Comments on: Zhonglish for two-year-olds http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/01/zhonglish-for-two-year-olds/?&owa_medium=feed&owa_sid= Home of the Beijing Sounds Studios: productions mostly of language through foreign ears Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:08:32 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Shaun http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/01/zhonglish-for-two-year-olds/comment-page-1/#comment-90749 Shaun Sun, 08 May 2011 05:29:37 +0000 http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/?p=416#comment-90749 The "是“ in the response combined with the word-order mistake sounds like she understood the question as "How would you use Chinese to say 'Where is mommy?'" in the sense of both those three words and the question itself. I'm an undergrad in Beijing studying Chinese and a very common mistake for English speakers is to add “是“ whenever you would say a conjugation of "to be" in English. She did translate "Where is mommy?" as three words and a question mark, same as my classmates from semester one and your cited translation software. If she needed to ask where Mom was in Chinese, she wouldn't even think about it, but Dad was asking her to translate a concept, and she translated three words. Also, excellent blog! You will probably see me back here soon. The “是“ in the response combined with the word-order mistake sounds like she understood the question as “How would you use Chinese to say ‘Where is mommy?’” in the sense of both those three words and the question itself. I’m an undergrad in Beijing studying Chinese and a very common mistake for English speakers is to add “是“ whenever you would say a conjugation of “to be” in English. She did translate “Where is mommy?” as three words and a question mark, same as my classmates from semester one and your cited translation software. If she needed to ask where Mom was in Chinese, she wouldn’t even think about it, but Dad was asking her to translate a concept, and she translated three words.

Also, excellent blog! You will probably see me back here soon.

]]> By: syz http://www.sinoglot.com/bjs/2009/01/zhonglish-for-two-year-olds/comment-page-1/#comment-12075 syz Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:04:59 +0000 http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/?p=416#comment-12075 YAG/甘雅 -- good idea to be thinking about the crisscross effects of code switching. I know nothing about this, but at the very least I may try to get her to translate back into English: "妈妈在哪里"英文怎么说？ just to see what effect it has. YAG/甘雅 — good idea to be thinking about the crisscross effects of code switching. I know nothing about this, but at the very least I may try to get her to translate back into English: “妈妈在哪里”英文怎么说？ just to see what effect it has.

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