Singapore often prides itself on its multilingualism, yet the majority of its younger generation has strayed from speaking their native tongue following decades of linguistic repression.

The movement responsible for this, the Speak Mandarin Campaign, has been around since 1979. It’s used to urge the younger generations to use Mandarin, a rarely spoken Chinese language back then, instead of their true native tongues: Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, and more.

22-year-old Sherryl Sng remembers much time spent with her grandmother being enveloped in unfortunate silence due to the language barrier.