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为中式英语(金语)辩护 |
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| I know
that I am stirring up a hornets nest of controversy by broaching
this subject. However, "controversy" is my middle name and
"mischief-making" is my game. Chinglish should not be confused
with pidgin
(洋泾浜) English. The latter being a contact language between people who
speak different tongues. Chinglish, on the other hand, is the
product of Chinese English speakers who apply Chinese syntax and grammar
rules to English ones. In a sense, it is a language of the educated
Chinese in China. For all its faults and shortcomings, I think that Chinglish has taken an unfair rap. I posit a situation where Chinglish would evolve into a distinct language that ends up as the world's second most common tongue before the end of this century. Mandarin is already spoken by 1.3 billion people worldwide. All students in China learn English and the majority of them use Chinglish. Within one or two generations, almost all Chinese will understand Chinglish. By then, Chinglish will no longer be considered as bad English for it will become another tongue. There will be good Chinglish and bad Chinglish. Of course it would be great if all Chinese speak Oxbridge English. That will never happen. The best way to think of Chinglish is to consider COBOL, a programming language used for business applications. It is closer to English than many other high-level computing languages, but no one thinks of COBOL as English language. From a practical point of view, a busy business person would be better off learning Chinglish, which she can pick up in days, instead of Chinese which requires months of effort just to acquire very basic fluency. It is also a mistake to think that Chinglish phrases originated from poor English. Many were created as language humor. I plead guilty to spawning a few during my last trip to Shanghai. My favorite response to an interesting situation is to say "Lots of meaning" in English, a transliteration of "很有意思" in Chinese. All my Chinese friends could appreciate the humor. Personally, an incidental benefit of understanding Chinglish is the ability to use translation software efficiently. I can read and speak Chinese. My ability to write Chinese has largely been revoked by Confucius. Thanks to translation software freely available on the web, I can "write" a fairly decent Chinese article by inputting in Chinglish rather than English. Inputting in correct English results in a poorer correlation. Perhaps Chinglish is a more logical language than English. Instead of denouncing Chinglish, we should just consider it an instrument of communication. Just like English, it is dynamic and changing. After all, a static language is a dead language. While not actually encouraging it, we should be able to tolerate it. The purists should bear with us flawed people a bit longer. 为中式英语(金语)辩护
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