IN A 45-minute speech, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew maintained his firm stand on the importance of speaking Mandarin for Chinese Singaporeans.

Referring to those who want to keep dialects as their mother tongue, he said: 'I understand the strong emotional ties to one's mother tongue. However, the trend is clear. In two generations, Mandarin will become our mother tongue.'

He reiterated the reasoning behind his stance: The value of a language is in its usefulness, at home and abroad.

'Today's Lianhe Zaobao had a whole series of middle-aged and older generation saying we must have dialects,' said MM Lee.

'If you've got 100 gigabytes here (MM Lee points to his temple), then you can put it in. But you haven't got 100 gigabytes... and the more you use dialects, the less you will use your Mandarin.'

He explained that if the Government had left language habits to evolve on their own, Chinese Singaporeans would be speaking a Hokkien-Teochew hybrid dialect today.

Looking forward, MM Lee said the key challenge is no longer about Mandarin versus dialects.

It is about getting more Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin to their children.

'If both (parents) can speak Mandarin, don't speak to your child in English, or one in English and one in Chinese,' said MM Lee.

'Speak to them in Mandarin. Leave their English alone - they will master it.'

He mentioned a study done by an American professor, Cornelius Kubler, who teaches Mandarin to US foreign service officers.

The study shows that compared to languages like French, German and Spanish, it takes four times as long to train someone to speak Mandarin at a level where they can function professionally.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that the proportion of Chinese Primary One students from dialect-speaking homes has fallen significantly in the past 30 years.

In 1980, it stood at just over 60 per cent. Ten years later, it had fallen to 5per cent. Today, the proportion hovers at about 2 per cent.

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This article was first published in The New Paper.