Native Language

Native language is usually a big headache of South East Asian.

Everyone knows I am a columnist in Hong Kong and Singapore major Chinese newspapers, but Written Chinese is not the only native language in my brain. When I consider some importance issues, like making decision on big business project, replying email to my lover, I think in English, not in written Chinese or in Cantonese. No language is the dominant language in my mind.

No dominant native language in thinking process may cause so many problems. You may find the sentence structure in my commentaries is not standard, like someone translates English essay into Chinese. Some proofreader in Hong Kong golden find incorrect usage in my English essay. My fluency of English is much worse than most of native speakers or writers from English speaking countries. Sometimes I may think the whole thing in Indonesian, but I am very difficult to present it to other people due to my poor translation skills.

Why do I suddenly restart writing blog in English? A big issue makes me cannot to think and write in English is a short period, so I write it in English.

You may find more and more blog entires in broken English version of my blog, when my feeling is still unstable.

P.S. I hope some hostile users from HKGolden can respects every English blog writers from Hong Kong or other Asian countries. You can tell the grammatical mistake to the author in friendly way, like leave comment in the blog, not use the mistake to make fun in the forum. This is very effective way to discourage the people to write and speak in English.

Hi, readers from HKGolden

http://forum3.hkgolden.com/view.aspx?message=1332448&highlight_id=0&page=1

I think some readers click here due to the post in HKGolden above.

As the first post in this blog said, you may find "broken" English in here. You can point out my grammatical mistake in comment section.

Anyway, some HongKongers may think "good" English as "complicated" English, please look the following reply in the post above:

英國人?咁既修辭技巧只算中三程度...不過冇辦法...佢要掩飾文法唔掂既事實,唯有用最淺易既英文....

Oh! My God, only HongKonger may think simplest English is the way to hide my "broken" English. In HongKonger point of view, complicated English is "good" and "advance". Really? For daily use, simple and clear English is enough.

On the other hand, this post in HKGolden explains the cause of Hong Kong poeple English in decline, the people only laugh other people writes blog in "broken" English and never encourage it.

You never jump into water, you never know how to swim. Only a few Hong Kong people understand the importance of "drinking water" in learning process.

The origin of Chinglish

Every foreign visitor in China may see some roadsigns with nonsense English translation. Someone calles this kind of English as Chinglish. It mixs the English vocabulary with Chinese grammar.

So many Chinese and Hong Konger finish college education in US, UK, etc. Why does no one stop Chinglish spread over the country?

1. Most Chinese students in overseas study IT, engineering or science, you may find some of them in faculty of business administration. Only very small portion of them choose social science or arts related subjects. Very rare parents may want their children to study Social Science or Art because of the unclear career path of the graduate. Simple English is enough for the life of engineering students or science students in university. Do you think they know how to write "standard English" for everyday life?

2. On the other hand, this is also the problem of working attitude. Most of Chinglish translation is product of computer program. Chinese in mainland China just enter the Chinese expression into computer program and use the result without modification. They do not take serious for their work. Please look Hong Kong, roadsign with Chinglish translation may be under fire of some magazines like Jimmy Lai's Next magazine.

Chinglish is a product of Chinese culture. As foreigner, you can laugh at this. As Chinese, you have to think the cultural problem behind the Chinglish and try to find a solution.