Talk:Chinglish

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Interesting article but horrifically disorganized, I hope my edits put it in better shape. There are also cases where in a probably unintentional case of irony, some sentences in the article had English that are almost as bad as Chinglish. Hopefully I remedied them as well. 24.19.184.243 06:04, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday, I posted a vitriolic comment on this page. I've removed it now because I calmed down a bit and really don't want to offend anyone anymore. Anyway, the long and short of what I said (in toned-down terms) is that we Chinese people usually won't mind having our laughable mistakes pointed out like that. We don't need anyone stepping in to hold up our dignity and rights and such. We are proud people, but we really can take a joke.

Anyway, I liked the Chinglish article and I had a really good laugh out of it. Having lived in Hong Kong since childhood, I can testify that most of its generalisations are true. --219.77.137.199 13:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Refuting some of User: mlw47 claims. Dood! if dis page is embaressement cuz der r lo "Danish-English, Swahili-English, Kudu-English..." GO WRITE THEM, I no quali (qualified) to wite dem. I have very good laugh and getting academic work done at da BEST resource I find where I can research Chinglish. So what if they are culturally relative? Stay in your own cultural territory, and let us do what is culturally relative and relevant to us. If its relevant to us its not insensitive, 'tis a RESOURCE. User: newty82 a Chinglish speaking CBC (Canadian Born Chinese)in Dunedin New Zealand.

I am half asian and half white, so I am staying within my own "cultural territory". I'd like to point out that most of your mockery wasn't even consistent with the "definition" of Chinglish on the main page (excessive use of "to"? You unnecessarily dropped verbs. You didn't vary any idiom.). Your comments are a perfect example of how this entire page is nothing more than a joke -- a joke that unfairly pokes fun at a particular culture. Cultural relativism by definition isn't NPOV. Again, I advise all of you to look at the NPOV page and to apply it's standards to this page. Furthermore, please look at blackface humor and tell me if you can see the resemblance. Mlw47

I'm not sure how "Cultural relativism by definition isn't NPOV" as you say. Could you explain, please? Do you mean "ethnocentrisim by definition isn't NPOV"? That might be closer to the truth. The purpose of this article ought not to be to make fun of errors that Chinese speakers make while learning English but simply to describe them. I haven't read it closely enough to know whether in fact it lives up to this descriptive goal. I certainly think there is a place for an article on common mistakes speakers of one language make when learning another. There really should be a companion article on "Englese," or "Engtonghua", that is on the mistakes English speakers make when learning Chinese.Interlingua 23:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I find "Chinglish", along with Spanglish and Engrish, racist and hardly POV. Ridiculing someone's poor grasp of English (a very difficult language to learn) is heavily ethnocentric and definitely NOT POV. -- goatasaur

I had my undies in a bunch over the term "Chinglish" as well -- until I came to China to teach English and had my students use the term routinely (to my intense shock at the time). Since then I've relaxed a lot. I recommend you do the same.

The fact is that English spoken by non-English speakers is often incorrect and is often quite humourous to native speakers. This is not racist. It is natural and normal. And, I might add, the people who listen to my mangled Putonghua (Mandarin) here in China also chuckle and laugh a lot as well. The key to knowing if it is "racist" or not is to know if it is good-natured ribbing or malicious laughter. I know when I boggle at the wonderful Chinglish (there's that nasty word again -- someone burn the heretic!) that surrounds me daily, my laughter is quite good-natured. I also suspect that the people who giggle when I ask to sell something (when I really mean to buy) are doing it in good humour and, nonetheless, appreciate my attempt to communicate in their native language, no matter how badly I botch the job.

For the specific word in question here, I'd say that "Chinglish" is a perfectly good word. It describes a subset of Engrish that is uniquely Chinese in origin. The kind of error that someone from China makes when speaking (or writing) English is unique to both the culture and the language of the Chinese people. Using broader (and more clinical) terms both obfuscates the style of error and, to my mind at any rate, reduces the desirable humour component.

Perhaps its time to throw off the shackles of Calvin and Luther and stop searching desperately for sin and offense. What do you say? -- Michael 14:10 19 May 2003 (UTC)

I say that you should learn to write with a less arrogant and self-righteous tone. Poor references, by the way. Mlw47

Chinglish sounds no offensive to me, but the definition does a little, "poor or 'broken' English", eh, sounds like Chinglish needs to be fixed(as Tan says in her book)? We use that a lot. :O BTW, are these Chinglish:

• Good good study, day day up.(i believe it's from Mao's saying)
• Show him some color to see see. :p

do they make sense to you English speakers?--FallingInLoveWithPitoc 06:46, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think "long time no see" is from Chinglish, or is it?--Liuyao 01:12, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Long time, no see" is from the spoken Cantonese 好耐冇見 (hou2 noi6 mou5 gin3). If anyone believes that is qualifies as Chinglish then please add it. IMHO, most sources take each character totally out of context when breaking down the compound; the following is my interpretation: 好 - very (in this context); 耐 - long time (as in requiring patience--耐心); 冇 - used for negation; 見 - see. --UTSRelativity 05:35, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There is another common mistake by non-native, but usually fluent, speakers--"Go eat cookie" instead of "Go eat a cookie", for example. Can somebody who knows how or if the missing article is grammatically wrong add it to the article? (Pun intended)

Since the term "Chinglish" has no racist connotations, I think you're mistaken about it being racist. And you're confusing POV with PC, a quality which is not as far as I know actively sought after by Wikipedia or its editors. Ninuor 15:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

On the contrary, non-NPOV (non-neutral point of view, the term goatasaur was looking for) articles are explicitly mentioned as not desirable. See "NPOV". NPOV is "absolute and non-negotiable". This page is clearly ethnocentric and is biased. The point of this page is to ridicule and not to inform. Mlw47

You may improve this page as you like, and if you think it warrants deletion, you may put it on VfD. — Image:Ca-on-sb.gif  UTSRelativity (Talk)  03:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Chinglish and Pidgin 2 How to Avoid Writing Chinglish 3 Produce of China 4 Waiting will be prosecuted? 5 I Can't Believe What I'm Reading 6 Person from Hong Kong viewing this passage 7 Ding = strongly agree? 8 He/she pronoun confusion worth mentioning? 9 The City Bank Apartment Hotel picture 10 Everybody Calm Down 11 Mixture of Chinese and English 12 Republic of China on Taiwan/in Taiwan 13 Examples 14 Welcome to 15 Good One.

[edit] Chinglish and Pidgin

Was pidgin really Chinglish? I don't know much about the original Chinese pidgin, but I think a pidgin in general is more of a composite language (e.g. Singlish?) than a bad form of one language (Chinglish definitely being "bad English"). Markalexander100 06:37, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, it was just an insult. --Menchi 06:42, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

But why would comparing bad English to good pidgin be an insult? Markalexander100 06:45, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That persistent and common misconception that non-standard dialects of English are "substandard". --Menchi 07:06, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How to Avoid Writing Chinglish

I cut this section, since it's not really encyclopedic; we're here to describe, not to give advice. The other recent changes are good, though. :) Markalexander100 06:47, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Agreed and respected. --DF08 07:13, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Produce of China

Isn't "Produce of China" actually perfectly correct English when denoting a bottle of wine? I suggest we remove this from the list. Ninuor 02:08, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm just going to go ahead and remove it. You'll find it in the history if you miss it. Ninuor 14:40, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Waiting will be prosecuted?

• Waiting will be prosecuted. = No parking. <--- No, "waiting will be prosecuted" means that you will be prosecuted if your caught waiting. This is just an idiom. For example, I don't think the direct Chinese translation of "It's raining cats and dogs" would go over smoothly. Why highlight this difference at all except to poke fun? In Spanish, if you say "Como el burro que tocó la flauta," which translates to "Like the burro that played the flute," you'd be saying something like "By a stroke of luck" in English. What are you trying to elucidate for the public here? -mlw47

I've seen this a lot in Hong Kong, and it kind of makes sense, especially if you get the meaning of what the Chinese characters say. It's possibly another way to say no parking, but I find it's not really Chinglish.

OK...the sentence seems to come from: 停車等候會被撿控(Usually it is a zone where you can stop for a while to load or unload your car but not a zone for you to stop and wait for your date.) I have not heard this before but I do hear the phrase Smoking will be prosecuted a lot more often. MythSearcher 14:49, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I Can't Believe What I'm Reading

This page is an embaressment. I can't believe this hasn't been taken down yet. This page is ethnocentric and it is not neutral. Why aren't there Danish-english, Franco-english, Swahili-english, Kudu-english pages? Why isn't there a page highlighting how American's bastardize French when they talk, or how the Finns can't enunciate all of the phonemes in Hindi? All of these transliteration problems really are not worth documenting since they are matter-of-fact errors that are culturally relative and culturally insensitive. As such, I question the intent of this page and all similar like transliteration-error pages. This is disguised racism, which is deplorable, or at least, blatant ethnocentrism, which is undesirable. I call for this page to be quashed. -mlw47

• • Why aren't there those others? I don't know - why don't you write them. The ones involving non-English languages? That's because this is the English Wikipedia. If you want an article on how Americans screw up French, go read the French Wikipedia. And these are more than just "transliteration problems" (in fact, by and large they're not transliteration problems but translation problems caused by first-language interference) - Chinglish (in al its variants) is a distinct English variant with coherent and predictable grammatial, phonetic, and syntactic structures. As such, this article is just as valid as one on American English, Carribean Patois, Tok Pisin, Singlish, Engrish, or any other structured variant of English. Now stop being a dick.--61.218.55.27 02:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

This page exists because, unlike Finnish variants of Hindi, as the above user stated, Chinese English has developed into a very extensive system. There is a long, recognized history of interactions between the languages. As the below user and many others note, "Chinglish" is widely acknowledged by ethnic Chinese/Chinese citizens. It is not racist but merely documenting a wide-spread phenomenon with many factors of influence in the interaction between the world's most populous linguistic-ethnic group and the world's most prominent international language. --Dpr 03:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Person from Hong Kong viewing this passage

To anyone that does not come from chinese speaking culture,

The word chinglish is not racist and in fact is quite commonly used in Hong Kong by english speakers esp. teachers.

To those who is from chinese speaking culture,

This is a warning of how bad our english is and meaning it should be improved.

Chinglish is not racially charged because the part Ching is from the Chine or Chin part of Chinese, not from the racially charged noun Chink.

BTW, the example on top about OK lah is actually Cantonese-English, not particularly Singlish and seen more often in Hong Kong.

MythSearcher 12:04, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The likes of OK lah are also no stranger to Singaporean English. --Dpr 03:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• I'm Cantonese-Chinese and I was literally on the floor wetting myself when I read this article! I don't think it's racist or derogatory. I think such articles point out certain things that will make those who commit such errors in speech and translation to improve themselves. --Charlie Huang 【正矗昊】 15:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

On the Chinese pronounciation of "Clinton": The Cantonese/Hong Kong pronunciation "Hak lum dun" is in fact choosen by the press. Most English-proficient locals would agree that it is not even close to the English pronounciation, the reason- I.M.H.O., is that we want the trans-pronounced name to sound nice when spoke with the local tongue.

The "hak lum dun" pronunciation is because the transliteration comes to Cantonese via the standard Mandarin transliteration, which is pronounced kelindun.--59.121.192.235 10:02, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, we sometime give special Chinese names for people who was named in another language, for example, the former British Colony Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patterson, we named him Pang Dian-Hon: "Pang" is from the first sound of his family name; "Dian" from the second sound, but this came from the Chinese term "Ong-Dian" from "Ong-Lok, Wun-Dian" meaning "peaceful and stable (society)"; "Hon" from "Kine-Hon" meaning "having good wellbeing". It was our wish what he would bring to Hong Kong during his time of office.

Also, these Chinese names we give to Westerners are usually made of three Chinese characters, which is common for Chinese names. The Chinese version is not necessary derived from the entire Western-name, for example, Hillary Clinton's (the former First Lady and wife of President Bill Clinton) Chinese name is from "Hillary"

If we cannot come up with a Chinese name we use the "Given-dot-Family" form, "Bill Clinton" would become "Bay Lay (DOT) Hak Lum Dun".

May I add: "Cambridge" (Famous university in England) is named "Guim-Keu" (Sword-bridge) in Chinese by scholars who attended there, not that the bridge resembles a sword, but it sounds great!

[edit] Ding = strongly agree?

       for today, when chinese people use "ding" on internet mostly means 
       "Strongly agree, most appreciated"

Maybe so in mainland China, but most certainly not in Hong Kong/Cantonese. 202.66.156.117

Right. but I don't understand the current explanation about the Cantonese meaning. Ding = stand against. So "Un-Ding-able" means... what? Can't stand against? What does "stand against" mean anyway? Stand against as in to lean against? or what? --Sumple (Talk) 05:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I believe that this phenomenon came from trivia shows on TV, where when the right answer is given, the "DING" sound is played. When the answer is wrong, "ERRRRH." Anyone gave a thought to that?--Ruthless4Life 19:43, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] He/she pronoun confusion worth mentioning?

Hey, nice work on this page, I like it. But then, I like Chinglish. The lead paragraph is a little long though. A pretty common feature of native Chinese speaker's English is (IMO) their trouble sorting out he/she and him/her, which is of course due to the fact that this distinction isn't made in spoken Chinese. I find this a particularly jarring mistake that happens even with speakers who have a great grasp of English.

Out of curiosity, is there a Chinese term for the reverse phenomenon (waiguoren speaking horrendous sounding Chinese?) And does zh: have an article on it? --pfctdayelise 06:35, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, it seems the zh: for Chinglish is "中式英語" so the opposite would be "英式中文"? Maybe "美式" for American, etc. The problem is that there are loads of Chinese who speak perfect or even better English than white people themselves (do you know WHY) but relatively few the other way, so that MOST foreigners speak horrendous Chinese. All but one of the white people I know in HK, some who have been here for 20+ years, can't manage to grasp the tones of Cantonese even though they're aware of them, whereas almost any Chinese who migrates to an English-speaking country will be able to get rid of their Chinglish within a few years. Of course there still are many English people who do speak very good Chinese if they went to a local school, or devoted some time to study it. 203.218.91.57 15:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The word for "broken English" is 蹩脚英语, which means "inferior, shoddy, lame English". Actually there are a few sites on the net that refer to 蹩脚汉语: see http://www.cqwb.com.cn/webnews/htm/2005/8/9/155161.shtml

[edit] The City Bank Apartment Hotel picture

What has this picture got to do with the subject? It doesn't seem to illustrate anything to do with Chinglish. Flapdragon 12:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The crappy translation perhaps? --Sumple (Talk) 04:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't get it. What's wrong with the translation? I mean I don't know what the Chinese means but the English is fine. Flapdragon 10:20, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh right. The caption needs changing then. The problem is that the actual name of the hotel is actually a name ("huiyin") which, literally and character by character, means "gather" "silver", which has been translated into "bank"? and "city" should be "metro" or "metropolitan", in the sense of a superfluous word meant to sound hip?

basically it's a bad translation because it translates literally (sort of) something which should not be - it's like if you translate Mao Zedong literally character-by-character into "Hair Irrigate East" (something like that)? --Sumple (Talk) 12:10, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, but I don't see how anyone could have got that without a goood knowledge of Chinese! Also, it's not clear what the translation should have been -- this could just be excused as a free translation, and who says the English name has to be an accurate translation of the Chiense one anyway? Given that there are several more striking examples illustrated -- in fact the article is perhaps overburdened with pictures -- I still don't see how this one is necessary. Flapdragon 12:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

True. I can't think of any way that the sloppy translation can be explained in the space of a reasonable caption. --Sumple (Talk) 00:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've removed the picture, hope you agree. Flapdragon 17:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Everybody Calm Down

C'mon people. The Chinglish entry is funny and for real. Nobody is making fun of anybody and nobody is being a racist. Why is this such an issue? This is a real and very common part of our culture so it is what it is. If it isn't then you would not see Chinglish anywhere. Lighten up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by D-dawg (talk • contribs) 05:50, June 4, 2006.

[edit] Mixture of Chinese and English

I thought there is another form, which, for example, goes like this... someone says he went to the zoo. He goes "昨天, I 去 Zoo.　那边 have 很多很多 animals." Isn't Chinglish like this?--Tdxiang 06:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I think "Yesterday, I go Zoo. There have many many animals." qualify better. would better qualify as Chinglish. --Kakurady 02:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

No. It is a mixture of Chinese and English. ColourBurst 22:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It is called Mixed code, not chinglish if you actually have chinese characters within the sentence. MythSearcher 03:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I have to admit that this Chinglish article is funny, but only at the beginning. The section about "Examples of Chinglish expressions" is totally bs(excuse my language) and outdated... I don't know how many times has the author been to China, or how much does he/she know about China, but as for me, I was born in China but grow up in the States, and I visit China at least once a year. To tell the truth, I've seen similar expressions back 7 or 8 yrs ago, but not recently. Maybe what you see or hear in China isn't perfect, but definitely not as dumb as this article says. So, for the sake of your website, please update and correct the $hit.

This is Wikipedia, and the article is written by many authors. So change it if you think it is wrong and mind your language. Also, please sign after your comment on talk pages. MythSearcher 03:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't know what parts of China you visit mate. The foreign language institute? These expressions are commonplace, even though the government is putting in a great deal of effort to eradicate it. --Sumple (Talk) 04:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Try living there a while. If you speak English there in social situations, you'll quickly find the truth of this article. I can say that with 100% certainty having lived full-time in the region for the past 3 years rather than paying the occasional visit.--59.121.192.235 09:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Republic of China on Taiwan/in Taiwan

I'm not 100% on this, so I'm putting it in Talk for now. AFAIK, living in Taiwan, the usage of "on Taiwan" rather than "in Taiwan" isn't necessarily a misuse - often it's the result of a deliberate change in meaning, referring to Taiwan the island rather that Taiwan the "country" (note: written with the "" to try and avoid this degenerating into a country/non-country shitfight). Basically it is used sometimes to emphasize either the government-in-exile concept or the Taiwan-as-part-of-China idea (on Taiwan) rather than Taiwan as an independently functioning entity (in Taiwan). Personally I would remove it from the article, but I want to see what the consensus in here is.--59.121.192.235 09:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above. "The Republic of China on Taiwan" is an official and time-honored designation, deliberately using "on" to refer to the island in order not to make a political statement that hints at Taiwan independence. {Bubbha 10:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)}

Yes, I agree. "on Taiwan" refers to Taiwan as an island, and is not an example of Chinglish.

"on Taiwan" is Chinglish, because it employs a mode of construction unusual in English in order to achieve a political objective (as Bubbha and anon pointed out). There being a "reason" behind it does it make it non-Chinglish. Although I think the explanation relating to the expression in the article should perhaps be changed to show that it is not simply a grammatical error.

Even if it is intended to refer to Taiwan as an island, it's still Chinglish. If you wanted to refer to Britain, the island, do you say "on Great Britain" or "on Britain"? You'd make it clear by saying "on the island of Great Britain", or simply say "in Britain" and hope the listener appreciates your meaning.

Perhaps "sometimes the deliberate choice of words for political or diplomatic purposes can result in English expressions which are unusual to a native speaker..."? --Sumple (Talk) 04:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

are getting out of hand. Could someone trim them down please. 219.77.98.166 08:17, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome to

The article states that "Welcome to" causes confusion and is should be taken as meaning "Thank you". In UK English, "Welcome to" is commonly used: for example, some towns and cities have "Welcome to <city name>" at their boundaries; and some bus and train companies display "Welcome aboard <name>" signs at vehicle entrances. Is this usage confined to European English, or do other variants also understand "Welcome to" without confusion? Bazza 13:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• In English, in a phrase beginning with "Welcome to", the subsequent words must make up a noun phrase (often the name of a place or a business). For example, "Welcome to Burger King". In the Chinglish phrases, they tend to be followed by verb phrases, which is an ungrammatical construction in English: ("Welcome to ride Bus No. 33.") (59.121.188.158 10:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)}

[edit] Good One.

125.63.147.187 11:33, 4 November 2006 (UTC)Hmmmm no. Not racist methinks. Just funny. As it no doubt is when English speakers butcher Mandarin.

Here's one from the Waitomo Caves near Shenyang, which is the capital of Liaoning province in the North East. it's grammatically correct but still slightly inappropriate to the English speaker's ear...

"Please do not urinate or relieve your bowels" - At the entrance to the lower part of the caves.

Then how can we express the meaning without using potentially "bad" language? This might be a harder task than you think. --Kakurady 09:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

By using more appropriate language like "Please refrain from relieving yourself here". Though I did once see a sign in Chinese (in China) that said "Only bastards piss here." It elicited guffaws from among my Chinese travel partners! {59.121.188.158 10:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)}