If you’ve been keeping up with the local cinema scene recently, you’d have definitely heard of Dear You. This Chinese film has sparked discourse on language and identity in Singapore, particularly within the local Chinese community.
Watching the debate unfold got me thinking about the role language plays in films and what Dear You represents beyond its story. Personally, I think dialects deserve a place in Singapore cinema, and here’s why.
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Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
In case you’ve missed the whole deal with Dear You, here’s basically what’s been happening.
Chinese film Dear You premiered in Singapore on 18th June 2026, after dominating the Chinese box office. While the film was filmed predominantly in Teochew, it was slated for release in a Mandarin dub for general screenings on our island. This was meant to be in line with our Bilingual Policy, where Mandarin is encouraged as the main language among Chinese Singaporeans.
Those who wanted to watch the original Teochew version had to fight for a mere 4,800 tickets across 8 screenings.
The response was overwhelming, and more Teochew screenings have been released batch by batch, with tickets continuing to sell out within hours. Demand became so intense that scalpers even started reselling tickets, much to the dismay of moviegoers hoping to catch the film in its original language.
Singaporeans at the local premiere of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle.
Image credit: Movie Mania, Singapore via Facebook
Singaporeans are no strangers to watching films in foreign languages, nor are we averse to them. In fact, I’d say we very readily accept them. Recent films like the Korean thriller Colony have popped up during conversations over lunch, and I’m sure droves of Singaporeans found themselves in cinemas for Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle last year. Some might even fancy the occasional French arthouse film screening, or binge on the Oscar nominees for Best International Film.
The thing is, Korean, Japanese, or French aren’t languages most of us hear in our daily lives, but that hasn’t stopped us from watching films in their original language. Most foreign films are screened in Singapore with their original audio, and we’ve been plenty satisfied with the English and Chinese subtitles that come with them. Even anime films, which are known to have English dub versions, are mostly only screened in Japanese with subtitles.
Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
Which is why the Dear You situation feels so puzzling. Teochew isn’t some obscure dialect that’s completely unfamiliar to Singaporeans. If anything, it’s far closer to home for many of us, whether it’s a dialect we grew up hearing from our grandparents or one that’s rooted in our family’s history. But somehow, the original audio was treated as the exception, while the Mandarin dub became the default for local screenings.
So if we’re perfectly comfortable watching films in Korean, Japanese, or French with subtitles, why does a dialect that’s part of Singapore’s own cultural fabric suddenly need to be dubbed?
I, for one, strongly believe in enjoying a piece of work in its most original form. It lets you appreciate a creator’s vision as it was intended, from the nuances in dialogue to the emotions conveyed through the actors’ performances. And to enjoy a film in its most original form, that naturally means watching it in its original language.
You have to admit that English and Singlish carry very different emotions, even when you’re trying to say the same thing.
Image credit: @uncle_deluge via X
You might think of language or dialect as nothing more than a means of communication. While that’s not exactly wrong, it also tells us so much more about a person, a place and a culture. And this isn’t just restricted to film.
Language provides context. The way we speak changes depending on where we are, who we’re with, and even what we’re trying to say.
Think about your own life. Yapping with your friends would be different from how you talk to your parents, and that’s different again from the emails you send to clients at work. You may speak in proper business English all day at your 9-to-6, before coming home to conversations in your mother tongue. You’d hear radio deejays speaking in a more westernised accent in the car, but the moment you step out and walk into a kopitiam, you’ll be surrounded by full-blown Singlish.
So what I’m trying to say is: Language isn’t just about getting a message across. It’s a reflection of identity, relationships, and the environment we’re in.
Image for illustrative purposes only.
Image credit: Andre Begin
Filmmaking is a deliberate process, and each creative choice is made with intention. The same goes for the script, where the choice of language is arguably one of the most important factors that a filmmaker has to make.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “show, don’t tell” since primary school. It’s basically the same concept, where the creator shows you key elements of the story through how the language is used, without just straight-up telling you.
Sometimes, language alone is enough to establish a scene – you don’t exactly need to spell out the fact that a character has travelled to France when everyone around them is suddenly speaking French. And to go back to Dear You as an example, while the film is primarily in Teochew, you’ll also hear characters speaking in Mandarin and Thai, depending on where the scene is happening.
Sometimes, you can even see how the creator’s environment impacts the language of their work.
Image credit: @ShitpostRock2 via X
Language can also tell you a lot about a character without ever spelling it out. Maybe a character instinctively thinks in Tamil because that’s the language they grew up with, even if they mostly speak English in their day-to-day life. Or maybe another character speaks using a wide vocabulary because they’re highly educated, or they spent all their childhood reading non-stop.
But once you take a film and dub it over with another language, a lot of these deliberate choices are stripped away. At best, you could get a dub that tries its best to preserve the thought behind the original language and its use. At worst? You could get a market scene in Rio de Janeiro with characters talking in English, with the same intonation as a TikTok text-to-speech voiceover. Or perhaps, a scene of your local auntie at the kopitiam talking as if they’re reciting a passage in your listening comprehension exam.
A phrase that gets thrown around quite a lot is “lost in translation” – you might even recognise it from that one line in Taylor Swift’s All Too Well. But this can be a genuine problem when trying to dub or even make subtitles for a film.
The English translation of Urek Mazino couldn’t exactly capture the humour that is 동생님, or essentially, “Junior (respectfully)”.
Image adapted from: Naver Webtoon
Some words often may not have direct translations across languages, or sometimes the directly translated word isn’t commonly used in everyday conversation. I’ve seen people ask why English doesn’t have a single word for “the day after tomorrow” while other languages do. Fun fact: We do, and the word is “overmorrow”, but no one ever uses that anymore.
Another issue that comes with translation is connotation. Let’s take Korean as an example. You’ve definitely heard of oppa, the term often used when referring to handsome Korean men. But if you didn’t know, oppa is actually a term for women to describe men older than them – men would call their older counterparts hyung instead. The Korean language is full of grammar and terms like these that add a sense of seniority to it, which languages like English simply don’t have.
When these factors can’t be translated well, the intended effect of adding a phrase or a sentence to a script may not kick in as well. It’s like when someone doesn’t get the joke, and you need to explain it – it’s just not that funny anymore.
Image adapted from: TABLO via YouTube
You may have watched a YouTube video in a foreign language with subtitles and noticed translators’ notes providing extra context to what’s being said. Unfortunately, this isn’t common practice in film subtitles, let alone dubbing – you can’t expect the film to pause à la The Emperor’s New Groove to explain what was originally said.
That being said, films screened with subtitles can invite discussions about the film and its meaning. Viewers who understand both the dub and the subtitles can point out any differences between the 2, sharing extra context and nuances that others might have missed. Those conversations often deepen everyone’s appreciation of the film.
A dub, however, leaves much less room for that. Once the original dialogue is replaced, many of those linguistic nuances disappear altogether, taking with them another layer of the filmmaker’s intent that audiences could otherwise have discovered.
Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
Coming back to the Dear You debate, some may be wondering why there was such an overwhelming demand for the Teochew screenings. Perhaps one look into a Singaporean family’s home may provide the answer.
A lot of my friends regularly visit their grandparents, some even doing so every weekend. Yet more than a few have admitted that they barely speak to them during those visits. It’s not because they don’t want to, but simply because of the language barrier.
For many elderly Singaporeans, dialects were the languages they grew up with and have spoken their entire lives. Meanwhile, the younger generation grew up in a much different language landscape. English and the standard mother tongue selected by the government are heavily prioritised, while opportunities to learn and speak in dialects can come close to none.
Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes
It’s not that either generation lacks the desire to bridge the gap. At an older age, picking up a new language is understandably challenging. And as for the younger folks, well, a lot of us might not even know where to begin.
That’s why I don’t think the demand for Dear You was just about watching another blockbuster. It was a rare opportunity to hear a dialect that once filled our grandparents’ homes. For others, it was also a chance to experience conversations they never got to have, or perhaps understand a small part of a culture that had always felt just out of reach. Seen in that light, it’s hardly surprising that the Teochew screenings sold out almost instantly.
Sometimes, you just need to keep the bird flying to hit your minimum word count.
Image credit: SGAG via Facebook
I can definitely see the merit of having a standardised mother tongue. Having a common language can make communication easier and help preserve a shared cultural identity. But when I look around, I can’t help but wonder whether the policy has achieved what it set out to do. Unfortunately, the younger Singaporean Chinese population can be quite lacking in the Mandarin-speaking department, if all the comments relating to CLB Sam’s TikToks are anything to go by.
It doesn’t help that people my age proudly claim to be horrendous at the language. 10 to 12 years of studying Mandarin in school, and many of them still come back from holidays in China recounting stories of struggling to hold conversations there. Even friends who were educated in SAP schools – as Chinese as you can get in a Singaporean school – and studied Higher Chinese often forget how to read or write even pretty basic characters.
Of course, these are personal observations rather than definitive proof. There are probably many reasons behind them. For instance, English dominates almost every aspect of life in Singapore, from work to higher education and even casual conversations. Or maybe we need better ways to encourage people to continue using their mother tongue outside of school.
But either way, it makes me wonder whether the policy had to come at the expense of dialects. If many young Singaporeans aren’t becoming fully fluent in Mandarin anyway, perhaps there was room for both to coexist, instead of treating one as a replacement for the other.
With all that being said, I still don’t think dubs in film should disappear altogether. It definitely increases its accessibility, allowing more viewers to be able to watch it and know what’s happening. In fact, it can be especially helpful for those who may have difficulties reading subtitles.
But just because it’s more accessible doesn’t mean it has to completely replace the original. Just as some people would prefer to watch something easier to understand, others would prefer to see the work as it was intended, even if they take longer to understand.
Perhaps one way we could approach this is to have equal opportunities to watch the original or the dubbed versions. I remember seeing something like this in Korea – when I wanted to watch Zootopia 2, there was an equal number of screenings for the film in Korean dub and the film in English version with Korean subtitles. I’d say for a film like Dear You, this might help with the demand too.
At the end of the day, even after the whole Dear You debate blows over, I will still support the notion of keeping dialects in our local film screenings. Even if dubbing it over in a more commonly spoken language makes it more accessible, if audiences want to watch a film in its original language, that option should be just as readily available.
And if watching a film in dialect helps even one person better understand their grandparents or reconnect with their heritage, then I’d say that’s a choice worth preserving.
Check out more perspectives:
Cover image adapted from: Rotten Tomatoes, SGAG via Facebook
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