COMMENT Yesterday was the third anniversary of my mother’s death. Born in Kuching, Sarawak, she did not receive any formal education. She spoke pure Hokkien and a little Malay but not a word of English or Mandarin.

For practical reasons, my father sent all his eight children to English language schools. It must have been strange for my mother that most of us decided to communicate in English at home. But we would communicate with my mother in Hokkien because she understood no other languages.

I recall that as a child, the Rediffusion was on 12 hours a day. The familiar marching tune would come on at 6am and throughout the day, dialect programmes would be on air. All of us enjoyed story-telling and the detective series in Hokkien.

For my mother, it was her sole source of entertainment...