Talk:Chinglish/Archive 1

Names
"Some Chinese pick non-traditional English names. Such names may be derived from vocabulary they learned in their early English lessons, including names such as Apple, Space, Can, Sea, Mooncake, Magic, Koala, Spider, Thunder, Cloudy, Airy, Rainbow, Table, Bird, Eleven, Hifi, Ice, Puppy, Well" I have never heard of any of this in common usage at all. Also, even if this is true, why so long of a list? Next, the odds of this happening is the same as any other person choosing a unique name for their child. "Most (but not all) Chinese people living in Asia are given only Chinese names at birth, and choose their own English name at some point after they begin learning English (if they ever do). Although rare, some parents may name their child a Chinese phonetic translation of an English name, such as Suzie (Sook-Si in Cantonese), Raymond (Wai-Ming in Cantonese), Annie (On-Lei in Cantonese), Annie (An-ni or Anne in Mandarin), Joanne (Jia-An in Mandarin), Ivy (Ai-Li in Mandarin), Eileen (Yi-Lin in Mandarin), Pauline (Poh-Lin in Cantonese), Charlie (Jia-Li in Mandarin), Elaine (Yi-Lan in Mandarin), Maggie (Mei-Qi in Mandarin), Carmen (Kah Man in Cantonese), Ada (Ai-Da in Mandarin), or Joey (Jo Yee in Cantonese). This can be observed from the majority of Cantopop singers from Hong Kong adopting an English name that is somewhat a transliteration of their Chinese name as pronounced in Cantonese. For example: 陳奕迅 Chan Yik-Shun (Simplified: 陈奕迅; Jyutping: can yik seon; IPA:/'tsɐn 'jɪk 'sɵn/) is Eason Chan, 謝安琪 Tse On-Kei (Simplified: 谢安琪; Jyutping: ze on kei; IPA: /'tsɛː 'ɔːn 'kʰei/) is Kay Tse, and 容祖兒 Yung Cho-Yee (Simplified: 容祖儿; Jyutping: jung zou ji; IPA: /'jʊŋ 'tɕou 'jiː/) is Joey Yung." Can we have some standardization. A part of that is in pinyin the other is Wade-Giles. Yialanliu (talk) 03:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Top paragraph
Chinglish is not the name of a language. It is wrong to capitalize it except at the beginning of a sentence. --Roger Chrisman 19:05, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Untitled
I wreckon that Chinglish is a hilarious language! Keep it up guys and girls!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.30.148.47 (talk) 10:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

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)
 * Well the wikipedia article disagrees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Time_No_See_(Phrase)Yialanliu (talk) 03:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "Long time, no see" is from the spoken Cantonese &#22909;&#32784;&#20871;&#35211; (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:  &#22909; - very (in this context); &#32784; - long time (as in requiring patience--&#32784;&#24515;); &#20871; - used for negation; &#35211; - see. --UTSRelativity 05:35, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * No, it I strongly disagree that it originated from Chinglish (it's just a coincident that the Chinese phrase is used exactly the same way). The phrase appeared quite a long time before interaction between the two cultures would make such an influence. If I'm right, this phrase can be dated back to Shakespearean times; not quite the time when he would have spoken with Chinese... -- KelvinHO Wiknerd ( talk ) 08:32, 13 July 2008 (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. &mdash; [[Image:Ca-on-sb.gif|20px|Flag of Scarborough, ON, Canada]] UTSRelativity (Talk)  03:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

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)

This article seems to confuse the actual pidgin with the vague term "Chinglish". If the article seeks to define Chinglish as a pidgin, then it needs heavy revising. A lot of it is about common mistakes by learners of English rather than an actual definition of established syntax. If it is about the English in China, it should look more like the Engrish/ Japlish pages, and should have less categories relevant to linguistic analysis. Mark2shinshu (talk) 08:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I agree with you there, although I'm not sure that there is a consensus that "Chinglish" (whatever that really means) is a pidgin, but I will say that my hope for this page is to see it accurately describe the use of the English language in China. I think almost all of the "examples" at the end need to go. They're really just a list of unrelated errors.--Joelh (talk) 05:12, 2 July 2008 (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)

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)

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)

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)

Within the Chinese culture, English is mangled in many ways, (a) mispelled, or mispronounced words, (b) application of the Chinese grammar or idiom to English, or (c) choosing an incorrect word from a list of dictionary meanings of the original Chinese. To deride the first is unfair, racist, and denigrating. To be amused by (b) or (c) is not. In fact, publicizing Chinglish promotes cross cultural understanding. LoopTel 02:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

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!

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)


 * No. In Chinese, Ding means "to support" or "to push up". In many internet forums, when you publish your words, they will be added to the end of the topic. For example, right now, your comments are right above my comment. In other words, my comment is "supporting" or "Ding" your comments. In addition, some people may use "up" instead of "Ding". 192.174.39.232 01:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It means "bump" in forums. When you write "bump" that thread will be on top and be more visible. USER: cecikierk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.174.161.108 (talk) 04:10, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, "ding", (sometimes used as "頂" in Chinese), can mean "bump" but also to punch (upwards) with a fist or something like it, thus the offensive phrase "頂你個*". So, um, that's one of the meanings that I think 202.66.156.117 thought of hen he posted —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.176.168.217 (talk) 08:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

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

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)

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?-- Tdxi an  g  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)

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)

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

Another opinion
I don't think the number of examples are excessive. The external links cited at the end have far greater number. LoopTel 06:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Another opinion
Agreed - examples don't cite sources and appear to be a random hodgepodge of errors (for a variety of reasons, not simply interference from a Chinese L1 to an English L2) that people have spotted. I'm going to remove some conservatively and suggest that we should consider removing most of them.--Joelh (talk) 11:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

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 " at their boundaries; and some bus and train companies display "Welcome aboard " 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)}

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)}


 * "Do not throw urine around", in the men's toilet in the Orient Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai. Not a sign you see very often in western toilets, but what more can you do to make it more "appropriate"? --PalaceGuard008 03:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Two articles here.
This needs to be broken up into two articles:


 * One article on Hong Kong Pidgin, a mixture of Cantonese, English, and (to lesser extent) Portugese spoken in Hong Kong up until the middle part of the 20th century; now largely extinct. This is what produced phrases like "long time no see" and such in English.


 * Whatever is left--an article describing modern ways that Chinese speakers who are non-native English speakers speak the English language.

The former, sourced properly (and there are excellent sources on the topic), would be a fine article.

The latter might be deletion fodder... we'll see.

Thoughts?

--EngineerScotty 18:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, Chinese Pidgin English exists, but is mostly a stub. --EngineerScotty 18:56, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * An article called Hong Kong English do exist. MythSearchertalk 02:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Chinglish in Taiwan
The fact that people in Taiwan answer questions in full when they speak English is unremarkable. Native speakers of English often do this too. More importantly, learners of pretty much any language are taught to give full answers so that they can learn the grammatical pattersn better. Bubbha 11:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

google/babelfish translate?
Many of the "chinglish" sentences look like they were from Google Translate or Altavista Babelfish.

Example:

现代日本是单一民族占大多数的国家，国籍上的日本人与民族上的日本人基本倾向于相同.

becomes:

Modern Japan is the sole nationality occupies the majority the country, in on the nationality Japanese and nationality's Japanese basically favors to is same.

(source: Altavista Babelfish babelfish.altavista.com) Benlisquare 10:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

This article just seems to be a list of poor translations and English mistakes. Singlish etc are much better - this seems to be for amusement value. Secretlondon 07:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Tag
I do not see any ongoing controversies, hence I am removing the tag for an informative article. Regards Gun Powder Ma 23:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Reverse Chinglish
I have recently spotted some broken Chinese. If this becomes widespread in the next few years, it should be noted in this article as well. It was a photograph on Epoch Times showing a protester in front of the Chinese Mission to the UN. She was holding up a sign that said "China Please" and the literal translation "中国请". The English phrase is grammatically incomplete but can be understand as a plea; however, Chinese phrase doesn't make sense at all. --Voidvector 19:16, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

False information
Im freaking annoyed here... NO ONE in china uses "exter" trust me... i was born there and i travel there alot... im deleting ones i think aren right!theOne 07:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Haw
I just modified the entry for "Haw a thick soup". This is funny because the Chinese were properly using a real English word, "Haw", that is no longer understood by most English speakers. the Haw is the fruit of the Hawthorn. -Arch dude (talk) 02:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Let's make this better
I'm going to start going through this one pretty carefully, sourcing everything I can, deleting things that seem unnecessary or absurd. The Singlish page is a good model, but many of its examples aren't sourced. Let me know if you see any problems, and if you want to join in, go for it; I think this article can be improved a great deal. ---Joelh (talk) 11:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Better title?
Well, from my understanding of the word "Chinglish" meant Chinese mixed into English, such as "You are so 煩" (Can't think of better examples) and I'm sure that there'll be nicer titles than just "Chinglish"... -- KelvinHO Wiknerd ( talk ) 08:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Language humour section???
This section makes no sense to me. Most of the examples listed seem to be randomly selected phrases/chengyu translated word for word. Seriously people, pretty much ANY Chinese sentence will sound hilarious in English if you translate it word for word. I have never heard anyone say "good good study, day day up" in English for the purpose of being funny, or for any other reason. If that's a common occurrence elsewhere in the world (I'm in the US), the introductory sentence doesn't explain that. 64.178.41.22 (talk) 21:34, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I have actually heard people say this in China, but only as a joke to show how funny it sounds when translated into English. Same with "if you old three old four, I'll give you some color to see see." I'm going to go ahead and delete this section...--Joelh (talk) 04:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Second-generation Chinese language abilities
I have also heard "Chinglish" used to describe the limited Chinese spoken by many second- and third-generation Chinese immigrants, especially by and about ABCs. It's definitely distinct from what's described in the article, almost the complete opposite actually (limited proficiency in Chinese rather than English), but I haven't been able to find anything else on Wikipedia that addresses it beyond general bilingualism, language attrition, etc. There's a significant population of "heritage speakers" who talk like this, to the point where many American universities have classes designed to teach Chinese to ABCs. I saw a couple comments that sort of addressed something in the general vicinity of what I'm talking about. This might be worth a blurb somewhere. 64.178.41.22 (talk) 21:07, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What you describe is most likely code-switching, which is roughly the using of vocabularies from one language in the sentence of another language due to either lack of vocabulary or convenience. --Voidvector (talk) 08:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Right, the question is whether or not anyone else calls this type of code-switching "Chinglish"? 75.22.193.15 (talk) 03:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Eating Wikipedia
This trend deserves being reported on, preferably with photos, in the main article. Various foods being identified (obviously through a serious mistranslation) as “Wikipedia” have been appearing on restaurant menus all over China. They’ve been seen firsthand, and there’s no Photoshopping involved. One such occurrence was even pointed out by Wikimedia executive Jimmy Wales, who went as far as ordering Wikipedia with peppers, and claims that it is “delicious”! Check out these posts: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005189.html, http://ourfounder.typepad.com/leblog/2007/10/jimmy-wales-gro.html.

I really think this is too strange and funny not to be mentioned! However, if it’s determined not to be appropriate for this article, then it should at least have a place in articles addressing Wikipedia (terminology), machine translation, Chinese cuisine and/or edible mushrooms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.86.244.87 (talk) 06:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Removal without representation
I undid the removals made by a certain user - it causes the article to fail to make its point correctly. If there are any deletions that must be done, replacements need to be made. But "lobotomizing" for such "technical" reasons that are speculative themselves doesn't serve the community well. Instead, we need to make citations now... —Preceding unsigned comment added by MENDOZA I (PH) (talk • contribs) 11:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a collection of cruft. Please read WP:RS, WP:OR, WP:V, and WP:NOT. All content must be sourced, not original research, verifiable, and be within scope. Please do not add it back. ViperSnake151 22:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

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.

Better Example Needed
"They may also add various suffixes to common names, such as turning Sam into Samson."

Both "Sam" and "Samson" are used in English, although "Sam" may be more common in modern usage; "Samson" is a Biblical name.

A better example is needed.

Lack of References tag
As there are plenty of references in this article, i removed that tag. All the best--Yinandjang (talk) 18:14, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Sadly uncitable example
A friend of mine received the following correspondence from a financial services officer at a major Canadian university the other day; because it's a private communication it's not citable or I'd recommend it for use in teh article as an example of "soft Chinglish", which is increasingly common in Canadian official environments due to hiriing requiremets favouring so-called visible minorities (the institution in question is well over 50% ethnic Chinese in its student body and perhaps less than 25% so-called "European" (including actual Europeans, not white Candians that other modern ethno-speak calls "Europeans"), and certain departments like financial services are in the 80% range): ''Hi [name blanked]: This is new plan for medical/dental to undergraduate students and started spring semester 2009 on your account but you can opt-out if you don't need. The opt-out date is between Jan 5-Jan 28/2009. Please don't miss the date and if you need more informations please check up online for health plan or phone 1-555-555-5555. Thanks! Also uncitable is the way in which native English speakers will cater their use of English when speaking to Asians (which is quite annoying for those Canadians of Asian extraction who are assimilated and do not speak either Chinglish or Chinese, but perfect English). Such usages as dropping articles and pronouns and prepositions or mis-applyng plurals or un-idiomatic choices of words, as seen in this example, are increasingly common, and with many schoolteachers and university instructors not having a full command of English, some have noted non-Chinese students picking up "Chinglish" habits in their writing and speaking of English. Worth noting that Latin was increasingly "Celticized" and "Germanized" as the Roman Empire absorbed those peoples (only to eventually be run by them...), with similar changes to grammar/syntax as well as vocabulary imported/adapted by Latin as native speakrs of those languages became common in the bureaucracy and hierarchy. Unlike French, there is no "Office of the English language" and Canadian insitutions are more concerned in their hiring policies with the colour of someone's skin than their command of either official language.Skookum1 (talk) 17:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Skookum - sorry to hear that you have trouble understanding English. Keep working at it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.82.72.162 (talk) 23:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Not a neoligism.
I have removed the "neoligism" banner, because I don't think Chinglish is one any more.

"Chinglish", noun and adjective, has been a draft entry in the Oxford English Dictionary Online since Dec. 2004

"n. A mixture of Chinese and English; esp. a variety of English used by speakers of Chinese or in a bilingual Chinese and English context, typically incorporating some Chinese vocabulary or constructions, or English terms specific to a Chinese context. Also: the vocabulary of, or an individual word from, such a variety."

"adj. Of or relating to Chinglish; expressed in Chinglish."

And usages are cited dating from 1957, 1971, 1977, 1985, and 1998.

Subscribers to the Oxford English Dictionary Online can see the entry at http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00335104?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=chinglish&first=1&max_to_show=10

§piderJon (talk) 18:16, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

"Welcome you to"
I removed the claim about how difficult it is for English speakers to explain why "Welcome you to ___" is ungrammatical (originally at the end of the "Vocabulary" section). The claim "few are able to do so" might be true -- but it seems pretty unlikely to me that this can be backed up in a measurable way (and so it's not verifiable). (Anybody done a real study on this? ...) Chenel324 (talk) 02:40, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this about bad translations, English spoken by learners, both, or something else?
I feel like this entry is suffering from an identity crisis. There are a lot of different issues about English in China that could be considered here, and the entry touches on most of them without going into much useful explanation of any of them. It seems like the two main ideas of "Chinglish" represented here are "funny/bad translations on signs" and "ungrammatical/nonstandard things Chinese learners of English say when they speak it." I've tried to add more "China English" stuff reflecting the idea that English in China may be developing along the lines of something like Singlish. There are a number of other issues, like Chinese-English translation, rhetoric, the function of English in Chinese society, and the history of English in China that could be really relevant and don't have any other home on wikipedia, as far as I know. I'm going to continue to favor changing this entry to reflect a broader understanding of English in China, but I'd be very interested to hear other viewpoints. --Joelh (talk) 06:49, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

An Honest Question
There is already an article on Wikipedia with a legitimate, academic definition of the supposed phenomenon documented in this article, it's called "interlanguage". Furthermore, it seems that there is no phenomenon mentioned by this article that is not already covered by the various Wiki articles on creoles, pidgins, etc.

So what, really is the purpose of this article? Can so-called chinglish as a phenomenon be proven? I was reading an article from the "references" section of this entry (here:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?_r=1), and I came across this phrase:

"...these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language..."

I won't dispute that Chinese learners of English make mistakes when speaking English, or attempting to translate Chinese phrases into English, but are these errors "uniquely" Chinese?

That is to say, if someone was not previously aware that the source language was Chinese (whatever that means), would they be able to identify so-called chinglish, as distinct from errors made by learners of English who's native language is not Chinese? On the other side of it, would anyone be able to accurately predict the nature of the errors native Chinese speakers would make when speaking English? Furthermore, would these errors be *unique* to native Chinese speakers?

Although it may not be necessary, let me provide an example: Some Chinese children and some Spanish children are trying to learn to ride bicycles, all of the children frequently encounter various problems, including falling off their bicycles, feet slipping off pedals, et cetera. Now, imagine that these children are practicing behind a screen, so that observers can only see their shadows, would it be obvious which were Spanish children and which were Chinese children? Probably not.

Similarly, if one were not told in advance that Chinese people were making the mistakes noted in this article, or one did not see Chinese characters next to a translation in an image, would one be able to identify the errors as *unique* to Chinese people?

I find it doubtful that this would be possible, which suggests to me that rather than documenting a linguistic phenomenon, this article is simply singling out Chinese people, seemingly for the purpose of humor (note that many comments mention how "funny" the article is, and the reference article itself encourages readers to deride so-called chinglish). I feel this article serves no real academic purpose, and is certainly not worthy of documentation in any reputable, much less supposedly encyclopedic document.

Not only this article, but all the related articles (Franglais, Dunglish, Ponglish, Hinglish etc.) seem to suffer from the same basic problems, and also to be saying the same basic thing, just from the perspective of different groups of people, which seems pointless. 61.173.80.30 (talk) 01:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to say I agree almost entirely with everything said here, which is why I think it's so important to make this article better. It is true that speakers of one L1 may have different challenges or whatever speaking an L2, but culturally -- both in China and in English-speaking countries -- Chinese L1 speakers of English are frequently singled out for dubious reasons.--Joelh (talk) 05:41, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

"chinglish" as a misnomer
In the article, "chinglish" has been described as "Chinese English", "China English", and "Sinicized English". I feel each of these terms are inaccurate to the point of being misnomers in a broad sense, and useless in a narrow, or academic sense. When someone says "chinglish", are they referring to the way a speaker of one language speaks another, or to the way a member of a certain ethnic group speaks another language(English)?

The Mandarin term offered:中式英语 suffers from a similar, but not quite identical problem. It means literally "Chinese-style English". China refers to a country, and Chinese refers possibly to a nationality or ethnicity, if you accept such an indistinct definition of Ethnicity, i.e., those ethnicities found within the political region of the P.R.C.. However, Chinese cannot be held up as a "version", or "style" of English, since "Chinese" is not a language, that is to say, it is not *one* language, but can include an entire language family (the Sino-Tibetan), all of the languages and topolects/dialects spoken in the P.R.C., or only Mandarin.

It is clear from reading comments that when some people talk about "chinglish", they are referring to more than just Mandarin (I guess that would make it "mandaringlish"), but how is comparing several different languages to one language in any way definitive?

I think "chinglish" as a term is just as inaccurate/useless as "European English" or "African English". Furthermore, it tends to attempt to define the way an ethnic group, rather than speakers of a certain language speak English.

A more accurate title for this article would be:"Some examples of translation errors from Chinese to English". 61.173.80.30 (talk) 01:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Revising this Article
[the previous section was becoming a little long and hard to navigate. Also, this section may be more constructive in the long run]

@Joelh: Where material is based on legitimate research and academic material, it can be included in a section/article addressing "chinglish" as a linguistic phenomenon. Where it is based on perception and hearsay, it can be included in the section/article on "popular interpretations of 'chinglish'".

It is true that the various references used in the article give different definitions to the term they attempt to describe ("chinglish"), if the article were to be restructured, these different interpretations could simply be given their own section.

I personally am in favor of an overhaul rather than superficial or cosmetic changes to the article, as these changes seem to be detracting from the article, instead of adding to it. For example, changing the section on "Examples of Chinglish on Signs" to "Examples of Unusual English on Signs in China" does solve the problem of calling that material "chinglish", but still begs the question of what such a section is doing in an article purportedly about "chinglish".

I am more than willing to put my personal feelings about the term aside and work with others on either, or both an academic or/and popular version of the article (I'll provide my e-mail on a talk page for anyone interested). Before doing so however, I would like to know that this has the support of everyone interested in this article, and the editing of it, especially those who feel the article should not be changed, or who have very different ideas about how it should be changed, if at all.

A brief look at the history page shows that user "Pratyeka", who was, at least at one time, an administrator, started the article, and that users "Joelh" and "LoopTel" seem to be most frequently active in editing in the past year. "Keahapana" has done most of the recent editing (including undoing my edits), from his page, it seems (s)he may also have active interest in this article. While "Skookum1" seems to have never contributed to the page, he seems to have been rather active in the discussion, but, he also claims on his page to have left Wikipedia for good.

So if the article is to be changed, who is interested in making/helping to make those changes, and who is interested in keeping the article the way it is? I hope we can all come to some accord on this.61.170.231.167 (talk) 19:54, 4 September 2010 (UTC)


 * After having monitored and made small changes to this page for a couple of years, my guess is that we can go ahead with making some changes without much trouble. So I'm definitely interested in being involved. I think I said this before, but I'm in favor of turning the existing article into something that recognizes both the academic debate (is there such a thing as Chinglish / China English, what is it, etc) and the undeniably prevalent popular notion both in China and abroad (there is a lot of badly translated English in China, etc). I think currently the best choice is to rename this article "English in China," as that would cover almost anything we want to deal with here. One possible problem with that is the question of "Chinglish" in Chinese-speaking countries and regions that are not mainland China, and also at least one understanding of Chinglsh (by Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch'ien, in her book "Weird Englishes") as a Chinese-American phenomenon. For the most part, though, I think "English in China" is the way to go. --Joelh (talk) 16:53, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No, sorry to disagree. Chinglish and its usage as a word is widespread in North America, especially in centres with large Chinese populations; also in the UK, I believe, and probably Oz as well.  There might be a precedent with Chinook Jargon as used by English-language speakers or whatever that's called - even though I"m of the opinion that's a POV fork but have never come up with a solution (many Scandinavians, GErmans and also Chinese used the Chinook Jargon...and many natives who spoke it were also English-mothertongue speakers or did not at any rate speak their traditoinal languages); that's a side-tangent but maybe English as spoken by Chinese people would be more general, and much less China-specific.Skookum1 (talk) 17:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, good point. Still, I'm skeptical about using English as spoken by Chinese people for some of the reasons that have been pointed out above. Plus, "Chinese people" is a huge category that includes speakers of many languages. What about something like "Chinese English?" It gets very close to "Chinglish" and opens us up to be able to talk about English as used in China and other areas where there is a Chinese influence. As I think about this I have to say that as a shorthand, "Chinglish" is the most convenient, if not the most descriptively accurate. Anyway, the important thing here is the content of the page, I think. --Joelh (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Joelh makes a good point, but "English in China" is not useful, there's plenty of perfectly normal, perfectly proper English in China. To define "chinglish" as "English in China" implies that once you enter China, all English becomes "chinglish". Skookum1's term a different problem, which will be discussed below.

If we're going to get really technical about the title of the article, we would have to first re-analyze the term "Chinese". So many so-called Westerners still suffer from the myopic view that Chinese is a specific language, or that all people living in China speak the same language.

The term "Chinglish" ignores the different languages, dialects and topolects (dozens of mutually unintelligible languages)spoken by the over 50 different ethnic groups in China, and in fact treats them all as one single language, comparing them to the "equivalent" English. However, the Chinese government and most inhabitants of mainland China seem to be in favor of this gross misconception, so it may be a lost cause.

Ignoring, for the moment, that one glaring inaccuracy/assumption, we come to the other problem of separating the people(ethnic group), nationality, and language from each other. Until recently you could really safely assume that someone from England(nationality)would be English (ethnicity) and speak English (language), and that someone from Balavia (made up nationality) would be Balavish (ethnicity) and speak Balavian (language). But this is not the case, there is no scholarly grounds for making this assumption, especially when it comes to people who are "ethnically Chinese", who may have been born and raised in any number of countries, and may speak any number of native languages. This is the problem with Skookum1's term, it assumes that everyone who is ethnically or nationally Chinese speaks Chinese as their native language, and that none of them speak English, or some other language as their native tongue, which is inaccurate on both counts.

I personally feel the most technically accurate term for the phenomenon which "chinglish" tries to encompass is "features of English writing/speech produced by native speakers of Chinese", since we're already accepting the flawed term "Chinese". That definition/title effectively strips away the confusion of nationality and ethnicity and leaves only language, which is what "chinglish" is (or should be), a solely linguistic phenomenon. But I guess that doesn't roll off the tongue, or fit nicely on a Newspaper page, but it should certainly be included in the article. However, as Keahapana points out below, regardless of technical inaccuracy or unpleasant connotations, "chinglish" is the term that is "being used", and so the article really should use the term as its title. Fortunately, as long as the term is properly, and scientifically defined, it can also be perfectly acceptable.61.170.227.124 (talk) 13:11, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The Spurious Reasoning Encouraged by This Article
I feel the concept of "chinglish" as a phenomenon serves no real definitive purpose, at the same time that it encourages spurious reasoning and stereotypical thinking.

There is something called an interlanguage, and there is a page about it on Wikipedia, so-called "chinglish" may be an example of that, at best.

If so-called "chinglish" cannot be classified as just another dialect, pidgin, creole patois or interlanguage (for which Wiki pages already exist), then what is it? If it cannot be classified linguistically and most dictionaries don't even include an entry of the word, then why is there a Wiki page regarding it?

I feel that semantically the term "chinglish" suffers from the following flaws:

(1)The errors that some Chinese speakers make when speaking or writing English are not unique to Chinese speakers, but are common to all learners of the language, including in some cases children learning it as a first language. Chinese errors have not been proven to be qualitatively different from those of any other ethnic group.

(2)You cannot reliably identify so-called "chinglish" based on a language sample of English text alone, suggesting it can be classified as "chinglish" only after one learns that the producer of the text is Chinese, suggesting stereotyping.

(3)"Chinglish" is not an established system--it is not recognized as a standard or optional method of communication by any group of people. There is no definitive body of work outlining the rules and features of so-called "chinglish" (including this Wiki article)and it is not studied or taught anywhere. You cannot learn to speak "chinglish" and it cannot be produced at will but is instead the result of accidents, and I don't think accidents can be said to belong to any system.

(4)As a result, the above term doesn't provide any new information, and only restates certain stereotypes about Chinese learners, speakers and translators of Enlgish. For example, could one positively identify the following phrases as belonging to chinglish or not?:

(a)"Taste drive it"

(b)"only railway station understand"

(c)"The time is going" 	(to mean "We’re running out of time")

They are in fact so-called hinglish, denglish and namlish, respectively. (a1)Hinglish:http://blog.knowledge-must.com/archives/2-Hinglish-A-Pakka-Way-to-Speak.html (b1)Denglisch:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denglisch (c1)namlish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namlish

I think it's worth mentioning that in a quick search of online dictionaries I couldn't find the term "chinglish" as an entry, except for some slang dictionaries, and "The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary", which seems unique as the only dictionary I could find online that includes a definition for this term (here:http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/chinglish)

"language which is a mixture of English and Chinese, especially a type of English that includes many Chinese words and/or follows Chinese grammar rules"

But this definition has many flaws from a linguistic point of view (search "code switching", interlanguage, language interference), and is certainly not what is documented in this wiki article.

It should also be noted, while this Oxford site (http://oxforddictionaries.com/?attempted=true) apparently includes entries for so-called Singlish and Hinglish, it does not include "Chinglish".

A paper published on this supposed phenomenon (here:www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200410/uc20041009.doc)states:

"Li Wenzhong (李文中) gives the definition of Chinglish, '中国式英语是指中国的英语学习和使用者由于受母语干扰和影响，硬套汉语规则和习惯，在英语交际中出现的不合规范英语或不合英语文化习惯的畸形英语. '

Which means: Chinglish (literally 'Chinese-style English') refers to non-standard English, or malformed English which does not adhere to English cultural habits[styles of expression] that appears in the course of English communication as a result of Chinese students/users of English suffering from the interference of their mother tongue, or arbitrary application of the rules and [speaking] habits of Mandarin."

The paper goes on to state:

"...Chinglish, of course, is that misshapen, hybrid language that is neither English nor Chinese but that might be described as "English with Chinese characteristics.(Joan Pinkham, 2000: 1)"

In both cases above, it seems that the contributors are not speaking of a novel phenomenon called "chinglish", but simply of an interlanguage, which is defined right here on Wikipedia as:

"an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralizing target language rules in speaking or writing the target language and creating innovations."

I feel the term "chinglish" is born of stereotypical thinking together with cultural cheuvanism and belongs to the area of slang, possibly as a pejorative term towards Chinese people in general, but is of no other real value. 61.173.80.30 (talk) 01:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So what do you want to do? Have it deleted? There is a (small) chance that this will succeed. See deletion.It may be true that this article has little encyclopedic value and merely exists to amuse readers. Andries (talk) 20:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * @61.173.80.30 - Yeah, but who the hell cares what you think? What you're babbling is original research mixed with cultural/ideological tub-thumping.  Why do Chinese-language speakers have such an obsessive need to redefine and discredit English words and idioms and no less quite often deride any attempts by other-language speakers to criticize the Chinese language (as on Talk:Gweilo and elsewhere).  The fact is that chinglish is an established word and recognizable phenomenon; see this google and note the NYT and London Times articles about the Chinese government's own attempts to deal with the phenomenon-cum-problem.  The arguments you've made, and cited, are specious and irrelevant to experienced reality, which is that Chinglish exists both as a word and as a recognizable phenomenon in daily life as well as in public signage and manglings of official correspondence; there are in fact subtle instances of it in your own writing.  Pointing to Hinglish and Singlish is rather ironic, as both those terms are derivations of the older term Chinglish.  French-language speakers of English and African-language speakers of English use English in different ways than Chinese-speakers do; whatever paper you're claiming says there's no distinct difference you haven't cited and is headily fallacious simply by making such a nonsensical conclusion; I know because I can hear my Norwegian cousins mangle English in ways that my German and French acquaintances do not, and I come from a city (Greater Vancouver) where I've experienced Chinglish for all of my adult life and it's distinctly different from Korean-style English or Punjabi-style English.  Claiming otherwise and making some lengthy quasi-intellectual/quasi-academic argument as you have done is a pointless exercise; claiming a word offends you or doesn't have a right to exist is not what Wikipedia is for; Wikipedia documents reality, it's not meant to influence it, as you are hoping to do.  You'll have no more success in trying to delete or propagandize this article than others did with Chinaman.  If anything, you're just inviting it to become more detailed and more cited.....good luck with your cultural resentment, I'm sure it'll take you far among like-minded people; but I suggest you start using your zeal for critique first on yourself and then on your own culture/language, before you continue your life attacking others....24.142.35.171 (talk) 22:18, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * @61.173.80.30 - Chinglish also involves use of English that includes rarely used or arcane uses of English. Some of them are quite brilliant in fact (I've learned a half-dozen words in English I didn't know before). So do not mistaken the term chinglish as being derogatory, it covers the spectrum of odd and incomprensible uses of English from malaprops to bad translation to typos to terms and uses we are not so familiar with, many are amusing or puzzling. The term Engrish is slightly derogatory inasmuch as it is making references to mispronunciation, not necessarily misuse or rare use of the English language. Some of them afford us a laugh, smile or general amusement. So what? We all laugh, we all find things that are out of the ordinary or out of context that make us laugh. Life and living isn't going to change just because someone is 'sooooo righteous' who wants everyone to be politically correct or as politically correct as they are. It isn't going to happen.

The word isn't going to change, and the reality is well entrenched in terms of use (google lists 214,000 pages with reference to that word). So like it or not, democracy and common usage will prevail in spite of the politically correct, and aspirations of do-gooders. If wikipedia is an encyclopedia written 'by the people' and not a Britannica controlled by academics (who slant the facts with their biases), then butt out and leave the minority views and realities alone. There is already too many petty bureaucrats and fascistically minded people in control here who think they know more or better than the people who have taken the time to contribute their knowledge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.225.52.74 (talk) 04:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * @Andries

Yes, I think the article should be removed, or at most, any features presented that can be academically proven to be unique to what is being called "chinglish" should be added to the page on "interlanguage".
 * @61.173.80.30

Do you have any evidence, personal or otherwise, proving that "hinglish" and "singlish" are derived from "chinglish"?


 * Rather than getting bogged down in a personal debate, where more angry expletives will be thrown my way, I'll point to the wiki page on motion sickness as an example. Motion sickness is a scientific phenomenon that has specific features and causes, many people are largely unaware of this phenomenon, and use the terms "seasick", "airsick" and "carsick" as though referring to unique phenomena, when in fact it is the identical phenomenon experienced in different environments.  The wiki page does a great job of carefully pointing this out (although there are still separate pages on seasickness and airsickness, which seems needlessly redundant to me, just like this page).


 * I think a term should have an "established definition" before it can be considered an "established term" in casual conversation and in slang perhaps not, but definitely in what claims to be an encyclopedic document of any merit. However, as I said before, a definitive term of what "chinglish" actually is supposed to describe is not available.


 * Each definition differs in some way from the other, and even the definition given at the top of the article claims conflictingly that it is both "English influenced by Chinese" (which means any native Chinese speaker who speaks English with an accent is speaking "chinglish", and any book translated from Chinese with any errors/inaccuracies is written in "chinglish"), and as "the variety of English spoken in China" (which is blatantly incorrect, there is no specific "variety" or "version" of English spoken, studied, or taught in China).


 * In a book referenced by this article "The Translator's Guide to Chinglish", the author claims the sentence "the key to the solution lies in the curtailment of expenditure" is "chinglish", claiming that the sentence should be written "the solution lies in...". While this sentence is needlessly wordy, and perhaps bad prose, that's all it is.  In fact, a search for that phrase on Google turned up 320,000 results, from various sources including academic papers, published articles, etc. The only thing that leads the author to conclude that it is "chinglish" is her prejudice and the fact that she knows the sentence was produced by a native speaker of Chinese translating into English.


 * It is this same prejudice that led to the writing of this page. No one can claim that they could distinguish a uniquely "chinglish" sentence from simply bad prose or machine translation of ANY other language into English (for anyone claiming differently, I would be happy to conduct an experiment).


 * Therefore, the claim that "chinglish" exists is not an academically proven fact, but a misconception based on prejudice. That Chinese learners of Enlgish make mistakes while trying to express themselves in English is a reality, but the fact that you have to know someone is Chinese before you can identify their English writing as "chinglish" is prejudice.


 * Do Chinese learners of English make mistakes when translating Chinese into English or when speaking it? Yes they do, are these mistakes unique to Chinese people? There is no evidence to support that (or at least none has yet been given), and the burden of proof/evidence is with the party who wants to write the Wiki page, not the party that wants to take it down, meaning so-called "chinglish" as defined in this article is a non-term and should either be redefined, or removed.


 * Lastly, there's nothing wrong with me expressing my personal opinion, as long as it is not a personal attack against someone else, regardless of who cares or not. I should also be able to do so without being cursed at as a result.61.173.105.66 (talk) 11:56, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * What you have decided is irrelevant to wikipedia's inclusion criteria; enough publications - much more notable than you - use this word regularly and it's a common feature of modern English and it doesn't really matter if it's derisive or not (and it's not, and I'm speakign as a native speaker of English). Your arguments are all highly POV as well as original research; and this statement: Therefore, the claim that "chinglish" exists is not an academically proven fact, but a misconception based on prejudice.  is utter rubbish; the word doesn't need to be an "academically proven fact" in order to be included, and "academically proven fact" of this word's existence is sufficiently proven by its acceptability to the editors or the New York Times and London Times.  As for your allegation that it's based in prejudice, that's utter rubbish and also POV; the term franglais is of similar origin, but is not pejorative in the slightest; nor is Chinglish.  You make all kinds of uncited claims, and are clearly soapboxing on this subject, as if your opinion mattered (it doesn't).  And while complaining about a personal attack for being called stupid and ignorant and specious, you fail to see that you are collectively attacking other speakers of English, native and otherwise, who use this term or who understand it without having to over-analyze it as you have done.  Translatino: why don't you take your ethnopolitical insecurities and analyze yourself for a change?Skookum1 (talk) 20:24, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * @Skookum1
 * You are absolutely correct, I don't expect my personal views to have any weight on Wiki policy. You say that my comments come from original research, and that may well be, but I'm not asserting my opinions or views as encyclopedic material, and therefore I don't bear the burden of presenting proof and sources for my arguments.  However, this Wiki article does, and the section on pronunciation and vocabulary in the article doesn't include a single reference or citation, and, according to the letter of Wiki policy: "Statements consisting only of original research may be removed." (I think I'll do so.)


 * So removing this section would be completely in line with Wikipedia's own stated policy, yes?


 * In addition, the caption of one of the pictures in the article claims: "The Chinglish translation on the sign ("To sell inside the commodity space all acceping money sipe supplys examineing the price service") is meant to signify, "All cashiers in the marketplace offer price-checking services."


 * Falsley implying that the gibberish on this sign is actually a dialect called "chinglish", and the translation follows its rules. However, there is no support for this, so does that mean the caption has to be removed, changed to reflect reality, or that the entire picture can be removed as well?61.173.108.143 (talk) 09:55, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * You also claim that my statement that "chinglish" is based in prejudice is "utter rubbish", but you do not qualify this statement with any sensible argument. Furthermore, there is support for my statement right here in the Wiki article:"The term "Chinglish" is mostly used in popular contexts and may have pejorative or derogatory connotations."


 * You DO know what the words "pejorative" and "derogatory" mean, right?

Hey guys, this conversation is getting a little long and unwieldy but I want to chime in. I see a lot of merit in what the anonymous person at 61.173.105.66 is saying, but I strongly disagree that this article should be removed. There is actually substantial scholarly debate about the nature of this phenomenon. Take a look at the journal "World Englishes" or the work of linguist Braj Kachru for a glimpse at that, if you're interested. On the topic of "Chinglish" or "Chinese English," I highly recommend the books "Chinese Englishes" by Kingsley Bolton, "Chinese English" by Xu Zhichang, and "China and English" by Joseph Lo Bianco et al. Yes, "Chinglish" itself is a problematic term and there is not much agreement about what it is. Frankly, I'd prefer for this article to be retitled "English in China" and for some sections to be removed -- I personally don't think that badly translated signs really constitute a language, for example. But this is an issue in popular culture both in China and abroad, and it's only likely to increase in the future. Those of us who want this article to represent a more accurate picture of the phenomenon -- and that includes the debate, the disagreement, and the inherent cultural biases and assumptions invovled -- can do what we want to make this article better. But I don't think it should be deleted just because the term itself is disputed.--Joelh (talk) 23:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That is essentially what I was saying...I just get tired of reading people on "attack mode" against English, like it was something that could or should be censored and controlled, which is where this guy is coming from. Essentially he's asking that Wikipedia be censored, and we know that's against the rules; no mroe than the English language should be censored; far more offensive terms like chink and nigger and kike are also in Wikipedia, but this is nowhere even near that; it's simply slang in origin....chinglish to me (being from Vancouver) is spoken English as delivered by Chinese speakers, e.g. without plurals or conjugation, and in certain constructions (and attitudes)....the "English as used in China" is different than that, it's like robo-translation via babelfish; but the NYT and London Times have dubbed it "Chinglish", which is their meaning of the word; it's a range of phenomena, really.....but their existence should not be deleted just because someone's noise is out of joint, and on the lookout for words to be offended by....Skookum1 (talk) 01:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't like the term, it's true. That however is not my motivation for wanting the article to be removed,or the title changed (what is defined here is not "chinglish"). The term itself is not properly defined, and this article does not define it, or at least, the content of the article does not reflect the definition given. Let's quickly review all of the definitions given to "chinglish", both in the article, here on the discussion page, and by other users of the word, particularly news publications:

"chinglish" is the what Chinese people sound like when they speak English.(this is a stereotype, not all Chinese people speak English incorrectly, furthermore people who speak a variety of languages drop plurals, mispronounce "th" and "r" and so on when learning/speaking English. This phenomenon is not unique to Chinese learners but people with limited experience may have only heard Chinese learners do this. To claim that this is unique to Chinese learners is incorrect. This definition is wrong in that it links language habits with ethnicity (which is ethnic stereotyping).

"chinglish" is the way people in China speak English. Not true, just as the English of three-year-olds is not "the way people speak English in America". This method of speaking is not an established system, or an accepted variation of English in China, it is the natural result of attempting to learn a language other than one's native tongue and is a documented phenomenon called an interlanguage. This definition is wrong in that it proposes there is a single way all people in China speak English, or another standard in use as a preference besides standard English.

"chinglish" is gibberish that results from machine translation of Chinese to English, or extremely poor translation attempts by Chinese people who have a poor grasp of English. Bad translation is bad translation, period. This definition is wrong in that it assumes such translation is intentional or desirable, or selectively used by anyone.

"chinglish" is English with technical or grammatical errors, but only when it is translated from Chinese, or by Chinese people (note poor translations of Chinese into English by native English speakers is not included in the article). This definition is wrong in that this phenomenon cannot be verified. Going on this definition, one cannot identify Chinglish without first knowing the author of a phrase, or the language from which the phrase originated, which cements the term as stereotypical, but more importantly as unscientific.

Sookum1 claims that the term "chinglish" is no different from a term like "franglais", this is incorrect. So-called "franglais" is commonly defined as utterances mixing French and English words, and mixing the grammars or inflection rules of the two languages. While "language that is a mix of Chinese and English, and follows the rules of Chinese" was the only dictionary definition that I could find for "chinglish", this is NOT the way "chinglish" is defined in this Wiki article. Furthermore, "franglais" is interpreted differently, depending on the speaker, some people see it as the poor French Spoken by English learners, others see it as native French speakers incorporating English-isms and non-standard French which follows the rules of English into their speech. This again, is not the way "chinglish" is defined in the article, an English speaker who is learning Chinese and pronounces it poorly, uses English structures, and English words that don't exist in Chinese is not said to be speaking "Chinglish", is he?

The article is highly flawed, even by Wiki standards. It is obvious that this article was not assembled by someone with any real grasp of Linguistics, the non-referenced sections on pronunciation and vocabulary make this particularly apparent. The specific flaws are pointed out by the banners placed in various sections. However, this article has been reproduced in its entirety on dozens of web pages WITHOUT these explanatory banners. Perhaps it should be re-written, properly referenced or re-titled instead of deleted? I fully support that, but none of that is happening. It seems that no one is willing to do this (and I'm certainly not) so the only remaining option is to remove the article, or at least the sections that don't meet Wiki standards for inclusion.

Finally, Sookum1 reveals what may be the actual core of the disagreement we're having here. He seems to be claiming that although "chinglish" is just another derogatory term used toward Chinese people, that does not mean it should be removed. I wholly agree with this. If this article defined "chinglish" as a stereotypical name given to English spoken by Chinese people, I would have no problem with it whatsoever. The problem is that this article is attempting to present a stereotypical epithet as though it is an academic fact. But what is recognized by academia is not "chinglish", at most it may be "Features of English spoken or written by Chinese learners(of English)". I've been to the "nigger" page, and have no problem with it. It defines the term --as it is used-- and provides a wealth of information on etymology, development etc. If however the article claimed "A nigger can be identified by..." then I would immediately suggest that portion of the article be removed. Are you getting me?61.170.228.100 (talk) 08:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it should be re-written and properly referenced and maybe even re-titled (as should a number of similar articles, probably!) Would those who have been involved in this discussion be interested in working together with me to do that? I think we might disagree about how to do it but this page would really benefit from some people doing some serious work on it. I've been making small changes for about a year -- it was, in my opinion, much worse before -- and the more information we can provide about the phenomenon (both of "Chinglish" as a linguistic phenomenon, if it is one, and as an object of popular discourse, which it most certainly is), the better. --Joelh (talk) 05:29, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I would be happy to see this article actually broken into two, one with the serious purpose of addressing those features considered "unique" to learners of English who's native language is Mandarin, or some other Chinese dialect, that is, something that focuses on material addressing this issue taken from reputable academic sources. I would suggest the name of that article be changed, to something like "China-English" or "Chinese interlanguage" and be available for disambiguation.


 * The other page can simply be whatever is left over, ridiculous mistranslations, errors arising from clumsy machine translation, whatever. It seems to me that most people who think of so-called chinglish think of what's shown in the pictures in the article, and a small number of people think of the material actually present in the referenced material. This article is combining two different phenomenon and calling them the same thing.  I don't think re-writing this article will help, since the basic definition, or scope of the term is too broad, as I said, I recommend splitting it into one addressing the linguistic phenomenon shared by many attempting to learn English, who speak a Chinese dialect as their native tongue, and another addressing the social phenomenon of westerners mocking them for it. I would be happy to look up and read through source material in the writing of the academic article, and translate where necessary (I speak/read/write Mandarin). Can we get some consensus on this?  I've been to the pages addressing this, but they all suggest trying to talk the issue out with other editors before going into negotiation/mediation.61.173.102.198 (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I am quite torn about this. On the one hand, you're absolutely right that there is a huge difference between the actual linguistic study of this stuff and the popular conception. On the other hand, they seem to be intimately tied to one another in the scholarly literature -- for example Hu Xiaoqong, in various articles, refers to "Chinglish" and "China English" as two ends of a continuum. Even there, though, she is mostly referred to speaking & writing (mostly in educational contexts, though not solely) -- and so your point about the signs is well taken. It irks me that most non-Chinese people's impression of how English is used in China is to a great extent influenced by photos of badly translated signs (which surely exist around the world in every language). Currently, my vote would be a radical change to the structure of this article which highlights the debates and different understandings of the term(s). Thoughts from both the person whose IP address is 61.173.102.198 and others?--Joelh (talk) 21:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)


 * [addition]The new content in the article is a nice attempt, but only further confuses things. First of all, where is this new information coming from? It cites no sources, and makes unfounded claims. So-called "chinglish" is not a language, it is not defined as a language. If we accept that what is being called "Chinglish" is a mixture of Chinese and English, then how is this exemplified by the images in the article? They are not "a mixture of Chinese and English" but signs with Chinese and poorly translated English.


 * Furthermore, this new section (terminology) makes the section on vocabulary illegitimate, as that section gives examples of "features of English spoken by Chinese learners, and bad usage choices", not "a mixture of two languages". The section on "examples of chinglish on signs" also does not exemplify the given dictionary definition of "chinglish".


 * The reference to other "mixed languages", listed on Wikipedia is not going to save this article either, it amounts to little more than one illegitimate source being used as reference for another. More than half of the sources have the same problems that this article does, so referencing those equally illegitimate articles serves no purpose. The legitimate pages document a wide variety of different phenomenon, from mixing languages, to extensive borrowing, to what are actually legitimate creoles passed down over generations, but this article does not discuss any of those things. I feel this article doesn't need to be touched up and re-worded to satisfy technical points of contention, but might be divided into two separate articles, as I stated above.61.170.225.172 (talk) 20:48, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Renaming the sections
Chinglish is a well-established word commonly meaning both "errors by Chinese learners of English" and "Chinese mistranslations of English". Renaming this article is impossible under WP:TITLE because Chinglish is precisely "what reliable English-language sources call the subject of the article" (2,500 ghits in Google Scholar and 2,000 in Google Books).

A more productive question is how to rename sections "3 Features" and "4 Examples of unusual English …" (cf. English words with unusual properties). I suggest we use Chinglish's two common meanings to name them something like "Pedagogical Chinglish" for scholarly aspects and "Translational Chinglish" for popular examples. "Pedagogical aspects" and "Mistranslational aspects"? What do you think? Keahapana (talk) 23:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I think Keahapana might have meant "Chinese mistranslations -into- English". Why not just "Scholarly Research (of Chinglish)" and "Popular Instances(of chinglish)"? Information from scholarly papers investigating the linguistic phenomenon could go in the first section, and whatever is presented in newspapers or other "reliable" sources detailing material that has been seen and heard annd simply called "chinglish" could go in the other. That or something like "in academic contexts" and "in popular contexts". Thoughts?61.170.227.124 (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that makes a lot of sense. Academic vs popular seems to me to be the best way to distinguish the two. The academic section can talk different perspectives (Chinglish as an interlanguage vs China English as a developing variety, for example). For an overview of academic understandings, check out Xu's book Chinese English, for example. (I'm reading it right now.)--Joelh (talk) 04:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Neither "Academic" nor "Scholarly" seems suitable because they apply to both these first and second topics. Victor Mair, who is a renowned academic and scholar, studies popular Chinglish mistranslations, most recently "Fuck Class Do Not Disturb". No, Anon Shanghai User (Why not register with WP?), I meant what I said. For a nonnative speaker of English, you seem peculiarly confident in your idiolect. Best wishes, Keahapana (talk) 22:36, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Keahapana, I think our point here has to do with the locus of the discourse about Chinglish/China English. On the one hand, there is the language-learning aspect (how do Chinese users of English use it in ways different from both native and other non-native users), and on the other, there's (to make a broad generalization) "funny English signs in China." I'm seeing more and more the difficulties of separating the two, but there does seem to be something different going on. The anonymous user whose IP address is 61.170.227.124 might be able to tackle the difference a bit better than I can. --Joelh (talk) 04:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There seems to have been some misunderstanding here, and I'm probably to blame for it. My suggestion for "academic" and "popular" sections does not refer to the current "Features" and "Examples..." sections(those sections could remain as they are, just with different content), but to the two main branches of a completely restructured article, which would ideally include individual "Features" and "Examples" sections of their own. However, as long as we're exploring the implications or difficulties of such a division (a scholar who "studies" signs that have been unfortunately mistranslated), I have to say I don't see any particular problem.


 * Just because a scholar takes interest in blogging about mistranslations he's seen on signs does not make that material scholarly. Just as a scientist can observe things both scientifically and unscientifically. Also, there is no confusion in this case, if we follow the same standard: where Dr. Mair conducts scholarly research on the linguistic phenomenon, involving negative language transfer, interlanguage, SLA, etc., which leads to "chinglish"(unpublished speculation about the causes behind catastrophic mistranslation not included), it can be included in the former section, although this may be unlikely, as although Dr. Mair uses the term ("chinglish")on his blog, it is not included under his research interests, and he seems to have never published books or articles on the subject. Where Dr. Mair chooses to spend his spare time observing and then presenting obvious mistranslations (which are also called "chinglish"), that can be included in the latter section (this being the two envisioned sections of a restructured article, not the "features" and "examples" above).


 * Here also, I'll briefly address a question, and an implication:
 * (1)Wiki policy specifically states that registration is not prerequisite to participation. I don't currently see any specific advantage to registering. If that changes, I will(assuming there are no unwritten rules about non-registered members, that is).
 * (2)Assuming that because I'm (presently) connecting to the internet from Shanghai and am therefore not a native speaker of English is quite a leap, and an incorrect one, which (strangely enough) I JUST addressed in my last entry in the above section. However, even if I were a non-native speaker, that wouldn't have any bearing on anything, now would it, unless there are some unwritten rules about THAT?61.173.81.240 (talk) 10:09, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

You're correct, registration is not necessary. I suggested it for your benefit; having a permanent Talk page facilitates communicating with other editors. Have you seen the disruptive edit warnings on your User talk:61.173.108.143 or my reply to you on User talk:61.170.228.100? I apologize for wrongly assuming you were a NNS. My mistake. The NS/NNS distinction could be relevant when discussing common usage, such as whether Chinglish is a word. As the first line says, "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Chinglish article." On the other hand, you're free to continue pontificating (Would you call Language Log "scholarly"? Will you allow it to "be included in the former section"?). I've already wasted too much time on this page and will return to improving the article. Keahapana (talk) 19:41, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that being a native speaker would have any bearing on discussing whether "chinglish" is a word (or its definition, connotations, usage etc.), as these would be verifiable by evidence, an not dependent on individual interpretation, native speaker or not. As far as Language Log, I'm hoping someone will be able to address that in the lower section. I'm glad to see that the article will be getting the attention it deserves, hopefully it can be made into something that is less of an embarrassingly unprofessional mar on a site that is steadily gaining credibility and renown. I've had a good evening reading up on Mr. Mair's ruminations, and some history of Chinese language-based discrimination, hopefully I will be able to track down enough references to verify (or eliminate, as necessary) content in the article. I was waiting for your response and saw it when you made it. It seems that having an account makes it easier for other editors to contact me, but doesn't necessarily affect my ability to communicate with other (registered) editors.61.173.18.217 (talk) 20:55, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Referencing Issues
Doesn't reference no.16 citing Wiktionary violate Wikipedia's rules on self-referencing? Anyone?61.173.18.217 (talk) 18:28, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't reference no.15 reference a group blog? Which is also not acceptable as a source according to Wiki policy? Can someone enlighten me?61.173.18.217 (talk) 18:38, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No and no. Wiktionary and Language Log are both reliable sources and used in hundreds of articles. Please review the WP Guidelines linked on your 61.170.228.100 Talk page. Keahapana (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

That is what I have been reading reading. Wiki policy states that Wiki articles cannot reference Wikipedia itself, except in articles about itself. Wiktionary however, is an exception?

Also, how does (or why does) Language Log not fall under the category of a blog which is not suitable for citation? How is it qualitatively different from any other online journal where contributors are held to no standards of expertise, accuracy or credibility? Mr. Mair's early contributions were quite incorrect regarding some samples of so-called "chinglish", and this was only revealed later by another contributor.

Other articles still have incorrect translation/explanation/speculation about other "chinglish" phrases, which have not yet been corrected (and may never be, some of these articles date from four years ago), so how is it a reliable source? I've read the rules, I just don't understand how they are being applied (or not applied, as it were).61.173.18.217 (talk) 20:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC)