Chinglish & Englese

3.15.2008

"Then he grabbed his briefacase," Sixiao messes up a word.

"Brief-uh-case?" I tease.

"Haha, whoops. Chinese moment!" she laughs.

Sho has been here for long enough and speaks Chinese often enough to slip and say a bit of "Chinglish" every now and then. I heard this term at work. "You must help the students improve their Chinglish!" the foreign teachers' manager repeatedly repeats. [No really, she repeatedly repeats things more repetitively than anyone I have ever known. Or anyone I know for that matter. She's so repetitive!]

So if the Chinese commit the sin of speaking Chinglish, the English commit the crime of...

"Englese?" Sho offers. Collin & I laugh. "Englese." Definitely.

We are earnestly trying to learn Chinese while we are here. As we approach the 1 month ticker mark [can you believe that?] my Chinese vocabulary consists of:

-Ni hao! (Hello!)
-Zaijian (Goodbye)
-Xiexie (Thank you)
-Bukeqi (You're welcome)
-Zuo (Left)
-Yao (Right)
-Dui (Correct)
-Bu (No)
-Gan bei (Bottom's up)
-Hen hao (Very good)
-Wo shi lao shi (I am a teacher)
-Mei Guo (America)
-Ma fan ni (May I trouble you?)
-Fu yuan (Waiter, bartender, server)
-Di tie (Subway)
-Hu tong (Old street/buildings)
-Counting from 1-99 [Once you learn 1-10, 11-99 is simple.]

Oh and I almost forgot:
-Wo bu ai lao tou (I do not love old heads). [Long story].

Alright, so I have my little base of words. Not bad for a few weeks, right? Yeah, well the problem is this: PRONUNCIATION. If you are learning English and you say the word a bit off, you might still be understood. Example: someone approaches you and asks where the "toiret" is. Chances are, you are going to correctly direct them to the toilet (especially if they look distressed). In Chinese, there is so much emphasis on tones that to pronounce a word or syllable with the wrong tone means you are saying an entirely different word. Couple that with the fact that many Chinese tones are sounds that we've never heard before in our life. The result? Englese.

Collin and I exchange Englese stories almost daily. We try to explain something to our students using a Chinese word and they stare at us blankly. After a moment of awkward silence, a student (sometimes) figures it out then translates to the class. From our point of view, err, point of hearing, the word we just said sounds just like the word the student repeated. But us saying it equals complete confusion and the student saying it provides complete comprehension.

Example: Collin said to my students, "... and then we went to the di tie." [Pronouncing it dee-TEE-uh]

Perplexed faces. "Subway?" he attempts. Nothin.

"Oh, oh, oh...." a student finally says. "Di tie." [Pronouncing it DE-tee-eh]

We gave each other a quick glance. "That's what he said!" we're both thinking.

Sometimes we just have to write the pinyin (romanticized Chinese) on the board and hope they figure it out.

"And on Thursday, we went to Beihai Park and then ate across the street in the hutong [who- tong]," I told my class today.

"Hutong?" they repeat. No idea what I'm talking about.

"H-U-T-O-N-G." I write on the board.

"Ahhhhh, hutong!" they all say.

"That's what I just said!" I silently declare. Stupid Englese accent.


On the cab ride home from Beihai the other day, our student asked us how to say our address in order to tell the driver.

"Uhhh.. no idea," we respond.

"How do you get home?" she inquires.

"Um, we just yell 'right' and 'left' as we get close," I explained.

Then I demonstrated:

"Yao! Yao! [Yo! Yo!]" and frantically pointed my hand right.

"Zuo! Zuo! [Zow! Zow!]" and frantically pointed my hand left.

Our student looked at me, "Zow?"

"Ya. Left."

"No... left is zoo-oh."

"Then what does zow mean?"

"Morning."

The three of us burst into laughter. "You mean I have been getting in taxis and yelling 'Morning! Morning! Morning!' at them?"

We laughed about it the whole ride home; Collin mimicking me by throwing his hand left and yelling 'morning!' and then throwing his hand right and yelling 'afternoon!' Our student was extremely amused by all of this and I'm sure appreciative as well-- her foreign teachers struggle with her language as she sometimes struggles with ours.

After we got out of the cab, we giggled about it more. I had this hilarious picture of a Chinese person hopping into a cab in NYC and yelling, "Morning! Morning! Morning!" at the driver. I shared this with Collin, who said that he's sure the drivers here knew what I meant, given the context. I agreed, stating it'd probably be more like a foreigner in NYC screaming at the cabby to go "White!"

I can't help but feel as if an American driver would be slightly annoyed at the person's Chinglish. Do Beijing drivers scorn my Englese? I might never know, but I do know that I scorn my Englese. I hope that one day I can claim: "My Chinese is hen hao."