From bilingualism to multilingual confidence: What the Dear You debate is telling us

We can continue to invest in mother tongue education while recognising that dialects and heritage languages deserve a more visible place in our cultural life.

- Lily Kong

It took a film to reopen one of Singapore’s foundational policy questions.

Dear You, the Chinese blockbuster filmed largely in Teochew and centred on the emotional worlds of Chinese migrants to South-east Asia, arrived in Singapore with a peculiarity: Its general release here would be in Mandarin-dubbed form, while the original Teochew version would be confined to limited screenings.

The response was immediate. Tickets to the original-language screenings sold out quickly. Film-makers spoke up. Members of the public questioned why a Teochew-language film could be screened commercially in Johor Bahru, while Singapore audiences were largely offered a dubbed version. Within days, more original-language screenings were added.

On the surface, this may look like a dispute about film distribution. It is not. It is a reminder that language policy in Singapore remains deeply bound up with questions of identity, memory and belonging.

What is at issue is not simply whether one film should be shown in Teochew or Mandarin. It is whether a language framework that served Singapore well in one era now needs recalibration for another.

This is not an argument against bilingualism.

Singapore’s bilingual policy has been one of the most consequential and successful pillars of our nation-building project. It gave us a common working language in English, enabling inter-ethnic communication and global connectedness. It also sought to anchor cultural continuity through the teaching of official mother tongues. In a young and vulnerable state, this was not merely educational policy. It was strategic statecraft.