Long anecdotes with little pay-off

This will be my thread for whenever my contribution to the conversation is so irrelevant and dithering that I no longer feel comfortable hijacking other people's threads.

1. CHINGLISH AND OTHER SPONTANEOUS PIDGINS
5:10 AM

booksfallapart's (thank you for die correction, Solla) brief reference to code-switching in his vastly more brain-feeding thread "Sounds" reminded me of something that happened to me last week. I was chatting with an Asian friend of mine and as we were talking, we of course were communicating in a sort of a Chinglish, which felt very natural and not weird at all. Then a third person came by and started talking to us in Chinglish as well. Friend A was Chinese-American and straight out bilingual by any definition - I'm sort of in a weird limbo zone but am effectively bilingual (loooong story) - but Friend B, the newcomer, was an American who had learnt Mandarin to an advanced level. In other words, he was what I would call not bilingual but a diglot. Now his Mandarin is absolutely great, perfect pronunciation, runs circles around me when it comes to politospeak. If it's possible to learn a language to native-level fluency, he surely is getting close. But somehow, when he joined into our Chinglish discussion, it just felt WRONG. His Chinglish somehow felt really off to me. Going back to that interesting discussion on that other thread about words/phrases/strings, he would break all the phrases in exactly the wrong place! That might seem like a silly assertion to make because Chinglish is nowhere near being a true Creole - I haven't met any communities that speak exclusively Chinglish or anything, and moreover I rarely speak Chinglish myself unless I happen to be talking to someone who is equally bilingual. But Friend A agreed - there was something that was just unnatural about Friend B's Chinglish, something that indicated his status as a non-native speaker. Perhaps he was leaning too heavily on English grammatical constructs.

I want to give some examples, but they'll probably make little sense unless you know Mandarin and even then they may make little sense (I appear to have been going increasingly incoherent in recent days).

"Good" Chinglish might be: "Ni zhi bu zhi dao" as one phrase; "wo xi huan" or "I like" (generally subject + corresponding verb in the same language)
Friend B: "Do you zhi dao..."; "I xi huan" or "wo like" (this feels VERY awkward to me)

"Good" Chinglish: "wu ge ping guo," "fat girl"
Friend B: "five ping guo's," "pang girl"
Actually now that I think about it, "wu ge apple" isn't that grating to me although "five ping guo's" will forever be gross; perhaps there are other Chinglish speakers in this Salon who will disagree.

I also find that when I use English in my Chinglish, I often drop in-built tense/number markers because, you know, Chyneeze don't swing that way.

So put together in a very simple (and boring) convo:

Me: Hey dude, wo hao xi huan zhe ge movie o, I already see it like wu ci le, mei yi ci dou hen exciting o!
Friend B: Yeah I zhi dao what you mean, wo ye saw it guo hao ji ci le, haha. Ni hai shi bi wo feng a little, wo hao xiang zhi saw that movie three ci...

Ew ew ew!!!!

Other Chinglish speakers might disagree; obviously there is no Henry Fa's Dictionary of Modern Chinglish Usage, and also I'm afraid that making up examples of Chinglish is harder than I thought (Chinglish being, after all, such an organic creation). But it's interesting to me that even in this sort of a situation, which is very spontaneous and certainly not regulated on any sort of official level, our brains (or at least my brain) still have rules for how best to deploy particular languages. I wonder if established Creoles underwent a similar process: initial chaos (our Asian immigrant parents meeting the English-speaking world); and then, with bilingual descendants, semi-rules vis a vis grammar for the nascent Creole, informed by the grammar and blocking patterns of the original languages.

Any insight on the rise of pidgin languages of all types welcome.

This is a good example of why I should not be allowed on the internet or near phones when drunk. I think I am going to go eat some pepto bismol and go back to lurking until my hangover subsides.

Martin M (booksfallapart) is actually the source of the sounds thread and the note on code switching. This is all interesting to me, but I don't have any sort of academic background in linguistics.

you're absolutely right. i will fix that asap. ah well. names and usernames are very hard for me when they are similar; i'll be mixing up murr and medellia any minute now!

(solla/sfalla)

Oh, for the day when someone mixes me up with my dear MurrMurr. *purrrrrr*

Reminder to self: do NOT read this thread when eating or drinking or engaged in other oral activities

Dammit. I'll have to put the mac in the shower. Back shortly.

>5 Medellia: I just want to mistaken for the divine LolaWalsher. That brain, those books, those incisive comment. Wait! She did say I could be her for a year, but she neglected to give me her brain, books, and incisive comments. Damn.

She's away on vacation at the moment, my spy in her neighbourhood tells me. We could go round to her place and steal her brain, her books and incisive comments.

Anyone game?

6. The shower is my favourite place to read. You have to hold your book outside the waterjet ofcourse, but if you keep your hand holding the book above shoulder level, the drops on your wet arm don't drip on the book.
You have also to keep one hand dry to flip the pages. It gets more difficult when you want to take notes...

When I read in the shower the pages just melt away. Usually by the time I'm finished my shower, the book is finished, also.

I used to write essays in the dorm showers with an expo marker on tile walls - unfortunately copying my work down onto Microsoft Word was a real bitch... not to mention the time I set off the fire alarm by trying to write on it...

ok, back to business.

Hairball, (may I?) you mentioned Henry Fa's magisterial and seminal work, Modern Chinglish Usage, (no touchstone? Shocking!) I would like to suggest a new thread devoted to well-chosen excerpts from this remarkable and rare book, with commentary added by the Mandarin-speaking Amateurs.

Ni jue de ne? Ingai hau shiao!

I hope we can also talk abut creoles and pidgins.

I've got really good recipe for pidgin creole. It tastes like a cross between gullah and cajun.

Hah!

hmmm, pidgin creole...what beverage goes well with that?

>12 tomcatMurr: Never heard of Modern Chinglish Usage (really? or are you Kai-wan-xiao-ing?) If so, I look forward to learning more.

The following are just some idle thoughts: My kids (Japanese father, American mother) attended the American School here in Japan (although they began in Japanese school) and apparently most of the students there speak some version of "Japlish." However, we approached bi-lingualism at home with the habit of keeping each language separate (a challenge at times). This seemed to help all of us maintain a higher level of consistency and literacy in the separate languages in which we are strongest. For the kids, Japlish was an "in group" speak among their peers at school, so it was easy not to use it at home.

Yes, I was kaiwanxiao, but I sure wish there was a reference like that! Maybe we should write one as Murr suggested... I'm sure we could come up with something saxophone (this is what one of my Taiwanese relatives thought the "long form of the English word 'sexy'" was, although I have no idea where she heard that word from, considering that most of her English is monosyllabic).

I'm curious about what you mean by keeping each language separate at home... did you try the system where, say, Dad speaks mostly in Japanese and Mom speaks mostly in English? I've heard a lot of people fantasize about that lately ("When Baby Dingo is born, I'm going to speak only Swahili to him and Pierre is going to only speak Farsi!! And then we're going to hire a Tibetan au pair"), but I have no idea how it would work out in practice!

I should probably clarify, now that I'm posting in the Chinese learning support thread and all, that I'm not "truly" bilingual. The story is very long and boring to everyone who isn't related to me, but basically I spoke almost exclusively Mandarin for the first three or so years of my life, then went on NEUROTIC LOCKDOWN MODE and spoke exclusively English, then had to start from scratch with Mandarin in high school. The bad part is that my Chinese is not excellent. The good part is that my Taiwanese mother now speaks English. The other good part is that judging from my experience there's something to be said for learning language at an early age. I had a MUCH easier time with Chinese pronunciation and grammar than my classmates, and I actually feel (and sound) much more comfortable in Mandarin than English, although I certainly am better at the latter.

Only in a thread with a title which promises little pay-off would I dare to go with this LOL.

I came to an English-speaking environment at the age of 13. I spent about six years trying to ensure that anybody who ever spoke to me would have no idea that I was not born in Canada, that I was not "native". I rejected all opportunities to be a part of a Czech/Slovak community here, which was thriving. Once I got over that nonsense, I became terribly homesick and rejected Czech/Slovak books, newspapers, magazines, contacts because they made me profoundly sad, and there was no possibility I would see Czechoslovakia ever again, since The Wall would be eternal. Eventually I got through the worst of that, too. Once I had children, with a Canadian girl, who had no interest in/inclination to learn Czech/Slovak, I also decided that since Czech and Slovak are useless languages, I would not teach them to my children. Now, when it is much too late, I think it was a mistake. My children grew up unilingual when they could have had more. Many people I know have children born in Canada who speak fluent Czech/Slovak and are teaching Czech/Slovak even to their children, now two generations removed. I now read Czech/Slovak prodigiously, trying to make up for everything I have missed, and am back to being homesick. LOL

Why late?

You mean why do I think it is too late to be teaching them the languages?

Because they have now both moved out of the old homestead, on to university and independent lives of their own.

Their father's wishes or regrets are pretty irrelevant to them now.

My son is just about perfectly fluent in French now, and wants to reach that in Spanish within two years, but Czech and Slovak have never interested him much.

And my daughter will have to show proficiency in French to get into the PhD program, but again, Czech and Slovak are irrelevant now.

Well, at least they're not mimes. They seem to be doing quite well on their own.

No, no miming for either one. LOL.

There must be a YouTube relevant to this.

As the redoubtable Admiral Stockton said once: I've got no ammo.

@16 Amaranthic, I love that new meaning for "saxophone"!"

To answer your question about my (#15) comment, "keeping the languages separate at home," I meant to say that we (parents) never had the habit of mixing Japanese and English as Japlish, so I suppose our kids followed that example. (I'm not passing judgment on whether mixing is good or bad, simply saying we didn't have the habit of it). We never concerned ourselves with our children becoming too aware of the difference between languages, yet they naturally noticed that when parents talked to each other, they used English. During their first 4-5 years, I also spoke primarily Japanese to them (my level has remained at pre-school Japanese!), as we wanted them to firmly establish one language and be able to succeed in Japanese kindergarten.

Suddenly, we were assigned to Houston, TX, so mastering English became a priority. Our son entered ESL class in 1st grade and daughter spent a very confusing year in English-immersed kindergarten. In the US my husband switched to speaking English, especially to our daughter, because she was becoming frustrated at trying to communicate with him. Also, it was more appropriate for our son to pattern his Japanese after the male role model, given the gender differences in Japanese usage. Today our 20 year old son jokes that he speaks like a 60 year old man in Japanese, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm also curious that you went through a language shut down period. My best friend (Chinese) went through something similar when she was growing up. Our daughter (then age 6) almost did a melt-down (frustration) and wouldn't try to speak any language, which is the reason I urged her father to switch to English to save their relationship. It seemed to work. We returned to Japan 7 years later and she has built up her Japanese to a fairly high level, but her English is still superior.

Apologies for going on at length. I'd love to hear from others with similar anecdotes.

You know, polutropos (hos mala polla plagxthe... my god I must get to bed soon before my failed high school Greek class comes back and haunts me), I actually feel much better now that you've shared that. Obviously our situations are different, not least because you actually know your language, but going by your example, it looks like there's hope for me yet! I can only hope that I one day am as agile with my Mandarin as you are with your Czech/Slovak.

Someone was telling me one of those quasi-spurious 'friend of a friend' type anecdotes about a friend who grew up in Catalonia, speaking Catalan at home and Spanish elsewhere. Apparently the kid spent the first few years of his life under the impression that rather than having Catalan and Spanish being two separate languages, there was instead only one language with "home" formality and "public" formality. Now I try not to put too much stock in worn anecdotes passed down through the grapevine, but this - the confusion around language boundaries - seems plausible to me. I always wonder how aware children in bilingual or trilingual homes are of the distinction between their languages.

I meet a lot of biracial kids who went through language shut-down or something similar. I find that a lot of the time there's this very peculiar shame in regards to language and culture when it comes to people who don't fit neatly into any slot. For me, claiming my heritage and language always felt very political.

#23 nobooks

"Today our 20 year old son jokes that he speaks like a 60 year old man in Japanese, but that's not necessarily a bad thing."

I love that. When in about 1989 (I had left Czechoslovakia in 1968) I had a 15-year old visitor from Prague, he said to me after a few days that I speak Czech like Karel Jaromir Erben. Erben was a great Czech poet who died in 1870. The point was that rather than the slangy "in" Czech that was native to him, mine was formal and old-fashioned. I laughed and was soemwhat complimented, but also felt very old-fogey.

>25 polutropos: Polutropos Your story made me smile. :) My son had the nickname "oji" (uncle) at school.

Nice story Polu,