Growing up, I had a complicated relationship with language. Since my parents didn’t speak English to me before I started preschool, I had to learn English through immersion there. I spent much of my childhood perfecting my English and neglecting my Chinese.
As I got older, I was always embarrassed about my Chinese. I wasn’t a star student in weekend Chinese School classes. I speak with a Taiwanese accent that people from China always comment on. By the time I started taking Chinese classes at Yale, I was used to speaking in a mix of Chinese and English (Chinglish) that I found it hard to speak only Chinese. For example, I once asked my mom if we could “zuo a guo of laundry” (literally “do a load of laundry”). When I did try to speak Chinese in class, I was repeatedly told that my Chinese was ‘wrong’. My teacher constantly corrected my Taiwanese accent and my English influenced sentence structure.
Insights from Linguistics
At Yale, I work on the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project (YGDP) which documents subtle differences in the way people speak English in North America. Through my studies, I’ve learned to put a name to language differences I’ve observed in people and the language pet peeves of those around me.
More importantly, I’ve learned that these differences have systematic explanations. The judgment that some of those differences are “good” and others are “bad” usually has a lot more to do with our underlying assumptions about those who speak those varieties and not anything inherent to the language itself.
For example, in high school, my teachers would always correct people when they used double negatives like “Ain’t nobody gonna do that”. But this has been established by linguists as a phenomenon called “negative concord” which is characteristic of African American English (AAE) (and other varieties of English as well) . Not only is it logical and systematic, other languages such as Spanish, French, and Russian all regularly use it to express negation.
This got me thinking about my struggles with the Chinese. Since there are linguistic explanations for personal datives (“I gotta get me some coffee”) quotative like (“and he was like…”), and metathesis (saying “aks” instead of “ask”), why wouldn’t there be explanations for my Chinese?
Chinglish shishenme? (What is Chinglish?)
As part of a class project last year, I wanted to learn about the phenomenon I knew as “Chinglish”. To me, and my Chinese American friends, this word describes when you speak Chinese and English in the same sentence (codemixing). To my dismay, according to linguistics literature, Chinglish is “the misshapen language that does not follow the rules of the English language and culture”. This is often attributed to Mandarin Chinese speakers who are learning English. Examples include：
- Direct translations of Chinese sentences into English such as “I very like..” for “我很喜欢”
- Literal translations of figurative language like translating “加油!” (a Mandarin phrase that means something to the effect of “come on!” or “Go for it!” as “Add gas!”
- Mistranslations (usually by machines) due to cultural disconnects as in these photos from the New York Times.
The Chinese government has repeatedly moved to eradicate this form of Chinglish, but it persists to this day.
Recently, there has been controversy surrounding this word. Some people use it in a derogatory/pejorative sense, and in reaction, others call it racist. However, Chinese Linguists and people in my parents’ generation (1st generation immigrants) use the term to describe Chinese influenced English.
The Two Chinglishes
Much of the discourse about this topic is confusing and unproductive because people mean different things when they say “Chinglish”. For example, the Wikipedia page for Chinglish describes Chinese influenced English while citing this Oxford English Dictionary definition which describes Chinese-English codemixing.
“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.”
Oxford English Dictionary
This confusion isn’t limited to Chinglish. The same Wikipedia article compares Chinglish with other “interlanguage varieties of English” which are described as ‘pidgins’, codemixing varieties, or English heavily influenced by another language. These include Greeklish, Konglish, Spanglish, Singlish, Runglish, and Tinglish. In this series, “Chinglish” will refer to codemixing unless stated otherwise. I think it’s important to talk about linguistic phenomena in ways that are recognizable to those who speak it. Everyone I know who mixes Chinese and English calls it Chinglish.
So Chinglish is just bad Chinese?
Contrary to popular belief, the ability to speak any codemixed variety shows high linguistic skill in both languages, not a deficiency in either. Since codemixed sentences have to conform to the rules of both languages, speakers need to deeply understand both to even create codemixed sentences. If you don’t understand the rules, you’ll make ungrammatical sentences just like in any other language/dialect. There is no reason to stigmatize the mixing of languages, in fact, it’s pretty amazing.
Want to read more about Asian American linguistics? Read my next post about what it means to “sound Asian” here!
3 Comments
Jess
April 14, 2020 at 7:16 pmInteresting article and agreed that code mixing requires deep understand of both languages. When my kids were young, they said something like “I am 看ing TV” (看 = watch) or “This is un頂able” (In Cantonese means cannot stand it). It is amazing how much they understand grammar and be able to mix the two languages together
Uncle Dan
April 15, 2020 at 7:27 amHey, Serena,
Uncle Dan here.
I struggle wit language 2.
I not understand English well, cause I wread, rite & speak American.
Hillbilly Childrenese is my favorite form of talk, as you well know.
Love❤️ & Prayers 2 Y’all
Uncle Dan,
P. S. Great Article
Michael
June 15, 2021 at 6:15 amI think it’s important to differentiate between codemixing and unintended errors. I can agree with you on using Oxford’s definition of Chinglish as codemixed Chinese and English, I suppose, though that’s not a standard understanding of the term, as far as I can tell. It seems it’s much more commonly considered to be English with errors introduced by way of Chinese as a first-language interference or through overly simple or incorrect translation (I haven’t seen it described as Chinese with English interference, or “bad Chinese” as you say).
Let me use my own case as an example. I’m an American living and working in China, now married to a Chinese. My Chinese level is intermediate, and I’ve been teaching English in China for about six years now.
When my wife and I talk to each other, I would say we use both codemixed American English with Mandarin Chinese as well as ungrammatical, error-prone Chinese (on my part) and occasionally ungrammatical, error-prone English (on my wife’s part). We often describe the way we speak as part English, part Chinese, and a large part Chinglish.
Are we able to communicate with each other effectively? Sure. Well, most of the time anyway! :). On the occasions when confusion creeps in, we’re able to work it out in fairly short order. But is our codemixed melange of languages equally useful for communicating with others? Not really, no. People with a moderate understanding of both languages might get a lot, but not all, of what we’re saying; people fluent in both should be fine, though they might scratch their head at our non-standard usage, pronunciation, and so on. (I’d like to think we’d make them laugh sometimes, too.)
I agree that your Chinese teacher is going too far in ‘correcting’ your Taiwanese pronunciation, as if Taiwanese, or Shanghainese, or Fujianese, etc., are somehow ‘wrong’ Chinese–they’re not, but the CCP and, to some extent, the educational system and pop culture, sometimes think otherwise. But, if you’re using English sentence structure when speaking Chinese to a Chinese-speaking audience, then it is wrong and worth correcting–as long as your goal is to be able to communicate clearly to someone who doesn’t share your mixed language background.
The same is true in reverse when the people in my classes use Chinglish: it’s typically not because they’re adeptly mixing the two languages, it’s usually because they’ve defaulted to an L1 structure or a simple or faulty translation. I point it out because it’s my job, and I want them to be understood clearly and for others to think of them as intelligent and professional.
I get the tension. I don’t want to be judgemental or harsh. I get that there’s no such thing as one ‘standard’ of English, or Chinese, or any language; languages are not static and always evolving. What seems an error to one might be a consistent feature of another person’s dialect, and mutual understanding is the most important thing. But, that doesn’t mean language errors don’t exist, or that L1 or L2 interference can’t cause problems in understanding or in the way a person is perceived. Knowing the audience is key, and, particularly when the audience isn’t known, teachers have to reach for what is broadly considered standard, even if that’s a fraught concept.