Chinglish 101

One more week of school till the summer holidays! Hooray! For two months, we will have lives again! We'll go places and see things and BLOG again on a regular basis!

The other day, I was on the bus on my way to see my Chinese friends. While stopped at a traffic light (without my camera), I noticed a sign that read something like this: You want to learn English speak? All the time you dine interior of this restaurant, you get coupon to give you 50% discount to make more fun to English speak make here and your friend.

Hmm, would that be 50% off the food or the English lesson? Let's hope the food is better than the grammar.

I've decided to give you all regular lessons in a very commonly spoken language in China -- Chinglish. Its definitely easier to learn than Mandarin and you can look up the complete definition in Wikipedia.

Chinglish (also Chingrish) (simplified Chinese: 中式英语; traditional Chinese: 中式英語; pinyin: zhōng shì yīng yǔ) is a portmanteau of the words Chinese andEnglish and refers to spoken or written English which is influenced by Chinese^[1]. There are an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English in the People's Republic of China^[2].

The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory connotations^[3]. The terms "Chinese English" and "China English" are also used, mostly in the academic community, to refer to developing Chinese varieties of English^[4] .

Today's lesson however, will be about very important words you should teach children to say in English. Flash cards are a very effective tool in that they help one to link the visual to the spoken, sparking the imagination and helping to reinforce such things as spelling. When looking to buy your own 'Chinglish' flash cards, make sure your set includes important words such as the following:

Will be seen in Transformers 3 -- the cousin of Optimus Prime.

I thought my mum made this one up...guess I was wrong.

So I looked this character up and h`ao means one of three options: day of the month; (suffix used after) name of a ship; (ordinal) number. Seems like they 'missed the mark' on this one...

I do believe it's meant to be 'forceps'. Note to self, if this is what they think forceps are, never have a baby in China!

a

Almost! Props for trying to use your vocabulary but actually the character simply means 'ape'.

Dick said, "Look Dora! There is a Red Ball on the train tracks! Shall I retrieve it?" (and the irony of the situation is that the character has nothing to do with trains, balls, or being red...)

Extremely important for your children to know if they intend to go to school in America.

Someone tore the page with the word "electrograph" out of my dictionary. A good rule of thumb is, if you can't find the word you are looking for in your dictionary, make one up!

Again, when you're 8 years old and learning English, very handy to know.

Because if you teach them the word 'donkey', we wouldn't be able to laugh at them when they come to the West to use their 'Chinglish'.

Consider this a plea to anyone thinking of a career change. If you can speak English, China needs you.