Status planning for Mandarin is an ongoing affair. In fact, a recent SMC (2000) advertisement campaign was fronted by four glamourous Mediacorp artistes in a bid to persuade the masses that speaking Mandarin is just as 'cool' as speaking English.

The status of Mandarin is almost on par with English and is now promoted as a working language, particularly in trade affairs with China. Once regarded as the language to transmit cultural practices and traditional values, it is now arguably synonymous with "linguistic capital" (Bourdieu, 1991), providing economic mobility and advantage.

If we follow this line of argument, it would be relevant to say that Mandarin is also undergoing corpus planning. Having increased its status, widespread usage of Mandarin is encouraged; hence, there is a need for the corpus (for example, vocabulary, syntax) to expand in order to accomodate breadth and depth of functions in expanding fields such as Information Technology (IT). One such aspect of corpus planning can be seen in the generation of new lexical terms to account for entities like 'The Internet' (Wang Ji Wang Luo) and 'Electronic-mail' (Dian You).

Another aspect of corpus planning is the pinyinisation of Mandarin characters (Hanyu). It is a "romanized system of transcribing Chinese characters based on Mandarin pronunciation. Most Chinese in Singapore go by the dialect pronunciation of their Chinese names, not Mandarin" (Bokhurst-Heng, 1999;260). However, three of our respondents (out of 20) have their names, including surnames, registered in romanized Hanyu Pinyin. (Their names have been marked with an asterisk under Some survey results).

Technically, there is no status planning for Teochew and Hokkien. Not having been accorded a status means that private organizations such as the Clan Associations (Huay Kuans) cannot and do not have the means and resources to do so. This is exacerbated by the lack of support from the state.

Since the dialects have no status, people are not encouraged to speak them, and have less incentive (or none, even) to use them. We know that a language can only thrive with comprehensive and increased usage. With little or no usage the corpus will not expand. Thus, the dialects cannot keep pace with modern technological terms, and thus are labelled as 'archaic' in some circles.

However, there is some form of corpus planning for Hokkien on the part of the Clan Associations. Students who attend Hokkien-dialect classes are taught simple phrases such as "Jiak pa buay" (see attached article by Theresa Tan) which increases their lexicon (corpus) and potentially provides the foundation for frequent usage of Hokkien. The Clan Associations (of Hokkien and Hainanese) may be inadvertently  carrying out corpus planning for their dialects on a smaller scale (and possibly a subconscious level) simply by providing these lessons.

Related to this is the notion of acquisition planning. "Note that most acquisition planning addresses formal schooling as a site for planning. More recent approaches explore other relevant sites, such as informal education, and emphasize the important link between community structures and aspirations..." (Stroud, 2002, Lecture Notes, 11th October). Increasing the number of (competent) speakers is accomplished through institutional means (provision of classes); this addresses one sub-aspect of acquisition planning, which is the maintenance of a language potentially undergoing shift/decline, in order to achieve a higher count of proficient speakers. 

We have confirmed this from information gathered through The Straits Times and from our personal inquiries. Lessons have already begun in mid-2002. The enrolment rate of the Hokkien classes were encouraging enough for the Huay Kuan to continue for another two batches. Unfortunately, there may be a cessation to this encouraging phenomenon as the instructor, Professor Zhou Chang Ji, is returning to mainland China. 

Although the Hokkien Huay Kuan is active in this area, the Teochew Huay Kuan has no plans in the forseeable future to conduct or provide Teochew classes (see Question 14. in http://www.geocities.com/teochewsg/teochew/interview2.htm).