Funny Chinglish

[prateeksha]

Not sure if a similar post exists, please feel free to merge it in that case.

I am not talking about weird English descriptions directly copy-pasted from Google Translate. Let me put my point across with this instance. My 英-汉翻译 teacher recently told us two quirky instances of Chinglish. He was trying to explain how the Chinese interpret English on the lines of grammar patterns in Chinese. For example, assuming English words as Verb + Complement

他这次比赛 quali不fy, 你有 consi什么deration?

Would love to hear more from others!

[mcgau]

It looks like a kind of Hong kong-influenced expressions which are pretty popular among students.

- O 不 Okay? (O not Okay)

- grad 了 (Graduated / adding "了" after an English word to suggest past tense)

- 自修ing ( studying / adding -ing after a Chinese word to indicate continuous tense)

- niubility /newbility (a popular self-coined word for Niu-bi 牛逼. And a guy who is very niu-bi is Newber)

- "Hello, Mary!" --------- "Ha 甚么 lo , 趕快开工!"

[陳德聰]

Bahaha, I love it. We speak Chinglish like that here in our mixed groups all the time, usually English inflectional morphology like plural "-s", past "-ed", etc. are the ones that seep through:

Me: 我饿了

Friend: Yeah me too, I'm craving some 包s

"Jason说他昨晚吃ed a lot"

Friend: Where'd you put 那个锅??

Sister: 我在洗ing it!

But I can't think of a time when we've actually used Chinese words as infixes before, although I guess we might not notice... I would expect things more like...

see不清楚

<- hold住、比较better etc haha

[Michaelyus]

他这次比赛 quali不fy, 你有 consi什么deration?

Ooooh... Infixes in Chinglish are the new big thing in the "language". But these examples sound just a tad... dare I say it... ungrammatical. Especially "consider什么ation": I would prefer "considera什么tion". Unless this is a dialectal difference (I have quite conservative Chinglish, slightly influenced by the Hong Kong style, but not greatly, being over here in Britain; I know Singlish has the most innovations).

Combining the tense systems is a weird feature of Chinglish, and clashes, leading to nonsense:

Yesterday 我就在作ing过 homework, when 某件事happen[ed]了。

I mean, what aspect/tense is that? And is it grammatical? It's very borderline for me.

Oh and Chinglish prosody clashes are hilarious (I think British + Taiwan is the funniest. Naturally Singlish blends really well such that it does sound 'native').

Has anyone come across Frinois before?

[tooironic]

You aren't seriously asking if a half-Chinese half-English sentence is grammatical, are you?

[Michaelyus]

In all honesty, it is a serious consideration. There will be surely "rules", as yet uncharacterised, which determine why some structures and vocab items do exit the mouths of speakers. So the question whether 在+V+ing+过 is 'grammatical' is a valid one. Processes of creolisation will always be founded upon subtle changes of structures and grammaticality.

[陳德聰]

Hm... For me it seems like it feels more natural when the information encoded in the morphemes that are being mixed do not contain conflicting features, or features that are already covered by existing morphemes.

E.g. 包s & *同学们s

In the construction of 包s the /s/ encodes a plural meaning and since the /包/ does not obligatorily encode any number feature, it should be okay.

Contrast with *同学们s where the /们/ and /s/ carry the same features and thus would be predicted to either be "ungrammatical" or at least sound really bad.

Unfortunately that wouldn't account for why 在V-ing would be fine... Lol this is hilarious.

[Demonic_Duck]

niubility /newbility (a popular self-coined word for Niu-bi 牛逼. And a guy who is very niu-bi is Newber)

That's brilliant!

[陳德聰]

Found a nice little paper about Chinglish here in case people are wondering about what codeswitching is.

[chestnut818]

i heard one among teenagers...Beijing Hua has a sentence“麻利儿的” which means hurry up, quickly.....but now they always say "quick利儿的"

.....

[外国赤佬]

Yes, the HK speakers are weird like that. When I was dating an HK girl, I started talking like that myself, to my own surprise. I've no idea how this gets into one's brain, but it's very annoying.

Truth to be told, not all Chinese people find it cool. A girl from Chongqing felt very negative about the practice and told me that she thinks that 香港人是半洋不中的，挺可怜的. (I'm sorry in advance if this opinion offends anyone, I don't necessarily support it myself.)

[tjlai]

Yeah us BBC's use Chinglish all the time! Sometimes it's because we don't know what the word is in Chinese, but more often than not, it's just become part of our language. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but we use pretty much everything that's been mentioned.

[prateeksha]

Found an interesting article:

http://offbeatchina.com/english-words-with-chinese-characteristics

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

Something happened at school a few days ago.

The class was plaing "大電視", a game where people need to guess words with just hints given to them by their teammates.

Some of the words are -ing nouns like computing, and the teamates just use "緊" (as in meaning something is on-going) for all of those: 電腦緊.

[anonymoose]

香港人是半洋不中的，挺可怜的. (I'm sorry in advance if this opinion offends anyone, I don't necessarily support it myself.)

 

I think probably many 香港 people would agree, except perhaps about the 可怜 part. The difference being that from a mainland (official) point of view, 洋 is bad, but from a Hong Kong point of view 中 is bad.

[lips]

from a Hong Kong point of view 中 is bad

Speak for yourself.

[skylee]

from a Hong Kong point of view 中 is bad

Speak for yourself.

Re #16, I agree with anonymoose. And of course I speak for myself. Need I say Hong Kong is not China?

Hong Kong is compatible with China. But many Hong Kong People find themselves incompatible with the People's Republic of China. I am aware that when I say this I would need to define "Hong Kong People" and I am fully aware that up to 150 Mainlanders migrate to this very small place that is called Hong Kong everyday and we have no control of it. Hong Kong is one of the places with the lowest birth rate in the world as it is very difficult to live here and we don't see hope. Unlike Mainland China there is no need to implement a one-child policy here. Many of us have stopped wanting to live here. And I speak for myself.

[skylee]

Double- posted. Sorry.

[roddy]

Really not sure this needed to be bumped after two and a half years to respond to a ridiculous four year old post by someone who got banned almost as long ago...

[anonymoose]

Really not sure this needed to be bumped after two and a half years to respond to a ridiculous four year old post by someone who got banned almost as long ago...

 

I'm not sure how I even got to this post....