Language Log

A few days ago, I wrote a post called "The Westernization of Chinese", in which I linked to a virtuoso video performance by "Miss Lin".  Steve Kass asked, "Has anyone transcribed this whole thing?"  I don't think so, but with the help of Sophie Wei and Chia-hui Lu, who always wish me a good day / evening / morning / weekend / mood, I am pleased to present the complete transcription (in pinyin and Chinese characters) and English translation of Miss Lin's performance.  Even those who do not read Chinese will immediately apprehend the extraordinary degree to which English is mixed in with Mandarin.

Preparing this transcription and translation was a long and arduous task, and I'm sure that there are still some imperfections, for which I ask the forgiveness of Language Log readers.  At least the transcription and translation will provide a good idea of the nature of the language employed by Miss Hold.

Each segment of the monologue consists of three parts:

a. characters plus English

b. pinyin transcription

c. English translation

When she speaks English, all three components are identical.

In several recent posts (and in many earlier posts as well), we have discussed some of the ways in which English has had an impact upon Chinese:

• "'Have a good day!' in Mandarin"
• "Creeping Romanization in Chinese"
• "New radicals in an old writing system"

But the Westernization of Chinese reaches far beyond the types of influences and borrowings described in previous Language Log posts.  Testimony of the extent to which this goes comes from a Chinese friend:

My mother, as I've mentioned before, said to me about ten years ago: "I often have difficulty understanding the Chinese in the newspapers," even though Chinese is her mother tongue and her only language, and she is well educated. I find it's because the Chinese newspaper's sentences are now a direct translation from English, with English, not traditional Chinese, grammar and vocabulary. The Chinese language is becoming inexorably westernized.

Gloria Bien (who has been teaching Mandarin for more than forty years [she was my first-year teacher]) heard this sentence at lunch yesterday:  Zhù nǐ yīgè hǎo xīnqíng 祝你一个好心情 ("[I] wish you a good mood").  She remarked:

I was stunned.  How can anyone wish a good mood on me?  But our intern, a native Chinese fresh from Beijing in August, declared that this is actually said, as an equivalent to "Have a nice day."

That's the headline of an article in today's shanghaiist.

What is the greatest Japanese export to China?  Language!

As anti-Japanese protests and riots swirl across China (over some tiny, rocky, contested islands in the middle of the sea between Taiwan and Okinawa), Xu Wenguang, program director of CCTV 1, made this remarkable statement: