Singapore Teochew as a heritage language

Abstract

Situated in Southeast Asia, Singapore's sociolinguistic situation has undergone several changes due to active language planning policies, with English and Mandarin becoming the two socio-politically majority languages in Singapore society. Over time, this has led to the restricted usage of various non-Mandarin dialects, including Teochew, both in public settings and within the home. This paper examines how Teochew, a heritage language in Singapore, has been affected in its vocabulary usage in apparent time. The data was collected from 41 Teochew male and female speakers aged 12-86 years. This paper contributes theoretically by showing the properties of a heritage language, Singapore Teochew, in an environment with multiple shifts of several major languages in Southeast Asia, instead of the more common situation of one major language shift.