Grandmother Tonguea

A W!ldrice production

I love the intro with the echo of different words in English, Mandarin and Teochew. It begins with pronouns and moves to verbs which I remember vaguely that my maternal grandmother used to say, my dua yi still says and the cleaning aunty at my office still asks "jiak Pak bueh?" or "Have You Eaten?"

It's a common in Teochew culture to ask that. Or the love which the Grandma lavishes on the grandson by cooking way more than enough rice and dishes.

This play is narrated through the eyes of the grandson who is taken care of by his grandma till he was seven. He reminisces the habits of his grandma, who puts porridge into her mouth to cool it. He questions about the meaning of Mother Tongue in school. If we were to speak Mother Tongue to better communicate with our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, would they not be unable to understand since they only understand dialects? Mine are gone and my mom is the new breed who speaks English, Mandarin and bits of other dialects.

It skims across the Speak Good Mandarin campaign and the government's attempts to wipe out dialects and unify the Chinese with Mandarin.