'A guide to the English dialect spoken only in China.'

[Jamie_K]

Here is a funny article on the new Chinese “English”. My favorite expression in it is “Deformed Man Toilet”, which, of course Molly would say we should all accept as a valid expression.

weeklystandard.com/Content/Publi … 2vcjdb.asp

Content just isn’t that important. The goal is not to convey information in English; it is to convey that you are conveying information in English. One analogy is that some Westerners have gotten themselves engraved with trendy Chinese character tattoos. The tattoos may be gibberish, or worse, but they all mean the same thing: “I have a Chinese character tattooed on my body.” (This phenomenon–perhaps we can call it “Engese”–deserves a guidebook of its own.)

[Molly]

在它里的我最喜爱的表示是"畸形的人洗手间当然莫利将说我们全部应该作为有效的表示接受

First she’d have to understand what you, Jamie, means by “a valid expression”. What do you mean by that, Jamie?

And why would you expect Chinglish to follow only the rules of English? It is Chinglish after all. Should, say, this Yorkshire dialect example, which would be seen as comical to some of your peers, I imagine, follow your rules of English?

Seen at railway crossings in parts of Yorkshire:

“Wait while lights flash”

And see here:

Chinglish (slang) is a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English and refers to either (a) English interspersed with Chinese language errors common to those Chinese persons who are learning English or (b) Chinese interspersed with English, such as used by westernized Chinese (e.g. American-born Chinese) who are not fluent in Chinese and codeswitch English words into speech when they can’t think of the correct Chinese word.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish

[Molly]

A wider picture:

[b]Chinese Englishes: from Canton jargon to global English

Kingsley Bolton[/b]

This paper argues that one approach to the notion of ‘Chinese Englishes’ may involve the critical re–examination of a rich history of cultural and linguistic contact and language learning and teaching that runs from the early seventeenth century to the present. From a period of ‘first contact’ in 1637, this history includes the era of Chinese pidgin English from the mid–eighteenth century to the recent past, the impact of missionary schools and universities, Nationalist intiatives before 1949, and the Open Door policies of the last two decades. It also involves the consideration of the recent popularity of Li Yang, a celebrity English teacher, whose method of ‘Crazy English’ has recently been marketed to millions of followers throughout the PRC. Li Yang’s message of ‘Make money internationally’ serves to remind us that ‘pidgin’ English (typically glossed as ‘business’ English) arose during an earlier but no less crucial era of world trade and globalisation.

blackwell-synergy.com/doi/ab … 971X.00241

[Torsten]

Maybe it’s time for us to also start developing an interest for the linguistic situaation in China. For example, how popular has Mandarin become, which role does Cantonese currently play, how many Chinese speak or understand English and other European languages such as Russian or even German?