A few days ago I tried to nominate Manglish as a term for Mandarin butchered by excessive influence of foreign sociolinguistic patterns, prosodic habits and so on.
Through an idle Google search I discover that “Manglish”, though, is a very well-established term for a dialect of English spoken in Malaysia, with 62,700 Google hits and its own Wikipedia entry. So what’s our word for Mandarin garbled by a non-native speaker? My vote is for Mandarish. Not quite as catchy as Manglish, but, with only 21 google hits, not too promiscuous in its semantic habits.
[Correction 12/9/07 - "Malay" to "Malaysia"]
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Comments 6
In my mind, I think that Chinglish describes the joint mangling of both English and and Chinese. I know that many people think of Chinglish as poorly spoken English by Chinese native speakers, but I think that it is simply because the laowais who speak Chinese to any extent to recognize the poor Mandarin are relatively rare.
Posted 14 Dec 2007 at 11:32 am ¶Hi juhuacha
You’re right about poor laowais not recognizing their own incompetence (I include myself in this category). If I get into the right situation I’ll try to get some good Beijinger comments about laowais speaking Mandarish.
But I want you to join me in advocating for a new term (“Mandarish” gets my vote) rather than try to re-use Chinglish to mean “Mandarin mangled by native English-speaking foreigners.” I appreciate that you can hear Chinglish both ways, but I think you’re too far in the minority. If you use it that way, no one’s going to know what you mean. Take a Google search for example. I’ll run through the first few hits on “Chinglish”
1. Wikipedia, where it gets defined as English with Chinese influences or, interestingly, Chinese using borrowed English words. Neither of these quite gets at what we want to say here, which is Chinese (in this case Mandarin) with characteristics of English prosody, grammar or sociolinguistics. Now if you really want to get buried in the subject, there are some worthwhile comments in the Discussion page. But the consensus there seems to be even more that Chinglish is a word that refers to English rather than Chinese.
2. A blog with the usual humorous Chinglish signs BUT some pretty good analysis instead of the usual condescension. Take a look at his review of machine translation, a common villain in the Chinglish sagas. I put an RSS feed on my home page. Bottom line: English with Chinese characteristics.
3. A machine translation site that seems to be legit. Don’t know what to make of this one
4. “The Chinglish Pool” on Flickr – seems to be entirely English with Chinese characteristics
5. …also Flickr
6. A page on engrish.com – the usual “let’s laugh at funny translations” crap. Bottom line: English with Chinese characteristics.
7. Some blog page – also the “laugh at funny translations” stuff. Thoroughly unoriginal and slightly annoying. Still: English with Chinese characteristics
I won’t beat it into the ground. We need a new word. It also makes me think that Beijing Sounds needs a good post of Mandarish. I’m thinking not beginning Mandarin learners, but pretty advanced speakers who still get thrown off the horse now and again.
Posted 15 Dec 2007 at 12:15 pm ¶I don’t know… somehow I feel like it should have two syllables. At three it feels too clunky, and by continuing to use the end of English instead of the beginning, it makes me think this would still be a term for some form of bad English rather than Chinese.
What makes Chinglish so great is that it rhymes with English, making it instantly recognizable (also why Manglish is so good for Malaysia, and Singlish for Singapore). I think what would be ideal is a word that uses the last one or two syllables of Mandarin or Chinese.
Also, would such a term that combines with English only be applicable to native English speakers learning Mandarin? And on third thought, shouldn’t the word be in Chinese? Some play on pu tong hua, han yu, or zhong wen, perhaps. This is far more complicated than I thought when I started this comment.
How about anyu (暗语）？
Posted 16 Jan 2008 at 2:18 pm ¶When I was in school (DLI, 1963), we used the term “Zhonglish” for our word-for-word translation games, like: Wo you dao qu. 我有到去. I have to go. Or: Shi ni gaoxing xianzai? 是你高兴现在? Are you happy now? Zhonglish gets a few hits on Google, which asks, “Did you mean: Chinglish”. Clever Google! For a Chinese term, how about something like yinghua-huahua 英化华话? It just rolls off the tongue.
Posted 19 Jan 2008 at 11:43 am ¶Hi Mike — Zhonglish. This is fantastic! I’m putting my vote here now and it’s really an honor to have you here, since you were studying Chinese when it was really hard (i.e. no computerized pinyin input). Shaan, sorry I’m not voting with anyu, but I just can’t generate the enthusiasm, although I agree now that Mandarish just wasn’t working.
I’d promised juhuacha earlier that I’d try to get a post eventually on Zhonglish, but I still haven’t made any progress. Need a critical mass of foreigners and a few bottles of beer.
Posted 19 Jan 2008 at 12:28 pm ¶“Anyu” has its charms — it instantly makes me think of one particular French classmate at Beida who actually had excellent Chinese but just couldn’t shake the Gallic accent. (I live in mortal fear that my spoken Chinese might suffer from something similarly obvious.) But it’s gotta be Zhonglish FTW here. For a Chinese name, what about 重语? Mispronounced and a malapropism.
Posted 20 Jan 2008 at 11:16 pm ¶Post a Comment