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Singaporean Chinese children's special Chinese vocabulary and their identity
Citation
Zhao, C., Liu, Y., & Goh, H. H. (2007). Singaporean Chinese children's special Chinese vocabulary and their identity. In Proceedings of the Redesigning Pedagogy: Culture, Knowledge and Understanding Conference. National Institute of Education (Singapore).
Abstract
As a variation of the Chinese language, Singapore Mandarin has its characteristics which represent themselves in phonetics, vocabulary, and grammar. Factors contributing to these characteristics are many: 1. Ancestors of Chinese Singaporeans mainly came from southern China and Singapore Chinese has been influenced by Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka; 2. Since the British rule, English had been the official language and keeps to be at a dominant position since independence of Singapore. Similarly, Singapore Chinese bears certain characteristics of the English language; 3. The population of Singapore is composed of Chinese, Malay, and Indian. In the course of interaction between nations, Singapore Chinese was also influenced by languages of the other two races, Malay in particular; 4. Since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, great social changes led to great changes in the Chinese language. However, for quite some time, communication between China and Singapore was stopped, so was the interaction between Mandarin and Singapore Chinese. Due to all these factors, Singapore Chinese has many unique characteristics comparing with standard modern Chinese. Data for current study come from Singapore Children Spoken Mandarin Corpus and this study tries to probe into usage and origin of some uniquely Singapore vocabulary in the Chinese language, which reflects Chinese Singaporeans’ unique identity formed in this unique historical, cultural, geographical, and racial environment.
Date Issued
2007
Project
CRP 11/05 LYB