介绍:
The 2013 Chinese buzzword "no zuo no die" has also been included in the online urban dictionary with the explanation, "this phrase is of Chinglish origin." The expression means if you don't do stupid things, they won't come back to haunt you"
Submissions by users are approved by volunteer editors, and new words or phrases can only be published with approval from more than half of the editors. Other Chinglish words or phrases in the dictionary include "gelivable" (awesome or amazing), "people mountain people sea" (very crowded) as well as several other Chinese expressions.
Zhang Meilan is a Chinese Language and Literature professor at Tsinghua University. She discussed her views of Chinglish.
"Chinglish can not be described as something good or something bad. Chinglish is storage of a mixture of languages. As Experts in the field of linguistics, we use Chinglish when researching about the development of languages. The increasing amount of foreigners that travel China for business or for educational purposes also means that Chinglish still has a distinctive purpose."
The Urban Dictionary is a Web-based dictionary that contains more than seven million definitions. Submissions are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site visitors. The Urban Dictionary offers literal definitions and descriptions of international urban terms. Each definition is automatically accepted or rejected based on the number of "Publish" or "Don't Publish" votes it receives by editors. Editors are comprised of public volunteers. There are no criteria that editors have to follow in approving or rejecting definitions.
The Urban Dictionary website was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham. Peckham created the site during his freshman year at California Plytechnic State University. Peckam is not the first person to create an internet hit during his time at University, Google and Facebook were originally made by a pair of Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The popular search Engine Yahoo was also made by two Stanford students, Jerry Yang and David Filo.
The expression Chinglish maybe alien to many foreign readers of urban literature but the popular Chinese term has been around since the 16th centaury when British traders reached Macao and Guangzhou. The expression partially died out in the late 19th century when Chinese missionary schools began teaching Standard English.
Chinglish was originally seen as a problem in China after the country was selected to host the 2008 Olympics. Chinese officials made a big leap to correct public signs that used Chinglish. During the last 10 years the standards of English in China have increased dramatically and Chinese citizens now feel comfortable with using Chinglish terms and understand the humor behind them.
Zhang Meilan discussed the history of Chinglish
At first, Chinglish was not only found in Guangzhou. Originally Chinglish was also not a pure mix of English and Chinese. Chinglish started off as a mixture of Portuguese and Chinese. After Shanghai was established as the economic and financial center for China, Shanghai also became a major port of Chinglish. As China became more open,Chinglish started rise in popularity in other parts of China. Chinglish can often be heard at the Huiming Street in Xi'an and at the Silk Market in Beijing.
I caught up with several foreign students in Beijing to hear some of the Chinglish they have witnessed during their time here.
"A chinglish phrase I have heard before is good good study, day day up. The harder you study more you can improve your English. Just the fact that it makes no grammatical sense is really funny. "
"Dangerous road kids caring, I guess it means be careful of the kids on the street."
"It makes sense, but it is an unusual way of expressing that thing. Like don't step on the grass, tiny grass is sleeping. I think it means that the grass was just planted."
Chinglish is an ever growing phenomenon and in the future their may be a people mountain people sea of foreigners using hop Chinese/English expressions.
