Hokkien (simplified Chinese: 福建话; traditional Chinese: 福建話Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hok-kiàn-ōe) is a variety of Chinese spoken in Singapore. The local form is known as Singaporean Hokkien (simp. Chinese: 新加坡福建话; trad. Chinese: 新加坡福建話; POJ: Sin-ka-pho Hok-kiàn-ōe). Among Chinese academic circles, this language is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu (simp. Chinese: 新加坡闽南语; trad. Chinese: 新加坡閩南語; POJ: Sin-ka-pho Bân-lâm-gu). It is closely related to the Southern Malaysian Hokkien (南馬福建話) spoken in Southern Malaysia, as well as to Riau Hokkien (廖內福建話) spoken in the Indonesian province of Riau. It also closely resembles Amoy (廈門話) spoken in Amoy, China, and Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan.

Singaporean Hokkien

Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages or dialects spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded as a combined Hokkien-Teochew speech (福潮話). In addition, it has many loanwords from Malay and English.

Nevertheless, the grammar and tones of Singaporean Hokkien are still largely based on Banlam. When compared to Taiwanese's prestige accent (臺語優勢腔) spoken in Tainan and Kaohsiung, the pronunciation of Singaporean Hokkien inclines toward the Quanzhou accent, which is also close to the pronunciation of Taipei and Amoy, and is less close to that of Tainan, which has a greater inclination towards the Zhangzhou accent (漳州腔).

A Singaporean would likely not have trouble conversing with Taiwanese speakers in Singaporean Hokkien, with the exception of some Japanese loanwords. Similarly, Singaporean Hokkien is understood by Taiwanese speakers, with the exception of some Malay and English loanwords.

History

From the 19th until the early half of the 20th century, there was a large influx of Chinese migrants from southern China into Singapore. This led to Chinese constituting almost 75% of Singapore's population. Of these Chinese, many originated from the regions of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou in Fujian province. They brought Min Nan to Singapore, which was then propagated throughout Singapore and Malaysia. As there was no formal Chinese name for Min Nan in the early 20th century, these migrants began to use their place of origin as the name of their speech, and thus called the dialect "Hokkien", referring to Fujian province.

During the 19th century, many traditional private Chinese schools in Singapore (referred to as 私塾仔; su-sio̍k-á) generally used Hokkien to teach Chinese classics and Classical Chinese. However, by the early 20th century, Mandarin began to replace Hokkien as the medium of instructions in Chinese schools after the founding of many Mandarin-medium schools.

During the 1950s and 1960s, many political speeches in Singapore were in Hokkien, in order to reach out to the Chinese community in Singapore. There was also a thriving Hokkien cultural scene that included Hokkien story-telling, opera, and media in Singapore.

After 1979, the Singapore government began to push for the use of Mandarin in Singapore, spearheaded by the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Following this, the Singapore government also began to employ a more stringent censorship, or ban, of Hokkien media in the Singaporean Chinese media. Consequently, all Hokkien-language media in Singapore had to be dubbed in Mandarin before being allowed to stream on national TV. In addition, the 1980s saw Chinese-medium education replaced by that in English, causing English to emerge as the most widely used language in Singapore. The emergence of the English language, coupled with heavy promotion of Mandarin, generally led Hokkien to decline in Singapore after 1979.

Current status

Today, the lingua franca of the Chinese Community in Singapore is Mandarin. Although Hokkien is still spoken, particularly by the elderly Chinese population, it is not as widespread as before. The most common places to hear Hokkien spoken in Singapore are in hawker centres or kopitiams.

Speaking ability varies amongst the different age groups of the Hokkien Singaporeans. The elderly are generally able to communicate effectively in Hokkien. On the other hand, the middle and younger generations have generally lost the ability to communicate as fluently. However, when it comes to using profanities, majority of the younger generation listed Hokkien as the first out of all languages and dialects. With the Speak Mandarin Campaign from the government, the Hokkien speaking population has declined greatly.

Revival through social media

There is a minority group of Hokkien Singaporeans and Taiwanese living in Singapore working to help preserve, spread and revive the use of Hokkien Chinese in Singapore.

The ease of access to online Hokkien entertainment media and pop music from Taiwan helps to connect to the language and culture. Many Singaporeans are increasingly using online and social media platforms, such as Facebook, Meetup groups, to learn, meet, and interact with each other in Hokkien. Singapore Dialects is one of such groups which has contributed to this revitalisation in the dialectical discourse.