Why does Singapore implement English instead of Chinese ?

Let's talk about why the Republic of Singapore, as a Southeast Asian country, uses English as its official first language.

Singapore originally belonged to the Kingdom of Johor in the Malay Peninsula, and the indigenous democracy was still Malay. In 1819, the year Queen Victoria of the Sunset Empire, known as the "Queen of India", ascended the throne, Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles (a native of British Jamachia), an employee of the British East India Company, landed in Singapore on behalf of the Empire, ushering in the British period. In 1824, the Kingdom of Johor formally signed a treaty to cede Singapore, making it a British colony.

At that time, the century when the sun never set, as a British colony, you didn't have to force the popularization of English, and you yourself had to use it often on weekdays.

It was not until 1942 that the Japanese wrested control of Singapore from the British, beginning a brief period of Japanese occupation. And in 1945, three years after Japan occupied the entire territory of Singapore, it declared defeat and withdrew from the war. We can feel from Korean dramas and Taiwanese dramas that Taiwanese and Koreans often quote Japanese in their spoken language.

But Singapore is different, after all, the Japanese control time is very short, so it has no impact on the status of English at all.

For 123 years, English has been the official language of Singapore. During this period, not only Malays from inside and outside Singapore, but also foreigners from the south, such as Qing Chinese, Indians, Thais, Armenians, Jews, etc., had to learn English if they wanted to live in Singapore for a long time. After that, it was the same.

Let's talk about Chinese. But before that, I think we have to clarify the key word in the question - Chinese. First of all, Chinese can be a big concept that includes the mother tongue of all Han Chinese, but it is often used to refer specifically to Mandarin.

It is well known that of Singapore's population of more than 5.6 million, Chinese make up about 75%, followed by 13% Malay, 9% Indian, and finally a very small number of mixed Eurasian and other races.

Among the Chinese in Singapore, the ancestral home of Fujian accounts for 40%, and the ancestral home of Guangdong, Hainan, Zhejiang is also close to 40%, and the other 20% are mostly from the southern provinces of China. Most of these Chinese had immigrated before the founding of New China, and the Chinese were well-known for their habit of huddling together for warmth, and their fellow villagers in other places would live in a circle in an organized manner, which is not how Chinatowns around the world came about.

This means that the Chinese brought their native language to everyday use, namely various types of Min, Cantonese, Qiong, Southern Wu, and even more Southern dialects, and they had little affection for Mandarin, which was later introduced based on the official dialect of Beijing. In other words, most Singaporean Chinese are not Mandarin as their first native language, and it is normal that they can't even speak that.

Why isn't Singapore's official first language Chinese?

Singapore has 77% of the population is Chinese, which means that Chinese should be the first language in Singapore, although Chinese and English, Malay, Tamil are listed as the official language of Singapore, in fact, in Singapore Chinese mother tongue families are fewer and fewer, once, a Singapore business group came to China to visit, see are yellow **, black eyes, black-headed Chinese, even the name is an authentic Chinese name, but the mouth is fluent in English, there is an important reason, It's that schools don't pay attention to mother tongue education. ** And major companies are mainly using English. In order to find a way out, people naturally emphasize English and ignore their mother tongue.

Singapore's "Chinese" is Malay, and there is only one version of Singapore's national anthem, which is "Chinese" – the Malay version.

Malay, English, Mandarin (Mandarin Chinese) and Tamil are the official languages.

However, it is very interesting that the state does not attach importance to the "Chinese" or the mother tongue of more than 70 percent of the country's population, and adopts various means and measures to implement English education, so that English is a dominant family.

In Singapore, people who only know Chinese can only communicate in daily life and cannot enter the upper class, while those who can only "Chinese" Malay may have problems even in daily life in this Malay-Chinese country (because more than 70% of Singaporeans in the population of Zhan Singapore basically do not understand Singapore's "Chinese" Malay).

Most Singaporeans are bilingual. Since there are three main ethnic groups in Singapore, English as a unified language, as English is in the United States.

Because it's Singapore, not China. If you want to do business with the world, of course, you have to speak English, but isn't it the same in China? Which job that earns money now, how many points do you score in your Chinese essay?

Singapore was once a national ...... of the Commonwealth

Does Singapore speak Chinese, which is described below:

Speak Chinese. Singapore speaks Chinese mainly because the Chinese in Singapore account for more than 70% of the total population, and many Guangdong and Fujian people in our country immigrated to Singapore a long time ago, so it is not surprising that Chinese is popular in this country. Although Singapore's Chinese is Malay, the official lingua franca is English, but don't worry about going to Singapore, many of their streets or shop signs are Chinese, so even if you don't know English, you don't need to ask for a translator at all, and you don't have to worry about the language barrier.

Singapore's official languages are English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and with a strong bilingual teaching policy, most Singaporeans speak English and Mandarin, making Singapore one of the easiest Asian countries to integrate into in terms of the degree of bilingualism between Chinese and English.

Singaporeans are divided into four main groups: Chinese, Malays (Indians) and Eurasians.

The ancestors of most Singaporean Chinese originated from the southern part of the Middle Ages, especially in Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan provinces, of which 4 percent were Hokkien, followed by Chaoshan, Cantonese, Putian (Putian), Hainanese, Fuzhou, Hakka, as well as Baba and Nyonya.