Chinglish. little phrases that have meaning only between you and your girl.

[Pineau]

Fiona has learned her english from watching TV but some of what she has learned is just plain wrong. But it had been very difficult to get her to un-learn it and teach her the right way. So I have adaped my Chinglish phrases to include the following. I understand it well but anyone else would just say huh?

gooder than no have.   (better than nothing)

we are (us) are they coming with we are.

they are (them) are we going with they are.

off = floor

road + lu = ru

[Willy The Londoner]

No wonder no one understands me. I HAVE been talking like that for years!!!

Willy

[Buzz]

my favorite,  'top side down'      or as we say here.  bottoms up!   

[David E]

My favourite from Ming :

" I difficult eat policeman with choplicks" !!!

Somehow she has got potatoes firmly mixed up in her head with "policeman"...dont know how or why, but nothing seems to work to undo this error...so I go along with it !!!

As for "choplicks"...this was a misprint in one of her English learning books...and it stuck forever !!!

[shaun]

My favorite is, "yesterday the day after tomollow," to which I reply, "you mean in 2 days?"  Yes. 

[Pineau]

Good one Shaun.  I use mingtian-mingtian for dayafter tomorrow.

Potato and policeman. This a strange one but it made sense to her at some time.

Fiona mixes English road with Chinese lu and it comes out dru. The dru has a terrific jam.

Floor and off are used easily interchanged. we live on the 7th off.

I hope I can correct these as she will have some trouble in America. Trouble is I understand perfectly and sometimes dont even notice the mistake. Like Willy I am starting to talk like that too.

[Chong]

Thankfully my wife is taking ESL ( English as a Second language ) classes sponsored by the gov't for newly arrived immigrants.  Her verbs & grammar are improving by leaps and bounds.

How many of you guys are practicing Mandarin with your wives ??

[Jan]

We have something similar to this as well...

She writes Finnish, and when she does not know the Finnish word, she adds a English word in it. And when she does not know the English words either, she writes Chinese Pinyin. So often her sentences are made up of three languages. With a huge amount of typos and grammar mistakes. But after a while I got used to it and can almost always guess what she is trying to say.

But because of she is using bad Finnish and bad English... After I learned her vocabulary I started to use the same words that she understands. And explain things with her vocabulary... So sometimes when I speak English with some other friends, they are stunned how quickly my English has gotten from so good, to so bad haha...

Same with my mother tongue Finnish language. Even at work, I notice that I sometimes sound like an immigrant or something. But because of this the immigrants have no problems to understand me and my basic Finnish without grammar... Kind of funny but also very annoying. And she also hopes that I could correct her mistakes and grammar mistakes. But for some reason I just understand her and miss all the mistakes and miss all the corrections.

[Neil]

I noticed that too.  I sometimes visit with my friend, who is Chinese.  She also asks me to correct her mistakes, but I so often understand what she means, not what she says, that I don't notice.  Communication is so much more than just words.  She sometimes asks me the proper way to say something, and a lot of times I'll be stumped.  I sometimes wish I was a little more educated. 

[David S]

Sometimes the goof-ups are so endearing also.  I remember when I was dating a Chinese girl and her car was in the shop and she needed transportation home from work she called me and asked; "Can you ride me home tonight?"

Another time she was telling me about a time she and her sister were shopping back in China.  Because my girl was much better at negotiating she wanted her sister to give her a sign when she really was serious about buying a particular item.  She told me; "I told my sister to give me the finger when she wanted something."  I had to correct her on that one.  Asking someone to give you the finger here in the US can cause quite a bit of confusion.

[shaun]

I know this isn't Chinglish but tonight I almost got into trouble.  Peggy and I were talking and I told her I bought a new DVD today.  I gave her the title and then a thought ran through my mind.  It wasn't a clean thought and I began to softly chuckle to myself.   She caught me chuckling and began scolding me, telling me I was a bad man.   I laughed even more.  Then she said, "all you want to do is have sex with a woman."  I was shocked because though the venue was correct the desire was not.  So I tried to explain my thought.  Then I realized she was really picking on me and I laughed even more.  The name of the movies?  Whale Rider.  Now I don't have to explain... do I?

The thing that amazed me the most was from a little chuckle she knew exactly what I was thinking.  I guess in many ways what a lot of American women say about us is true. We're all the same?

[Pineau]

A couple of new ones.

Spagainny = spaghetti

Gooder= better

Gooder than don't have = better than nothing.
 
water million.  = western union.  or water melon . same thing right?