Mandarin Is Not Equal To Chinese (從字幕想起)

This is captured from a Korean drama on TV. Not surprisingly, it is also dubbed into Mandarin (FYI: it's basically banned to broadcast dialect in TV programs, according to the Free-To-Air Television Programme Code. It's in line with the government's Speak Mandarin Campaign since the 1980s with the intention to make Mandarin the lingua franca among Singaporean Chinese). It's easy to understand that the English subtitles are made for the non Chinese speaking people (expats, Malays, Indians, etc.), but then why Chinese subtitles? Isn't it already dubbed into Mandarin? Only if you are aware, that not all Chinese Singaporeans understand Mandarin Chinese, as dialect groups in Singapore include Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, Cantonese, Hainanese and many others, and that even after 2 decades of promoting Mandarin, still, local Chinese people, are not all conversant with Mandarin. In Singapore, Mandarin and Chinese are different concepts. Mandarin is just one kind of dialect, where as Chinese is a universal written language. Those who understand written Chinese may not understand Mandarin, as they might be of other dialect origins.

從電視上翻拍的韓劇畫面，配音是普通話，字幕有中英雙語。英文字幕想當然是給聽不懂也看不懂中文的觀眾(洋人、馬來人、印度人等)，但為什麼有中文字幕呢，配音不已經是普通話了? 這個配音版本明顯是從台灣買來的，當然也附有繁體中文的字幕，我想製作單位是刻意不把中文字幕拿掉的，畢竟並不是所有新加坡華人都懂普通話。在新加坡，識中文字的人，不一定聽得懂普通話。

原生新加坡華人大都是閩南、潮州、廣東、客家、海南等方言族群，普通話對他們來說可是最為陌生的舶來品，大概是從1980年代政府開始推行講華語運動才開始發跡。這運動後來不知是走火入魔還怎樣，方言被全面封殺，例如無線電視的中文節目只許使用普通話發音，霹靂火和民視八點檔(最近在熱播"愛"XD)到了這裡都得講普通話(氣勢完全low掉)。

自政府推行普通話以來，20多年過去了，方言逐漸式微，取而代之的並不是普通話的坐大，而是英文使用人數的成長；方言不被鼓勵使用後，人們更為專注在英文的使用，方言家庭不是轉型成普通話家庭，而是變成英語家庭。