, NOT DIALECTS
Linguistically, dialects are variants of a single language, of which when spoken by different dialect speakers, would still be mutually intelligible. British, American and Australian English can be considered dialects of English, because speakers of these dialects would sound different, but still can comprehend one another.
We certainly cannot say the same for Hokkien and Cantonese speakers. In fact, Hokkien and Cantonese belong to different language families. Labelling these languages “dialects” cements their status as a “non-language”.
Before Singapore gained independence, Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese were the three most commonly used languages of the Chinese population. Mandarin was made to become the common language for the Chinese due to the government’s language policies.
The Speak Mandarin Campaign, launched in 1979, also had an important role to play in speeding up their demise. The early phase of the Speak Mandarin Campaign focused on getting parents and grandparents to learn and use Mandarin in place of Chinese “dialects”.
Under the Free-To-Air Television and Radio Programme Codes, it is stated that all Chinese programmes, except operas or other programmes specifically approved, must be in Mandarin. Exceptions in dialogues and songs may be allowed provided the context justifies usage and is sparingly used. This further reduces the exposure Singaporeans have to “dialects”.
It was not until 2016 when the 10-episode Hokkien drama Jiak Ba Buay (Eat Already?) was reportedly the first “dialect” series to be aired in Singapore since 1979.
BRINGING “DIALECTS” BACK?
Over the past two decades, there has been both academic and public discourse about how the loss of these languages has created problems for intergenerational communication between grandparents and their grandchildren. Young Singaporean Chinese have also reported a sense of identity loss in not being able to speak their “dialect” and are keen to search for their roots.
More crucially, older Singaporean Chinese who only speak “dialects” have problems navigating public services, and it is especially critical in hospitals and nursing homes.
These issues have not gone unnoticed. There are online communities getting people together to learn these languages in order to revive them. Organisations are also running classes for healthcare workers so they can better look after patients. The prohibition of “dialects” in the media space has also since been less strict.
Today, Mediacorp’s Channel 8 features “dialect” programmes on Friday mornings, and radio station Capital 95.8FM offers daily news bulletins. “Dialects” are also used to convey information and public policies to the elderly. Some escalators at MRT stations have safety announcements in Hokkien and Cantonese to remind commuters to hold on to the handrail.
Despite all these efforts, however, one cannot revive the dead. These revival attempts are affective responses to our feelings of nostalgia, or maybe even wistful regret and anxiety that these “dialects” will no longer be in our linguistic space. However, the fact is, there is little space and need for them once our grandparents die.
Research has shown that grandparents today have heeded the government policies well and pivoted to speaking Mandarin and/or English with their grandchildren. Our next generation of grandparents are the ones who have grown up in the era of post-independence language policies, and so they would have been educated in the official languages. Just like M and Amah in the movie, communication will still take place, just not in Amah’s language.
I am one of the lucky few who grew up speaking Teochew with my late grandmother, yet I struggle now to find the words to a Teochew lullaby she sang to me. In Singapore, when grandma dies, her language dies with her. When a language dies, the cultural worldview also disappears. The loss is intangible but permanent.
Dr Tan Ying Ying is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at the School of Humanities in Nanyang Technological University. She is a Singaporean linguist working on languages in Singapore.