Yours Toothfully (ad space for sale)

I read an interesting letter from a 74-year-old man in Today. He lamented that the demise of dialects is a loss to our society. Toothfully, even though I’m only 48, I share many of his concerns and his sense of loss.

Moreover, syntactically, Chinese dialects and Mandarin differ minimally: Only in pronunciation. In other words, as long as you speak a dialect fluently, the learning of Mandarin is not as difficult as it is often made out to be.

A whole generation of old folks, like my late parents, who were illiterate dialect speakers, have been deprived of their dialect programmes on television and radio.

They suffered mentally and emotionally for years without much complaint, believing in the larger good for society: The success of the Speak Mandarin Campaign.

Today, the campaign has been so successful that few young Chinese Singaporeans can speak dialects, resulting in a communication gap between them and their grandparents who only speak dialects.

From my 50 years of voluntary community service in the heartlands, I know that there is a sizable group of such senior citizens. The demise of dialects is not only a loss to them but, linguistically and culturally, a big loss to our society as well.

The full article can be found here.

有冇搞錯呀 (Yao mo gao chor ah)? Speak Mandarin Campaign successful meh? I still remember 亲情 was the last HK drama shown in Singapore without Mandarin dubbing.

The theme song was beautifully sung by the late 罗文 (Roman Tam). All my secondary school classmates from Hokkiens to Teochews and Hainanese, were humming the song and following the series (starring Chow Yuen Fatt). Nobody had any trouble understanding Cantonese.

Going back to 变色龙, 陆小凤, 小李飞刀 and 书剑恩仇录, everyone was following Adam Cheng’s “ah ah ah, ah ah ah …” or exclaiming “何必偏偏选中我?” whenever he was bored or got marked by a teacher. Long before Andy Lau Tuck Wah, there was a Cho Tuck Wah who acted in swordfighting shows with tacky special effects in 如来神掌.

Without a shadow of doubt, HK movies and TV dramas were far superior to Taiwanese ones back then. Regardless of dialect group, these shows have become an important part of the Chinese community’s pastime. We talked about the plot developments in these shows after school. We overheard them being discussed on the buses on our way home. Sometimes, we even talked about them in class, when the lessons got too boring.

Then, came the big ban. From then onwards, Chinese standards in Singapore started plunging. Why? Perhaps once again, the ones who enforced these policies on us are not very conversant with Chinese culture themselves. By banning dialects from the media, the authorities have effectively cut off an important connection between the Chinese population and their familiar source of entertainment. From then on, the learning of Chinese became a chore. And in my mind, that’s the biggest reason why Chinese standards have fallen and not risen in spite of the Speak Mandarin Campaign and the banning of dialects. Language cannot be taught in a class. I’ve forgotten most of my English grammar rules, so why is it that I can still write grammatically in English? Because I’m still using English as a medium to receive information and create articles, emails and stories. The language has become a tool that is indispensable to me.

With the loss of good entertainment, many of the younger people in the Chinese population would rather indulge in English programmes than watch the stupid Taiwanese stuff or the “cover versions” of HK dramas/movies. The importance of entertainment as a means of preserving a culture has been neglected.

While I share the writer’s sense of loss, I can’t agree that the demise of dialects have brought about an improved standard of Mandarin. Instead, it has turned Mandarin into one of the most hated subjects in our schools today.

By the way, I’m not a “native” Cantonese. Like Dr Sun Yat Sen, I’m a Hakka whose early ancestors from the North have settled in Guangdong Province. I speak my own native dialect as well as those of my ancestors’ adopted southern province (Guangdong) and Mandarin fluently. Is there a synergistic effect between the three? I certainly think so. Am I confused? I don’t think so.

YouTube 万岁.

Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports Halimah Yacob has urged foreign domestic workers – who would have one day off every week from next year – to make use of the mandatory day off to upgrade themselves.

While some choose to spend their day off shopping or catching up with friends, some Indonesian maids had been spending two days every month – for the past two to three years – studying.

The 52 maids today graduated with high school or pre-university certificates.

The full article can be found here.

It’s so easy to take for granted that upgrade=better. But being a cynical old man, I still need to ask the question: upgrade for what? Will our maids be better, faster and cheaper? Or will they argue with their employers more often, perhaps about whether Venus or Mars is closer to the Earth? Even nurses, policemen and dental assistants leave the job when they upgrade, let alone maids. Regardless of whether you look at it positively or negatively, there’re now more avenues for our maids to seek escape.

Of course, nobody can or should stop these women from pursuing further education. I call it pursuing further education and not upgrading as the former is more precise. That’s what these ladies want to do – pursue further education even as educated people in their country are not paid as well as they are. It’s indeed an academic upgrade, but whether it will lead to increased wages remains to be seen.

I remember my first maid was an Indonesian lady who woke up at 4.30am to study. She had been reading my books which taught Indonesian in English. She used them to learn English from Indonesian and from not being able to form a single sentence in English when she first came, she was speaking English fluently at the end of our 2-year contract.

As you may see, I have nothing against this sort of informal but relevant upgrading which improves communication. The maid did it at her own time. But come next month and the weekly day off is going to be compulsory. Our minister is encouraging a more formal form of upgrading. Our maids will now have the chance to graduate with a certificate in Math. So we stand to gain because they can coach our kids in Calculus and Statistics? And I thought I was a dreamer.

Just last week, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong stressed that there will be a greater need for dental professionals here to update and upgrade themselves on the management of the elderly. The full article can be found here.

So what sort of training should a dentist go for to make him better able to deal with elderly patients? As a dentist on the ground, Chinese dialect training comes to mind first. Many of our youngsters speak English with American accents even though they’ve never been to America, but they are totally hopeless when it comes to dialects or the colloquial “Mandarin” spoken in the heartlands. Even for a person who spent a lot of time with Hokkien Pengs during my army days, the “training” I got in the army was hardly adequate (I learned mostly the swear words).

Many years ago, when I was practising in Hougang, I was totally baffled by a heartlander asking for the nearest “锁匙头”. He was referring to POSBank. The logo resembles a key. Thinking back, I really could have benefited if there was a course on Ah Beng/Ah Lian/Uncle/Auntie talk. Hopefully, I can still remember how to speak proper English and Mandarin after that.

So what if we dentists keep upgrading ourselves with skills to sink implants and do sophisticated overdentures? I did mostly extractions, fillings and dentures for old folks -all with more or less the same methods and technology as that in use 30 years ago. Recent “updates”, rather ironically, tell us to stick with tried and tested materials and warn us of the hype that invariably occurs in the marketing of new technologies.

Many young dentists probably haven’t even heard of zinc phosphate cements, but this really old school stuff is making a big comeback. I almost forgot how to mix it.

Recent denture technology also does not live up to expectations. Flexible dentures may not show any ugly metal clasps. They may be more comfortable in some cases, but they are not as unbreakable as touted!

Experienced HDB practitioners will be able to tell you that many of the older folks here refuse to spend money on new dentures because they believe that they won’t live that long. A visit to China is a greater priority. Most also find great difficulty adapting to new dentures. Some have been wearing their dentures for more than 20 years and expect them to last them to the graves.

On top of that, some elderly patients are recovering from stroke or some other chronic illnesses like Parkinson’s disease and bite registration may not yield consistent results, causing numerous adjustments and resets. They may drop their dentures numerous times, break their dentures numerous times and expect free repair, claiming that they were just eating “loti” when their dentures broke. Not surprisingly, dentures are some of the most challenging things that any dental practitioner can do. It’s a lot of hard work and what do you get from the elderly?

“Lao lang bo liscount meh?”

Nothing wrong with that, these people still deserve treatment, but at the end of the day, we have rents, utilities and workers to pay. When you attend an upgrading course on patient communication, the lecturer is an ang moh. Far more effective would be a fierce, threatening stance adopted by a Beng dentist I won’t name. No wonder my competitors kept sending these patients to me and I now wonder if I was just being stupid by not turning them away or referring them to the Beng dentist.

So before we get upgrade-happy and start renovating our clinics with all the elderly-friendly features, let’s get real. Many older fogies consciously avoid private clinics that look too nice. The more shabby the clinic looks, the more likely it is to attract elderly patients. Looking and sounding like an Ah Beng helps a lot too, especially when there are disputes.

Just take a look at our hawker centres. The food sucks a little more with every “upgrade”. And if the hawker speaks good English, you know that he’s not a hawker because he cooks well. People often assume that the same applies to clinics. You may actually lose out to your competitors if you renovate, speak perfect English and they don’t.

Finally, if doctors and dentists were really earning more after all the compulsory continuing education, would they need to resort to selling opiate containing cough mixtures for a living? I’m sure these doctors have been upgrading themselves by attending continuing education talks, seminars and even courses. Some may have even written papers. But it’s obvious that money and time invested in these activities are slashing instead of contributing to the bottom line. Upgrade for what?