When Chinese people correct your English as a native speaker… uhh what?

[Zbigniew]

7 hours ago, murrayjames said:

Sure, but that is not what is happening here. The authors of the replies above (that I replied to) objected not to @grawrt's argument, but to his tone.

 I objected to nothing, least of all his tone. I was instead puzzled, as I hoped I'd made clear, by his claim: "Nothing personal but no native English speaker would ever write ‘customer services’". That this is a false claim is amply supported by (native) English usage.

 

7 hours ago, mouse said:

While I’m sure all native speakers would be able to guess that grawrt was being hyperbolic

 

I'm a native speaker and I didn't guess that; I can see no convincing evidence indicating that the statement "Nothing personal but no native English speaker would ever write ‘customer services’. I just told him actually we would never add the s there." was intended as hyperbole. 

 

 

[mouse]

1 hour ago, Zbigniew said:

I'm a native speaker and I didn't guess that; I can see no convincing evidence indicating that the statement "Nothing personal but no native English speaker would ever write ‘customer services’. I just told him actually we would never add the s there." was intended as hyperbole. 

 

 

Sorry, I wasn't trying to offend you. I just meant that one could imagine the circumstances that grawrt was referring to. I was trying to strike a conciliatory tone, but that's proving difficult in this unexpectedly charged debate.

[grawrt]

I'm really bad at doing quoting things... But there were a few people that raised the concern of my statement on 'customer services' so I will elaborate. lol

 

sorry I was actually just referring to pluralization as murrayjames pointed out. 

But regardless. At least according to American standard of English there is no way we would ever use customer services as a pluralization. The only time and place I can imagine it being used is to refer to the office of 'customer services' and that's it. I was actually quite curious about the comment brought up about how customer services is part of some of your varieties of English so I typed it in the search engine and I got nothing. Maybe you can give me some examples? 

 

Anyway. I just thought it was an interesting observation to make because if it were the other way around and it was me who consulted  a Chinese person on Chinese I wouldn't ever presume that I know more than them or that they're wrong. Whats more, I would never pay a Chinese person to proofread my Chinese and then tell them "no I think it should be this instead."

 

I know its common around the globe for people to encounter someone trying to educate another person about a culture they know nothing about. But I think these situations are different because this is a service being paid for. If you think that a proofreaders English is not as adept as yours why bother paying for that service? Why consult? You know what i mean? 

 

Honestly kind of came to this musing the other day when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in China. In a convo I had with this Chinese guy he told me I could never be an interpreter because my Chinese would never be as good as a Chinese persons. I countered that it was okay because my English would always be better than theirs. Instead of going haha true. He was like no way. Chinese people have 'native level English''. I'm just wondering where this sense of greatness stems from. Why is it conceivable to a Chinese person that a they can have 'native level English' but that a foreigner could never possibly dream of attaining the same. You know? That's kind of the musing I was thinking of. Hope you guys don't misunderstand me. I feel like I always have to post qualifications for anything I say on forums. 

 

Oh and i'm a girl. XD But its okay. 

[889]

My thought is that once your thoughts tend to run to "The Chinese, they . . . " then that's a strong signal you need a break from China.

 

[grawrt]

Yeah... probably? 

[mouse]

41 minutes ago, grawrt said:

But regardless. At least according to American standard of English there is no way we would ever use customer services as a pluralization. The only time and place I can imagine it being used is to refer to the office of 'customer services' and that's it. I was actually quite curious about the comment brought up about how customer services is part of some of your varieties of English so I typed it in the search engine and I got nothing. Maybe you can give me some examples? 

 

 

You're doing it again! Joking aside, yes, as far as I'm concerned, the only time one would put an 's' on the end would be when talking about the department.

[Dawei3]

Sometimes discussions on language may come across as stubbornness, yet may actually be lack of a more broad understanding of language.  Many times I've had various Chinese colleagues say "Chinese NEVER say xxx"  or "Only OLD Chinese say xxx".   They were definitely wrong because I had learned the words/phrases from other native Chinese, often young ones.  

 

A Chinese friend gave me insight on this.  She had been a Chinese instructor with an American who had his MS in Applied Linguistics that focused on Chinese.  She said until she worked with him, she didn't realize how much variation there was in "standard Chinese" within China (she had always lived in Shanghai). 

 

On one hand, this was a little hard to believe because she had obviously crossed paths with many Chinese from other parts of China.  She's also intelligent.  Yet, she needed it pointed out to her.  What she said explained the very strong statements of other Chinese (who likely also weren't fully cognizant of language differences). 

 

Language can be like this, i.e., we may not know how we speak until someone points it out.  i.e., Most Americans likely don't realize they say bottle with "dd", not  "tt."  And say baddle, not battle.  It's one of the reasons I like the linguist, John McWhorter.  He points out much that has been in front of me my whole life  that I had never thought about.  The Chinese who see language in prescriptive ways may not have had someone to give them this revelation. 

 

In addition, coming from an educational system that focuses on rote learning likely also inhibits people's ability to see things from multiple perspectives.    

 

 

 

[amytheorangutan]

12 hours ago, Lu said:

But this is not a Chinese thing. There are plenty of Western people who are more than happy to explain to Chinese people how their country works. There are even American people who are happy to tell me how the Netherlands work, and vice versa. It is possible that there is a specific brand of Chinese stubbornness, but I am not sure if that is the case.

Your comment reminded me of this video ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYsUt3KPiQs

[永鈞]

AH,  I have had so many frustrating experiences like this. I used to take part in some psycholinguistic experiements here in Taiwan, the woman running the experiment once told me that my English was incorrect (I can’t remmeber what it was she objected to). I tried to patiently explain the relevant usage to her and she was adamant that I was wrong. Maybe I could’ve challenged her to find a pen example of English produced by a native speaker that confirmed to her ‘rule’ but it was easier just to let it go. What was most frustrating was that she thinks I was ‘wrong’ beacuse I’m Irish and she thinks I don’t know standard English.

 

I’ve often been told similar things when I teach English in Taiwan. The school tells parents I’m American and they insist I speak ‘correct English’. They will disagree with how I marked a test and insist that they’ve studied in the US so they’re a higher authority than me on the matter (I’m talking about a non native speaker who went over for one semester.)

 

It’s a case of 夜郎自大

.

[Demonic_Duck]

Spoiler

Hi @grawrt et al! Long time, no post!

 

When I did translation/editing, I always responded in the same way to this kind of complaint: Google the exact term/phrasing and cite the number of Google hits for your preferred wording vs. theirs. It's difficult for them to argue when your version has 200,000 hits and theirs has 15.

 

On the rare occasion that they don't give up (sometimes on the basis that "the majority isn't always right", flying in the face of mainstream linguistics), you can send them links to "high-quality" (read: prestigious) sources that also use your version. Broadsheet newspapers and published books are always a good bet.

[Lu]

8 hours ago, 永鈞 said:

What was most frustrating was that she thinks I was ‘wrong’ beacuse I’m Irish and she thinks I don’t know standard English.

I'm now reminded of my Dutch 学长 who told me and my classmates, third-year students fresh off the plane, that if you went travelling deeper into China, sometimes people didn't understand you because your Chinese was too standard for them. Oh how we overestimated ourselves, it's kind of sweet to look back on it now.

[funnypuppy]

The answer to this question might help explain why Chinese restaurant menus around the world are notorious for bad translations and the instruction manuals for all those things made in China is SO bad.

Chinese people will pay very good money for a native speaker to tutor them, yet their companies rarely hire laowai to write or check their English or other language instructions or marketing materials.  This is a culture bound problem.

 

[陳德聰]

A couple of weeks ago, I was translating personal letters for an immigration application. I like to send drafts to the client since their legal representative may want to suggest edits, and it would be a waste of paper to re-do the entire package just to add/remove a line.

 

So I send off the drafts and get a message from the client that says their “lawyer” said there were some grammar mistakes in my translation. I hate playing telephone, so I asked the client to get their “lawyer” to call me to discuss.

 

“Lawyer” calls, my caller ID shows a surname I’d consider a pretty common Chinese surname, and she speaks English with a familiar Chinese accent. But for some reason we are having the conversation in English anyway. Whatever.

 

She says she was reviewing one of the letters and found a grammar mistake. I have it open on the screen in front of me and am re-reading it as she reads out the sentence without telling me which page and paragraph we’re on, a bit annoyed at this point but if I made a mistake obviously I will need to correct it.

 

The “mistake”:

 

”He would come visit us regularly.”

 

So I thought okay, it’s a bit nitpick-y to demand it be “come to visit” when omitting the “to” is perfectly fine in Canadian English, but it’s an easy edit so sure.

 

But what she actually wanted me to change it to was:

 

”He would come visiting us regularly.”

 

OR (she said)

 

”He would come to visiting us regularly.”

 

So I just repeated it back at her a couple times and said I was willing to change it to “come to visit” but neither of her suggestions... She said she believed that the second verb in a sentence should be in -ing form and that it was good to separate verbs by “to”. I mean, these are not entirely wrong statements but...

 

It felt like such a bizarre flex, to pick out this one sentence in the several pages of letters, and then to suggest one completely wrong edit and one that would be considered clunky and non-standard.

 

But she still continues to send her clients to get their documents translated by me so I guess she’s decided perhaps the language professional can do the language job.

 

P.S. it turned out she is a consultant, and not a lawyer. Because for some reason in Canada an immigration consultant can help people navigate legal proceedings for immigration, even though it should really be done by a lawyer and in most cases the lawyer is even cheaper...

[abcdefg]

2 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

It felt like such a bizarre flex, to pick out this one sentence in the several pages of letters, and then to suggest one completely wrong edit and one that would be considered clunky and non-standard.

 

But she still continues to send her clients to get their documents translated by me so I guess she’s decided perhaps the language professional can do the language job.

 

You get high marks for diplomacy! 

[Brian US]

Not really on topic, but about 80% of the time I see my name spelled out it's always "Brain". I'm sure it's mostly from auto-correct, but I wonder how many people understand it as brain, and assume that's an actual name in the West.

 

I don't correct it, and I even have some US co-workers think it was funny and strictly call me Brain.

[murrayjames]

1 hour ago, Brian US said:

I wonder how many people understand it as brain, and assume that's an actual name in the West.

 

In Sichuan I knew a Chinese man whose English name is Brain. When we met, I asked him if he meant Brian. He said no: his name is Brain.

[mouse]

I think I knew his mate, Pinky.