I ENCOURAGE MY STUDENTS TO SPEAK CHINGLISH TO HELP THEM OVERCOME THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF THE 4 GREAT LIES. HOWEVER, WRITTEN CHINGLISH PUTS A BAD FACE ON CHINA AND SHOULD BE CORRECTED. WRITTEN CHINGLISH IS FOR FOREIGNERS VISITING CHINA, NOT FOR LOCAL PEOPLE. WRITTEN CHINGLISH CAUSES GREAT HARM TO CHINA’S GLOBAL IMAGE. BEFORE THE OLYMPICS ALL WRITTEN CHINGLISH WAS ELIMINATED IN BEIJING. THIS THREAD IS INTENDED TO EXPOSE WRITTEN CHINGLISH WHEREVER IT IS FOUND, SO IT MAY BE CORRECTED TO SAVE CHINA’S GLOBAL FACE.
When you see Chinglish anywhere in China, this is the place to share it!
When you see funny English signs anywhere in China, this is the place to share it.
Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 2, 2010
SHANGHAI — For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”
Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.
Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.
Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell “Teliot” and “urine district”), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings.
The campaign is partly modeled on Beijing’s herculean effort to clean up English signage for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which led to the replacement of 400,000 street signs, 1,300 restaurant menus and such exemplars of impropriety as the Dongda Anus Hospital — now known as the Dongda Proctology Hospital. Gone, too, is Racist Park, a cultural attraction that has since been rechristened Minorities Park.
“The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing,” said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese deputy consul general to the United States who, as director general of the capital’s Foreign Affairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguistic standardization and sobriety.
But while the war on mangled English may be considered a signature achievement of government officials, aficionados of what is known as Chinglish are wringing their hands in despair.
Oliver Lutz Radtke, a former German radio reporter who may well be the world’s foremost authority on Chinglish, said he believed that China should embrace the fanciful melding of English and Chinese as the hallmark of a dynamic, living language. As he sees it, Chinglish is an endangered species that deserves preservation.
“If you standardize all these signs, you not only take away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but you lose a window into the Chinese mind,” said Mr. Radtke, who is the author of a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signs in their natural habitat.
Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtke is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.
Still, the enemies of Chinglish say the laughter it elicits is humiliating. Wang Xiaoming, an English scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, painfully recalls the guffaws that erupted among her foreign-born colleagues as they flipped through a photographic collection of poorly written signs. “They didn’t mean to insult me but I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable,” said Ms. Wang, who has since become one of Beijing’s leading Chinglish slayers.
Those who study the roots of Chinglish say many examples can be traced to laziness and a flawed but wildly popular translation software. Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, said the computerized dictionary, Jinshan Ciba, had led to sexually oriented vulgarities identifying dried produce in Chinese supermarkets and the regrettable “fried enema” menu selection that should have been rendered as “fried sausage.”
Although improved translation software and a growing zeal for grammatically unassailable English has slowed the output of new Chinglishisms, Mr. Mair said he still received about five new examples a day from people who knew he was good at deciphering what went wrong. “If someone would pay me to do it, I’d spend my life studying these things,” he said.
Among those getting paid to wrestle with Chinglish is Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University who is leading the sign exorcism. But even as he eradicates the most egregious examples by government fiat — businesses dare not ignore the commission’s suggested fixes — he has mixed feelings, noting that although some Chinglish phrases sound awkward to Western ears, they can be refreshingly lyrical. “Some of it tends to be expressive, even elegant,” he said, shuffling through an online catalog of signs that were submitted by the volunteers who prowled Shanghai with digital cameras. “They provide a window into how we Chinese think about language.”
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He offered the following example: While park signs in the West exhort people to “Keep Off the Grass,” Chinese versions tend to anthropomorphize nature as a way to gently engage the stomping masses. Hence, such admonishments as “The Little Grass Is Sleeping. Please Don’t Disturb It” or “Don’t Hurt Me. I Am Afraid of Pain.”
Mr. Yao read off the Chinese equivalents as if savoring a Shakespearean sonnet. “How lovely,” he said with a sigh.
He pointed out that this linguistic mentality helped create such expressions as “long time no see,” a word-for-word translation of a Chinese expression that became a mainstay of spoken English. But Mr. Yao, who spent nearly two decades working as a translator in Canada, has his limits. He showed a sign from a park designed to provide visitors with the rules for entry, which include prohibitions on washing, “scavenging,” clothes drying and public defecation, all of it rendered in unintelligible — and in the case of the last item — rather salty English. The sign ended with this humdinger: “Because if the tourist does not obey the staff to manage or contrary holds, Does, all consequences are proud.”
Even though he had had the sign corrected recently, Mr. Yao could not help but shake his head in disgust at the memory. And he was irritated to find that a raft of troublesome sign verbiage had slipped past the commission as the expo approached, including a cafeteria sign that read, “The tableware reclaims a place.” (Translation: drop off dirty dishes here.)
“Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are not translating literature here,” he said. “I want to see people nodding that they understand the message on these signs. I don’t want to see them laughing.”
Dalian mens’ WC
One step forward for man;
One giant leap forward for civilization.
Changsha 4 star hotel restaurant menu:
Potato fired in franc
TRANSLATION:
French Fries
Nanchang Coffee Shops
Awfully Coffee
Good Coffee
Both of the above are owned by the same family but are in separate locations. They got the names from a western customer who told them they served “awfully good coffee.”
Nanchang Coffee Shop
Midnight Coffee
Name came from a western customer who ordered coffee as black as midnight, no cream or sugar.
Bad newspaper translation of Chinese sign on Haizhu Suicide Bridge:
DO NOT DISRUPT TRAFFIC. FIND SOMEPLACE ELSE TO KILL YOURSELF.
Should be:
1. Please be considerate and hold your public demonstration where it will not disrupt traffic
2. Publicity stunts are illegal on this bridge
3. Create a disturbance on this bridge and you will go to prison.
From the Guangzhou-Wuhan high speed train “Passenger Service Guidance” which should be Passenger Service Guide
Chinglish: It is forbidden to take the flammable, explosive, corrosive, poisonous, radioactive and other dangerous articles, including the forbidden knives.
English: Knives and other weapons, flammables, explosives, corrosives, poisons, radioactive and other dangerous articles are forbidden in the train station or on the train.
Chinglish: The tickets check will be stopped before the train’s departure. Please pay attention to the stop time of checking, get on train or stand within safety line on platform for waiting before it.
English: Clear the departure gate and wait in the designated safety area on the platform prior to the train’s arrival.
Chinglish: Watch out the space between platform and the train carefully. Please stand the queue during get-on and get-off. Don’t be crowd when you getting on after the get-off please. It is forbidden to pass through under train, climb on roof, jump off station, enter railway track and so on.
English: Form a single file line at your designated coach. Allow disembarking passengers to clear the coach before boarding. Enter the coach single file, without pushing or shoving. Be careful of the gap between the platform and the coach. It is dangerous to leave the platform area to enter the track, crawl under the train, or climb on the roof and such activity may result in your arrest.
Chinglish: Please don’t push or lean on the door and don’t pull(or push) the emergency brake valve handbrake button, and other safety facilities ant random.
English: Keep clear of the door while the train is in motion and only use emergency equipment in case of a real emergency. Do not allow children to play with the emergency equipment.
Chinglish: Smoking is not allowed in every part of the train.
English: There is no smoking allowed in any part of the train.
Chinglish: Under the conditions which may effect the safety of the train and the passengers, please be followed with the crew’s instruction and keep order. Help priory for the senior and the disabled, illness, children pregnant and other who need help. In case of emergency, please notice the crew in time.
English: Please give priority to senior citizens, the disabled, pregnant women, the sick and infirmed, children and others requiring special assistance. Immediately notify the crew of any emergency and follow crew’s instructions at all times.
Chinglish: In case of the get-off which is necessary during emergency, you can break the safety window by a special hammer for escape. If on Electrical Multiple Unit, you can also press the emergency button above the compartment end door.
English: In case of emergency, evacuate through the safety window using the provided hammer to break the glass or push the emergency stop button above the rear compartment door.
Once，I notice a CD store named “ I have many CD than you”. The CD store located on a foreigners’ street in Dali, a famous tourist city. Luckily, I am a Chinese, I could understand it.
Another classical mistake was” please close the light”, which should be “please turn off the light”.
I often see many chinglish in our life, for example ”a long time no see” “good good study, day day up” and so on. I think whatever our English is good or bad, as long as we are brave, we are not afraid of losing face, although sometimes maybe our expression is not very accurate, we might be laughed at others, I think that these jokes and failure are the stepping-stones for success.
Chinglish may be caused by the usual Chinese language thinking ways. Chinglish is not terrible. The terrible thing is that we ignore it. Confucius said, “To err is human.” It is crucial that we should be good at correcting our mistakes.
Yeap, we can see chinglish everywhere and accept them in a Chinese linguistic logic. I don’t know whether a foreigner could read them or not. Obviously, our professor can understand the meaning. We usually make a fun of translating the Chinese to English in literal meaning like “people mountain people sea” and “I will give you some color to see see”. Can you guess the meaning?
Several reasons are responsible for the popularity of Chinglish. Firstly, Chinglish was born in China and consequently Chinese culture is the warm bed and region of Chinglish. And that is why it has its unique name of Chinglish which absorbs Chinese culture. Secondly, Chinglish is a combination of English and Chinese. It shows the English form which is consisted of 24 letters and it dose have Chinese deeply culture root, which we can easily see from such translation like” good good study, day day up” and “long time no see” etc. Finally as a language, its essence is to express what you think. Once we can reach this goal of making us understood, there is no need to pay attention to its form of whether is pure English or Chinglish.
This phenomenon is very common. I remembered that a park in our hometown translated the entrance into “way in”, and translated the exit into “way out”. I think they all belong to Chinglish. When the signs put up, the language must be correct.
Watch out your head!
Watch out.
In my home town, The Guiyang Railroad Police Division once had been translated as The expensive sun multiples by a duty a police to pay a brigade. And someone put this in websites made a lot of people astonished. Later, they explained that incident caused by someone use dictionary translate the name words one by one. That obviously belongs to Chinglish. And the name was already been corrected.
It is common that there is many Chinglish in our writing. Maybe this sentence is a Chinglish. But I want to share more funny Chinglish in our daily life. Such as: a long time no see, give you color to see see, who pa who, and good good study, day day up and so on. These Chinglish are accepted by us and usually used by us in our daily life.
Frankly speaking, if you speak Chinglish, nearly all Chinese can understand. We are used to it as our oral English. But it may be very funny or sometimes confused for the foreigners as written English. Some of the translation in Chinglish will make me laugh too. For example, “long time no see.” I think if you can speak good Chinglish, you are not afraid to express your general meaning. But at the same time I think it should be more formal as written English.
Chinglish is funny, we are all familiar with “Give colour to see see”, “long time no see” and so on. Last Monday, one of my classmates used “little three” to describe the other woman come between a couple. All the people present laughed. Chinglish is everywhere in China, sometimes we do not realize when we use it. For example, we usually say “drink tea”, “chicken leg”.
Mentioning Chinglish remains me one thing. There’s a station in the subway call “Jiang Nan Xi”, sometimes it was translated into “Jiang Nan West”. I often wonder it should be translated into “Jiang Nan West”, or “Jiang Southwest”, or “River Southwest”.
It is very interesting to write and read the Chinglish. It is somehow of the Chinese culture features, more easier for the Chinese to understand. When compared with the same meaning writen in English, Chinglish is written in a Chinese logic way. For example, Chinglish prefers to express the guidance in the form of a request rather than an order. What is more , when asking people to do or not to do something, Chinglish gets used to explain the reasons first and then the request followed. While in English, people would tell you the request first and give the reasons later.
a student wrote a diary named “an accident ”with the content as below
“one car come,
one car go,
two car bang bang,
two man die,
I saw ha ha ha ha”
It is very interesting that a non-native people learn to a new language. There are many expressions which seems not so suitable, for the non-native people usually use his own way of language expression to express a new language. We should forgive this phenomena, for they don’t know the context of the language.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
“LONG TIME NO SEE” IS AMERICAN SLANG, NOT CHINGLISH
Someone says ‘long time no see ‘is a chinglish , but I think is a good sentence to use , especially in china , to some extent , it is a contribution to enrich English . In my opinion, in china, as long as to express and understand the meaning between both sides, whether the item is native or not is not important.
I once saw four different translates for a road: East 2nd Ring Rd, E. 2nd Ring Rd, 2nd RINGROAD(E) and Two Ring E.Rd. The question is, which one is right? That road is the 2nd express ring of a city.
In my viewpoint, the chief goal of language is communication, which enables us to exchange information with each other. Therefore, Chinglish is fine if there is no barrier to commutation.
First of all, as the universal language in the world, it is inevitable that various dialects should be derived from formal English since there are huge numbers of people who speak English suffusing every corner of the world. The non-speaking English countries own their characteristic while speaking English. For Example, most Japanese have their Japan-glish, however, it does not handicap the communication between them. As we all known, majority of Indian often acquire a curious hybrid accent, called Hinglish, but for the reason that there are a great number of Indian engineers who speak hinglish spread all over the world, Hinglish become popular and it is said that the Indian accent will come out in the TOEFL exam in the future.
Further, a language could evolve since it can perform tolerate other language, absorbing the advantage of other culture. For instance, “Kungfu”, a Chinese word, has become a formal English word and it became famous topics in many Hollywood movies. And “Long time no see”, a Chinglish, is also a formal international English expression since 1994, and turned up in the recent popular movie, Avatar, whose the original line is “what is going on brother, long time no see”. Because of tolerance, English becomes more wide spread all over the world.
Finally, it is unavoidable that Chinese students use Chinglish While they are practicing oral English. The behavior that prohibit students from speaking Chinglish could lead to negative influence, such as adverse effect on communicative activities, or even they are afraid of speaking out to keep from make mistake.
In conclusion, the priority of language is communication. And to most people, learning English is not to become a compere or an announcer but for communication.
Chinglish Complaining tel.
English: Customer service telephone
Chinglish: When you leave car, please turn off door and window, take your valuable object.
English: Be sure to lock your doors and windows and take all valuables with you.
Chinglish: Don’t forget to take your thing.
English: Don’t forget your personal belongings.
Chinglish: X Bank Shaoguan Cent Company
English: X Bank Shaoguan Subsidiary
Chinglish: Many Function Hall
English: Multifunctional Hall
Chinglish: Crippled restroom
English: Public toilet for the disabled
Chinglish: To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty.
English: Caution – slippery path.
Chinglish: confirming distance.
English: keep space when driving.
Refer to Chinglish; I would like to share two examples with you. The first one is “good good study, day day up”, I heard this from my classmate who lived with a foreigner, she said that one day when she was watch a famous TV program her doormat came back and asked her what was she watching, she blurt out “good good study, day day up”, her doormat confused. The another one is “no entry no peacetime”, this one is come from one door sign of our capital airport, when foreigners see this may do not understand, in fact, this means “Emergency Exit”.
There are many funnier Chinglish on the restaurant signs, such as “4 Glad Meatballs”, “man and wife lungslice” and “Chicken without sexual life”. Or even some funnier Chinglish in our daily life like “you ask me, me ask who?”
Chinglish as a language, I think it is also OK when it does not make misunderstand, however, as above mentioned, it confused many foreigners, and make many funnies.
Language is used to express our meanings and let others know what we are thinking. From this point of view, English and Chinglish both are useful as long as it can send the information.
To some extent, English can carry more information than Chinglish. Meanwhile, English is much more popular and formal than Chinglish. Therefore, we should try our best to use English as often as possible.
The most widely used Chinglish nowadays might be “good good study, day day up” and “people mountain people sea”. The former is a slogan for children, encouraging them to study hard so that they can make improvement. The latter translates from a Chinese idiom directly one word by one word, which means there are a lot of people. But the most impressive Chinglish I have ever seen is in a restaurant in Guangzhou, which is “careful slipping”. In English it means “caution wet floor”.
The most famous Chinglish sentence I have ever heard is “long time no see”. In English, we would say” it has been a long time since we met each other. It is very funny sometimes when we come up with some Chinglish. In some sense, a statement would become as useful as the orthodox ones if everyone is familiar with it.
Chinglish: a time sex thing
English: disposable product
An interesting and useful topic! As we all know large amounts of Chinglish became prevalent among our Chinglish speakers, such as “good good study, day day up”, “people mountain people sea”, “tiger tiger makes powerful” and so on.
As we study English just use to pass the exam in the old education system, this generation of us especially we mainland students are always mute English speakers. We can pass the CET-4 and CET-6 easily as long as we do a lot of practice, but once we have the opportunity to speak to others with English we always try to translate Chinese to English in the Chinese thinking mode.
However, although Chinglish maybe cause misunderstanding even ambiguity, if we have the courage and confidence to open our mouth and practice more we will close to our dream of speaking English like a native speaker.
It’s an exciting thing that we recognize the importance of English, we should pay more attention to Chinglish use in some specific occasions, especially in the public signs and public media. It represents the image of our nation, we should be careful use them.
EDITOR’S NOTE: SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
/I still remember when I was in high school, my classmates always take “I will give you some colour to see see.” as pet phrase. Although there are mistakes in it, everybody will laugh when hear this sentence and everybody can understand what it is meaning. I think this is the typical Chinglish. Foreigners who don’t know Chinese will not understand the meaning. Sometimes, it is quite funny and can cement good relationships of each other. Sometimes, it can cause misunderstanding. So it is better for us to learn native language when we want to communicate with foreigners.
I love chinglish! I find it very interesting! Maybe you still remember the sentence “good good study, day day up”, “go slowly”, “welcome again” etc, these phrases became popular as soon as they first time appeared. Chinglish is English with a character of Chinese, it can express our meanings more exactly. However, I should they that if we want to learn English well, we should be stricter with ourselves. We can discover lots of errors of English spelling or grammar in restaurant, shopping mall etc, and such the phrase “welcome again”. Besides these, there exist many culture differences between China and U.S. For example, several years ago I saw a restaurant translated the name of a dish “童子鸡” into “young chicken without sex”, I don’t think this translation is wrong, but it really sounds strange! We can find many other interesting sentences. For example, “we two who and who”, “How are you, how old are you?” and so on. These reflect a kind of humor of Chinese.
Generally speaking, Chinglish may be caused by the Chinese linguistic logic. Sometimes it maybe produce dire consequences. It is a common phenomenon during the Olympic Games in Beijing. Some restaurants have English menus, but the translations are ridiculous.
Chinglish: Vegetable box
English: Stir-fried Crispy Cake Stuffed with Vegetable
Chinglish: Dry Ox River
English: Dry-fried Rice Noodle and Sliced Beef
Chinglish: Husband and Wife’s lung slice
English: Beef and Ox tripe in chili sauce
Chinglish :You see or not? Sit down see or go out talk!
English: Do you want to watch it or not? If you want, sit down to watch it. If you want to talk, then go outside to talk.
Another funny thing is people may understand English in Chinese way, like once I heard a story—
A man was filling an application form, and he saw “sex”(means “gender”in this case)in the form .Then he put “once a week”.
I rarely notice the English written in public places. It’s only for the foreigners. I think if the sentences can convey the right meaning, without grammar mistakes and misspellings, it doesn’t matter whether it’s native or not. Even the Google translating instrument would make Chinglish translation quite often. China is not an English-speaking country; you can’t require everybody to use native English. The same phenomenon exits in Japan, Malaysia, etc. However, if the English written in public fail to convey the right meaning, that would be horrible.
I think chinglish is very funny. Sometimes you will not know the meaning of the chinglish if you are not Chinese. For an example
Chinglish: He is made to wear a green hat
English: He is a cuckold.
Chinglish: Here comes the car. You go first, please.
English: Here comes the car. After you.
Chinglish: It’s ten o’clock. Get up, lazy worm!
English: It’s ten o’clock. Get up, lazy bones
Chinese TV stations told to stop using English phrases
By Chen Jia and Zhao Yinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-07 07:40
BEIJING – TV viewers may no longer be able to hear English abbreviations, like “NBA” (National Basketball Association), from mainland broadcasters.
China Central Television (CCTV) and Beijing Television (BTV) confirmed to China Daily on Tuesday that they had received a notice from a related government department, asking them to avoid using certain English abbreviations in Chinese programs.
The channels, however, did not reveal exactly how many English abbreviations are listed in the notice.
The Hangzhou-based Today Morning Express reported on Tuesday that a number of provincial television stations have also received the notice.
Broadcasters and journalists have been asked to provide Chinese explanations for unavoidable English abbreviations in their programs, the report said.
The notice not only limits the use of English abbreviations in sports news, but also in economic and political news. Abbreviations such as “GDP” (gross domestic product), “WTO” (World Trade Organization) and “CPI” (consumer price index) will also be substituted with their Chinese pronunciations, it said.
The country’s top watchdog on television and radio, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, refused to comment.
The move comes after a growing number of national legislators and political advisors called for preventive measures to preserve the purity of the Chinese language.
“If we don’t pay attention and don’t take measures to stop mixing Chinese with English, the Chinese language won’t remain pure in a couple of years,” said Huang Youyi, editor-in-chief of the China International Publishing Group and secretary-general of the Translators’ Association of China.
“In the long run, Chinese will lose its role as an independent linguistic system for passing on information and expressing human feelings,” he told China Daily in an earlier interview.
According to his proposal, all documents and speeches of top government officials should be written in pure Chinese, without the use of English abbreviations such as GDP, WTO or CPI.
His proposal also noted that a law or regulation should be introduced to serve as a guideline for the use of foreign words in domestic publications, and that a national translation committee should be set up to translate foreign names and technical terms, which can then be published on a website.
The restricted use of English abbreviations on Chinese television programs has provoked a debate among scholars.
“It makes no sense to introduce a regulation to prevent the use of English in the Chinese language in the face of globalization,” Liu Yaoying, a professor at the Communication University of China, said on Tuesday. “It is cultural conservatism.”
“If Western countries can accept some Chinglish words, why can’t the Chinese language be mixed with English?”
The Singaporean newspaper New Straits Times and London’s Daily Telegraph both used Chinese Pinyin Lianghui in their reports about the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, rather than using English to paraphrase the proceedings.
Governments of some Western countries have also attempted to preserve the purity of their languages.
For example, France is a country known for its linguistic pride. Its government outlaws advertising in English and mandates a 40 percent quota of French songs on the radio, according to a Christian Science Monitor report.
Chinglish is a common scene. For a person who grows up in China and speaks Chinese everyday, he is apt to make sentences in Chinese way. So when he learn another foreign language, it is natural
that he will make the sentences somewhat like Chinese. If an American tries to learn Chinese, I believe he will also do the same thing and make the American Chinese. The best way to avoid Chinglish may be to communicate more often with foreign people.
Some Chinglish was created intentionally for fun. For example, “You don’t bird me and I won’t bird you” is a Chinese slang (means if you don’t respond to me, I won’t ask you any longer) that changed into English look. I have heard of a story which I am not sure whether it is true. There was a manager who knew a few English words but liked to use them. One day, his assistant asked him if he were going to attend a meeting held in India on the next day. After getting an order of “Go ahead”, the assistant made it into schedule at once. And then, he booked passenger tickets and got luggage ready, which was seen by the manager. The manager was angry and fired the poor man who had mistaken the order “Go a head” with “Go ahead”. Well, “Go a head” is the manager’s Chinglish which means “Of course I won’t go” and pronounces “Qu ge tou” in Chinese.
I don’t realize that there are so many Chinglish in our life until now. And I also read some of the comments above, in which there are many funny Chinglish mentioned. All of which just reminds me your words as follows on the lecture given at the very beginning of this semester, “ If someone (an announcer of CCTV9, I just forget his name) can speak Chinglish in CCTV, why can’t you? Chinglish is so good.” So whatever Chinglish or English, just speak it out, that’s the most important thing.
We have learnt English for nearly 12 years, but just a few of us can speak idiomatic English. As for me, the most important thing is not what we learn, but how we use. Because we are lack of English speaking environment so we create the things such as Chinglish. It can be seen as a comment phenomenon but it also must be take serious. We are represented the new generation of intelligence and capability, so Chinglish will make us inflexible and weak in the competition of international market. I think there are a lot of methods to improve English, for example, reading English newspaper, watering movies and imitate the conversations of the films and so on. If we can make up our minds to change the attitudes toward learning and using English, we can say “Bye” to chinglish in the near future.
This is a very common phenomenon in China. Chinese make this mistake easily. The most familiar example is “good good study, day day up “. This translation is very easy to remember and we use it frequently.
In my opinion, CHINGLISH is acceptable in the case that we know the correct translation. We should use it just for funny or convenience. If not, we may not want to learn the correct translation. If that, we should not accept CHINGLISH.
Actually, I have not seen much translation in Chinglish. I first heard “Chinglish” in your class. Later, I understood what the meaning of the word is. I also learned that the English I am always saying is Chinglish. But you said that it’s ok to speak Chinglish. It’s wonderful. Just now, I also saw the news that English phrases are banned on CCTV. It’s difficult to say that this measure is good or not. We most Chinese have been used to these English abbreviations. In real life, changes will not as obvious as expected I suppose.
Languages are always developing. Perhaps we see today Chinglish, tomorrow becomes English.
For me, the key now is to be brave enough to speak English or at least Chinglish.
Long time no see used to be Chinglish, but it was absorbed by English, then it is to be American slang. There is also another Chinglish, like “good good study, day day up”. English is a language which is universal around the world for its pardon to other cultures. Many English words are exotic, which came from French, Latin and other language. So, as a result of English pardon, there will be more and more Chinglish to be English in the near future.
Referring to Chinglish, a very popular pet phrase among our classmates in senior high school suddenly occurred to me. Here it goes, “I fule you”, which means “I submit (yield ,bend) to you .” In our daily lives, using Chinglish can be a fashion sometimes. English words are mixed with Chinese or used in Chinese way, it can make many funny stories.
There is another Chinglish or misused English expression I want to shared here. Once in a Beijing West Mountains Park, I saw a warning board go like this, “Be careful of your children.” In fact, its original meaning should be “Take good care of your children.”
Language is used for communication. So I think it doesn’t matter your English is standard or not. A foreigner who doesn’t speak Chinese so well can make himself/herself understood. That’s enough.
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A style of speaking English by native born Chinese people, that is formed by the natural differences in our languages. Certain fundamental differences are difficult to overcome, even if the speaker is highly educated. Simple things can come into play, from the fact that the Chinese word for he and she is the same word, “TA”, to the lack of any “V” sound in their entire language. My message on Chinglish is: It should be conserved. It shouldn’t be treated as a cheap joke for foreign tourists to laugh at but as a cultural treasure.Chinglish is already being used by millions of people to communicate with one another.
I think it would be better if the slogans and notices should be written in a more precise way as if it is spoken by the native speakers. As for me, I’ll appreciate for seeing familiar Chinese notices when aboard.
Apart from the correct way of translation, sometimes it is fun to see the mix of two languages. Just like Sushi, Dim Sum, they have been translated into English but still keep their original pronunciation and meaning. In Hong Kong, we can always see the Hong Kong style English or the English style Cantonese, such as a different pronunciation for bus and toast.
There is a famous tourist attraction located in downtown Guangzhou. You may know it because the structure is conveying a feel of Canton, and it is very delicately decorated. Apart from appreciating the architecture there, you can also have an insight of daily life of Cantonese people in the past. After reading this, you may guess that what I am talking is the Chan Clan Academy; you are right if you think this way. However, you may find it kind of difficult to locate the exact position when you get near the spot, because there are several different translated name of it, namely Chen Clan Academy, Chen’s Lineage Hall, Ancestral Temple of the Chen Family and so forth.
Next time you bring a friend to this place, remember that all the names mentioned above actually refer to the same thing. I am sure you will never get lost again.