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Opinion / Forum Trends

Chinglish, amusing or just plain embarrassing?

( bbs.chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2015-02-02 08:38

Girdyerloins (Spain)

Language purists abound, but language changes. The Arab saying, I believe, is: "the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on." Chinese is my most recent - and most challenging - language and I would love to attain that lofty ideal of fluency whereby I can speak Chinglish.

Think how many words there are in Chinese now which, using Chinese homonyms, try to approximate words and names from other cultures. I admire what little I know of what is called "martian Chinese", the highly inventive, constantly evolving patois used by young people on the internet to dodge censorship. It is likely to become a language unto itself, another of the hundreds of Chinese sub-dialects. To deny the dynamism of language is to get left behind.

Chinglish, amusing or just plain embarrassing?

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