language

I love Chinglish. A lot.

In fact i'm not too proud to admit that much of my valuable revision time last year was spent on sites like www.engrish.com, giggling immaturely at accidently funny Chinese and Japanese-English translations. Which is why this current list of 'top ten' embarassing chinglish amuses me greatly, and I thought was well worth sharing:

1) Good good study, day day up (好好学习，天天向上)
Note: Study hard and make progress everyday

2) How are you? How old are you？(怎么是你？怎么老是你？)
Note: Why are you here? Why do I always meet you?

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Few articles are as simultaneously infuriating and mollifying as this recent article from Xinhuanet.com. It centers around a forum at china.com where 98% of the readers called for lower years English lessons to be dropped. Two reasons for this attitude are shown below:

‘It is very ironic parents and students spend so much time and money learning something they don’t use’

‘My daughter has mixed English with Chinese pinyin, which is pathetic’

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Want your baby to start talking sooner? Try buying a backward-facing stroller.

New studies from the University of Dundee in Scotland have found that caregivers talk to infants more when the kids face them in strollers. Researchers observed how mothers behaved with infants in two kinds of strollers – one in which babies sit facing away from the mother, and one in which babies sit facing the mother. The result: Moms talk to their kids twice as much when facing them. This means more language development and social interaction.

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In my previous blog I mentioned that I would perform practical yet humiliating tasks in Chinese in order to my pass my knowledge onto beijingkids readers. Without realising quite what I was getting myself into, I decided to book myself a haircut (yu ding yi ge jian fa de shi jian 预订一个 剪发的时间) with a Chinese hairdresser and place my language to the ultimate first test.

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