Speak Mandarin Campaign

The Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC; traditional Chinese: 講華語運動; simplified Chinese: 讲华语运动; pinyin: Jiǎng Huáyǔ Yùndòng) is an initiative by the Government of Singapore to encourage the Chinese Singaporean population to speak Standard Mandarin Chinese, one of the four official languages of Singapore as Singaporean Mandarin. It was launched on 7 September 1979 by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and organised by the Promote Mandarin Council. The SMC has been held annually to promote the use of Mandarin.

The campaign is contentious among Singaporeans. The ancestral origins of most Chinese Singaporeans were not from Mandarin speaking regions, and Singaporean Hokkien had served as the lingua franca of the Chinese community in Singapore until the campaign began. Since the 2010s, the SMC has been scaled down, with the government promoting greater appreciation of other Chinese varieties and relaxing restrictions on their use in local media. At the same time, many Singaporeans have begun to rediscover the ancestral forms of their respective Chinese varieties. Since 2020, Mandarin itself was surpassed by Singaporean English as the primary language in Chinese Singaporean households.