Talk:Chinglish

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)

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)

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)

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)