English lessons abroad

Chinglish story

This column focuses on Chinglish mistakes in our daily life. If you have any experiences to share, send them to Wang Yu at wangyu2008@ynet.com.

By Wang Yu

People think it’s faster learning a foreign language if you’re living in that country. But as far as I’m concerned, where you live doesn’t matter when you isolate yourself from a particular place’s culture.

My aunt lived in Los Angeles for more than 10 years but she still cannot speak English fluently. Two years ago, she sold her spa in the US and returned to China.

I was always curious how a woman who did not speak English could run a business for so many years. The answer is simple – she lived in a Chinese community. If she needed to deal with Americans, variations of basic sentences could be repeated.

This isn’t just happening within the middle-aged Chinese population. When I was on vacation in England, I saw some Chinese students who rarely got out of their comfort zones. Their English actually got worse – or at least improved at a slower rate than when they were in China.

One day we held a dinner party in the public kitchen of a dormitory. I lived with my friend Amy, who was studying there, and got to know many Chinese students in the school. After finishing dinner, we played mafia. A German student named Alex joined us. To make it easier for him, all of the Chinese students spoke English.

“Well, I think this lady-killer should be Chris. What he said in the last two rounds was quite contradictory,” Alex said.

He pointed at Chris Liu, who was sitting opposite to him. During the game, there is an anonymous “killer” who sits in the crowd that people have to ferret out. Every round the “judge” asks people to close their eyes and let the killer select someone to kill. The mission is to find the killer before everyone “dies.”

“You say it’s a lady killer, but I’m not a lady,” Liu said.

“Ah… by lady-killer, I mean someone who kills ladies. You see, only girls have been kicked out so far,” Alex explained.

“Basic knowledge, isn’t it?” Amy said to me quietly.

The language deficiencies of the Chinese students really became obvious. They had lived in England for two years, but their unwillingness to assimilate to local life really hurt them.

“Actually, the first few months are hard for everyone because you find that all you’ve learned at school is useless,” Amy said. “But I soon started to take it as a good opportunity – if you are in Britain, try to live a British lifestyle. Watch TV, go to the streets, find a part-time job – they all help to improve one’s English.”

“Yes, I agree. Is there anything you can tell me now?” I said.

“You’ve gone bonkers, mate!”

“What? Bankers?”

“No, bonkers. It’s English slang that means you’re crazy. I heard it first from a local boy when I was working in McDonald’s. Then I found on the Internet it first appeared in the early 20th century, meaning ‘light-headed, giddy’ or ‘slightly drunk,’ used by the British navy.”

I kept that in mind. It turns out that talking to locals really will teach you more than any book.