Common Chinese English Oddness

[Guest realmayo]

'As we know', there are some ways of speaking or vocab choices which Chinese speakers of English --including those whose English is good-- often make, influenced by their mother tongue. Sometimes these are errors, but normally just a bit odd and might be unremarkable were it not that so many people speak this way.

For instance:

"are you familiar with..." -- it if was just one person overusing this phrase I'd think nothing of it but so many Chinese people like it. They are I believe thinking of the Chinese word 熟悉.

"I seldom..." -- overused, instead of rarely or better: I don't normally.... Don't know if there's a specific Chinese word being translated here.

"I have ever gone to Beijing" -- mistake produced by translating 曾经.

"It is said" -- 听说 or 据说 I think? Normally used too much & sounds clunky.

Do other people hear these a lot? Apart from switching "he" & "she", are there any other examples you often hear? Are they because of translating directly from Chinese?

EDIT: I forgot to add: the fact that Chinese people keep wanting to force 熟悉 into English suggests I should use the world a lot more in Chinese, & probably am using 知道 or 了解 or whatever when I should be using 熟悉. Perhaps the same goes for 据说, 曾经 etc. Also I wonder how much my spoken Chinese similarly forces English usages into Chinese.

[889]

Starting sentences "Actually, . . ."

Actually, it's not odd to do this in English, just odd to do it too much.

实际是这样的！

[xianhua]

I'll meet you at the 'gate' when there isn't a gate in any shape or form. I guess this is translated directly from 门.

I'm sure there is a similar thread on this very subject somewhere.

[anonymoose]

My students often say things like "we learn a lot of knowledge".

Also "I feel boring/interesting/...ing"

I don't think there's anything unusual about saying "are you familiar with". It sounds perfectly natural to me.

[Daan]

Also, "learning new vocabularies".

[roddy]

One that I thought of the other day (no idea why) but that I haven't actually heard lately is 'you had better' for 最好 - which is a bit of a nasty one, as 'you had better' implies 'or else'. Don't know how common that is, but I've noticed it with a couple of people.

[Brian US]

One Chinese friend overuses 'and then' with it becoming odd when a story turns into one long sentence.

[liuzhou]

 The overuse of "and then" is common to all language learners. English native speakers do it too. Try reading or listening to some infant school students' stories. Exactly the same. 

[Hofmann]

I've seen a lot of bad punctuation and capitalization. If they use punctuation, I see overuse of exclamation marks.

[FadedStardust]

I've seen a lot of bad punctuation and capitalization. If they use punctuation, I see overuse of exclamation marks.

Working in ESOL classrooms here in the U.S., I've noticed that quite a few Chinese people don't hit the spacebar after adding punctuation. So their sentences all run together like this.It's a little annoying,don't you think? This, of course, comes from the fact that a.) Chinese doesn't use spaces at all, and b.) in full-width punctuation there is already "white space" after the 。，； etc. making adding more space slightly redundant.

I also hear them say, "I know," when what they mean is, "I understand," when you explain a concept they don't "quite" get, or are hearing for the first time, which could give a native English speaker the impression that either they knew the word/expression/whatever to begin with but forgot, which is sometimes likely, but other times it's odd when they say "I know," and then thank you for teaching them something new. The other impression a native English speaker can get from this is that the Chinese person is being arrogant (which isn't their intention at all, they are simply mis-translating ”我了解“).

[anonymoose]

I also hear them say, "I know," ... they are simply mis-translating ”我了解“).

More likely they're mistranslating 知道了.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, "I know" is definitely a good example, as is "actually" and the "interested/ing" problem. Haven't heard Roddy's enough to remember it as being widespread though. The "familiar with" is one instance where although in isolation it seems fine, lots of English learners here seem to use it much, much more than any native speaker would. "Are you familiar with the campus?" versus, I guess, "do you know your way around the campus?".

On a similar note, does anyone hear "China" as spoken with tones? Maybe it's just me, but most Chinese people I talk to tend to say this word as if the two syllables have the the same tones (ie 1 and 2) as Zhong1guo2.

[Guest realmayo]

How about this one: using "too" to mean "very", the same way that 太 can mean "very", without any negative connotations.

[Glenn]

I remember hearing a Japanese person make the same mistake with the -ing/-ed adjectives. I assume Koreans probably do too. This was the conversation:

Me: People never respond to my posts on Mixi. I guess I'm just boring.

Him: Yeah, me too. So boring. That's why I'm always Mixi, because I'm so boring.

It's interesting that -ed points inward, to yourself and your feelings, whereas -ing points outward, to the thing you're commenting on, stating an inherent quality of it. I wonder how that came about. Are there other adjective pairs like this in English, other than "boring/bored" and "interesting/interested"? I hope this isn't too off-topic.

[jmhcali]

They're confusing a stative verb with a verbal adjective. I don't know much about Japanese or Korean except that they're grammatically similar. Do both Japanese and Koreans consistently reverse these two word forms? If so, it's probably related to the way their languages form them, rather than blind guessing at English verb endings, the way Chinese sometimes do (because Korean and Japanese verbs are conjugated, unlike Mandarin).

[Glenn]

There are actually two different words. つまらない (tsumaranai) is "boring," and 退屈している (taikutsu shiteiru) is "bored". The former is an adjective, the latter a verb, and both inflect differently (actually the latter is already inflected. Its dictionary form means "to become bored".). Does Chinese use 無聊 for both?

[jmhcali]

Yes, in Chinese you'd say 我很无聊 for "I am bored" and 这很无聊 for "this is boring" although if you wanted to be a bit more polite you'd probably say 这没有意思。

[Lu]

Working in ESOL classrooms here in the U.S., I've noticed that quite a few Chinese people don't hit the spacebar after adding punctuation. So their sentences all run together like this.It's a little annoying,don't you think? This, of course, comes from the fact that a.) Chinese doesn't use spaces at all, and b.) in full-width punctuation there is already "white space" after the 。，； etc. making adding more space slightly redundant.

Or they put the space before the punctuation mark ,instead of after it .I don't know if it's just me ,but to me this looks so stupid .It's not that complicated a rule, and doing it right makes a text look so much less Chinglish, even if the grammar is sometimes off.

What I've also been seeing lately is people inversing their names when writing English, Japanese-style, so they become Ying-jeou Ma or Jiabao Wen. I find this a disturbing trend.

[Glenn]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the Japanese way of doing that. I understand the reason, but I want to say Kan Naoto, not Naoto Kan (for example; first one that came to mind). It just gets annoying having to switch.

I guess we'll know we've really hit a turning point if we start seeing Ming Yao. Man, that just sounds bad.

[Edit] Although I did just realize due to a post somewhere else that Yo Yo Ma is standard. But I guess he's the exception.