Progress, or procrastination?

For a final entry in my War on Chinglish series, I feel compelled to cover one of my biggest pet hates in the local use of English. It's a pet hate not because of its linguistic inelegance or pointlessness, as with most of the entries in this series, but because of the unfortunate habit of thought it suggests.

The Chinese love to say step by step. In fact, it trips off their tongues so readily and speedily, it sounds as if they have compressed the noun phrase into a single hyphenated adjective/adverb: step-by-step.

I'd much prefer it if they said gradually.

Now, step by step, or even step-by-step, is not wrong as such. It's certainly possible English; though I would argue that gradually is easier to use appropriately, the more straightforward and natural thing to say in most circumstances.

However, what I really like about the adverb gradually is that it seems to me to emphasise the process. And thus, although the process may be slow and discontinuous, this word nevertheless makes us feel some confidence in an ongoing progress towards its eventual completion.

Step-by-step, as almost invariably used by the Chinese, seems to emphasise the stages in the process - reminding you of their essential separateness, and of the need for a cautious hesitancy in moving from one to the next. Most of the time, the English phrase that would more accurately convey their thought is baby steps - the suggestion that care and caution must take precedence, and that progress, if it happens at all, must necessarily be very SLOW. It is a way of deferring a goal so far that one loses sight of it altogether, a useful tool for emasculating any initiatives for reform. The Chinese commonly employ step-by-step in much the same way as the dread phrase "Thank you for your suggestion" - to dismiss your attempt to offer helpful advice, and let you know, obliquely but firmly, that in fact nothing is ever going to change.

[I wonder if the Chinese have a problem with adverbs for some reason? It does seem to be a common mark of Chinglish to prefer clunky noun phrases to simple adverbs. Another particular bugbear of mine is in an all-around way, which, while it is again possible English, has, through its grating ubiquity out here, become definitively Chinglish. The more natural English would be comprehensively, and I do my best to substitute this as often as I can in my editing work. Unfortunately, this damned phrase is a favourite political buzzword here. It is hugely annoying because it is so rampantly overused, and is such pointless filler - essentially meaningless, but supposedly carrying some reassuring suggestion of care and thoroughness (and harmoniousness, I daresay). It occurs at least half a dozen times in any official pronouncement; and in an all-around way has become accepted as the 'official translation'. I tried weeding it out of the English text of a trade treaty I was revising a while ago, but I'm sure the Foreign Ministry will have re-Chinglished it before sending it to press. Sigh.]

Is the combination surprising? [War on Chinglish - 23]

The Chinese seem to be taught that as well as simply means the same as and.

And, for some reason, many of them seem to prefer the more cumbersome phrase, and use it far too often. Perhaps they have been infected with the vice of elegant variation, and shun the more straightforward word in a perverse bid for originality.

As well as is rarer and more intensive than just and; it implies that the item appended by it to a pair or list is somehow untypical or unexpected, perhaps excessive.

He attended Harvard as well as Columbia.

I tried the dumplings as well as the stew, and now I'm feeling too full.

It seems to be a particularly common tic amongst the Chinese 'academics' I work with to favour the use of as well as to link the last item in a list: e.g., On his visit to Europe, Hu Jintao visited Germany, France, Holland, as well as Denmark.

This brings up the small additional point that you can only substitute as well as for and with pairs of things (although it still might not be a good idea to do so); with a list like this, we'd need an and as well (between France and Holland, making them the last two items in the list proper, with Denmark being a supplement or afterthought). But the main thing here is that "as well as Denmark" would only be appropriate if we are seeking to correct a possible misapprehension in our reader or interlocutor that Denmark was the only - or only important - stop on the tour. As well as always carries some such extra emphasis, whereas and doesn't.

This may seem like a very small thing, but it has been occurring more and more frequently in my editing assignments of late, and it is starting to BUG THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

Please stick with and - it's so much easier. (And, as with so many of these Chinglish foibles, it is always correct; while learning the correct use of as well as will remain forever beyond the reach of most Chinese users of English.)

My liver has been badly destroyed [War on Chinglish - 22]

I pluck an example there from my own experience, of course.

Among Chinese English speakers, it's more common to encounter something like 

My car was badly destroyed in the accident 

or 

My coat was badly destroyed at the dry cleaners.

It's an astonishingly common slip, and it always gives me a good laugh. It arises from a failure to appreciate the strength of the verb/participle destroyed.

In most cases, it would be more appropriate to use damaged instead:

My car was badly damaged in the accident.  

You see, destroyed means 100% damaged: it is AS BAD AS IT CAN BE. So, it is incongruous – ridiculous – to use intensifying adverbs like badly or severely with it.

I'm not quite sure how this one comes about. I suspect it might be down to a faulty definition in a Chinese textbook or teaching dictionary. 

There are several ways of expressing this sort of idea in Chinese, but I'm not sure what their nuances are, or if they all ignore the distinction between partial and total damage. One of the most common seems to be 受害, shouhai, which does have a very general range of meaning: to be a casualty, to suffer an injury of some kind; it appears to be used both of physical harm to the person and of loss of property, and can sometimes even imply a fatality. So, maybe there's our culprit...

Just how uncertain are you? [War on Chinglish - 21]

Using maybe in almost every sentence is the quirk of Chinese behaviour which foreigners tend to find most irritating.

I assume it’s a product of the excessive – and rather fake – humility which dogs this culture. People litter their utterances in Chinese with similar markers of vacillation (可能, or 也许?) in order not to seem excessively confident in making a statement about something. But if this is something that is definitely within your knowledge – “What time does the train leave?”, “Do you like coffee?” – the ‘maybe’ tic is exasperating.

If you know, just say so. If you’re not sure, begin with I think. 

If you’re having to make a complete guess, begin with a phrase like It’s probably… or It might be… If you’re really uncertain, you can sometimes say perhaps.

But never, never, NEVER say maybe.

Who are you pointing at? [War on Chinglish - 20]

It is very common to hear the Chinese speaking of, for example, "those poor people in Africa" or "those foreigners studying Mandarin".

Oh dear. They have no idea how RUDE this often sounds.

I think this mistake arises because Chinese lacks articles, and so often uses zhege, nage - this, that, these, those - where English would use the (or a, or no word at all).

Those is a demonstrative adjective/pronoun – i.e., it calls special attention to something; it specifies a group of people or things as notable for some reason, distinct from the general group of which they are a part. It also very often implies a distancing from the speaker, and thus can suggest disdain, dislike, or disapproval. 

Chinese English speakers use those very commonly where they should just use the definite article the (for a specified group: “We should donate money for the earthquake victims in Sichuan”) or no article (for a general, unspecified group: “I feel sorry for homeless people”).

Saying things like “those earthquake victims” or “those homeless people” tends to sound patronising or contemptuous. Please stop doing it.

Does that come with potatoes?

According to this website, The China Potato Expo is on in Beijing this week.

It is described (only slightly Chinglishly) as follows:

CHINA POTATO EXPO is considered to be the only international trade show in the category of potato...

and other root and tuber crops... 

and related products...

in China.

The lack of a definite article at the start and the dread linguistic tic 'related' at the end are the Chinglish markers; although I suppose event titles sometimes do omit the article, and 'related' is (for once) actually appropriate here. And it must be hard for copy-writers to work their puff-magic with such resolutely unsexy subject matter. And perhaps that clunky "is considered to be" is a deliberate legalese vagueness: they're not saying that it IS the only international potato trade show in China, just that certain unspecified persons believe it to be so. Please drop me a line if you know of any other candidates.  [Only my undernourished Irish forebears are capable of finding the potato sexy.  Check out the brief instructional video below for the usefulness of the phrase, "Does the bride come with potatoes?"]

I'm glad they're not narrowing the focus too much.  I shall be eagerly seeking out the "other root and tuber crops".

Strangely, this event is filed under the category of 'Apparel & Clothing'. Really? It's all going to be clothes made from potato fibres?? Intriguing novelty though this would be, I doubt many of the leaders in the clothing industry will be enticed away from the contemporaneous Dubai Fashion Week.  We shall see.

Casual insolence (War on Chinglish - 18)

Are you going to send that postcard to Mr Robert?

No, I'm not.  Unless he's French, in which case I should more properly refer to him as M. Robert.  In all probability, though, I'm sending a postcard to my good friend Robert.  Or to someone I know less well called Mr Roberts.

This came up in one of my recording scripts the other day.  I've commented before on how a large part of the Chinese ineptitude with foreign names is down to how rarely they use them (outside of English lessons, that is; in history or science lessons, and in their domestic media, foreign names are invariably transliterated into Chinese characters, a process that usually transforms them so horrendously as to render them completely unrecognisable to non-Chinese).  I've also lamented - in talking about my frequent academic editing work - that the Chinese seldom or never seem to have any appreciation of consistent orthography when using the Roman alphabet: spelling, punctuation, and use of capital letters can vary wildly from one sentence to the next (I once had to deal with an author who contrived 9 different ways of referring to the United States in one article!).

But even so, their propensity to mangle people's names in English is quite staggering.

They can almost never recognise which language a name comes from (it's just not the kind of thing they pay attention to).  So, they'd completely miss my opening point about Robert being a common surname in French, but generally only a personal name in English.

They can almost never distinguish between personal names and family names.

[In English, a few names can serve as both personal names and family names (Robert or Robin or Richard as a surname, for example, are just about possible, but rare and unlikely), but most are one or the other.  Personal names are often converted into family names* by adding a final s: hence, Robert is (almost invariably) a first name, but Roberts is a surname.]

They always seem to forget that the English naming convention is to use the personal name (Christian name) first and the family name (surname) second.

They also forget (or never learn?) the simple rule that titles - like Mr, Dr, Prof. - may be used with full names OR with surnames only, but NOT with first names only (although you'd think that this would be just about Lesson One - or certainly Book One - of any English course they follow in schools).

And no-one ever seems to tell them that it is RUDE to refer to people by their surname only; that in formal writing, you should always use title + surname or full name (this is a particular bugbear in my editing work!!).

I caught a great example of this latter ineptitude on the local English-language TV channel, the squirm-inducingly bad CCTV9, yesterday.  Yang Rui, the grammar-mangling goon who fronts the daily current affairs 'discussion programme' Dialogue had the great English golfer Tony Jacklin on to talk about China's golf boom.  And he brought him into the conversation - after the inevitable painfully long and rambling introduction - by saying, "So, Jacklin, what do you think?"

It wasn't just a one-off slip, either.  He continued to refer to his distinguished guest in this way throughout the rest of the show.  I think I would have punched him; but our Tony bore the  recurring insult with saintly restraint.

*  The final s in so many English surnames probably derives from a patronymic, i.e. a father-name form.  In the distant past, when people still lived mostly in very small communities, a single personal name was usually enough to distinguish people from each other.  If there happened to be two Johns in a village, they might be differentiated according to the names of their fathers: John, Richard's son and John, Robert's son.  These patronymics evolved into the surnames Richards or Richardson and Roberts or Robertson - which could be used for entire families down the generations.  Other common surnames developed from the names of people's professions (Butcher, Baker, Fletcher, Smith, Wainwright), from the colour of clothes they commonly liked to wear (Black, White, Green, Brown) or from the locale where they lived (Greenwood, Lake, Bridge).  If Chinese students of English took an interest in this sort of thing, they wouldn't find it nearly so difficult to differentiate between first names and surnames, and they wouldn't make so many embarrassing faux pas when addressing foreign friends and colleagues.  But, alas, the Chinese seem to be a depressingly incurious people in many respects.

War on Chinglish (17)

Remind me of what I already know.

Inform me of what I don't know.

That is all.

[Well, no, not quite all.  I admit that I am irked by this at the moment because I have just encountered it - yet again - with a school I am working with.  It seems like another example of a rather-too-common Chinese slipperiness, seeking to find oblique ways to insinuate that they've already told you something they know they should have told you but didn't somehow get around to telling you.  You know - I find a scrawled handwritten note on the bottom of the slip of paper with the printed address of the company where I'm supposed to be pitching a training course the next day, and it says: "Reminder - laptop."  No previous reference has been made to the need for a laptop.  I hate using PPT slides anyway.  This school has promised to provide all necessary materials to me, and they haven't given me any PPT slides.  They haven't asked me to prepare any PPT slides.  So, what, pray, is all this crap about bringing a laptop?  There is no way I am going to be carrying my own laptop around with me all day just to do one brief pitch at the end of the afternoon.  That is all.]

War on Chinglish (16)

sports and games


Sports and games are not the same. A sport is an activity that exercises physical skill and/or strength. A game, however, is a form of competition defined by a complex set of rules, in which two sides contend simultaneously for victory against each other.

Running, swimming, skating, and pole-vaulting, for example, are sports but not games

(they have no aim other than to be the fastest, highest, furthest, etc.; and although several sportsmen may take part at the same time [e.g., in a sprint race] they are essentially competing individually, to try to give the best performance that they can; they are not confronting another competitor, to physically prevent him from attaining victory).

Chess, draughts, poker, backgammon, and go (weiqi) are games but not sports

(because they test purely mental, not physical ability).

Some competitive activities are both games (head-to-head competition within a defined set of rules) and sports (dependent on physical prowess): football, hockey, volleyball, basketball, etc.

A few activities may sometimes be seen as definitional grey areas. Some people object that table tennis is scarcely a sport, since it depends mostly on mental toughness and speed of reaction rather than strength or stamina. Others call darts a sport because it involves throwing something, even though the amount of physical effort involved is minimal.

Martial arts - such as boxing, wrestling, judo and taekwondo - are perhaps something of a special case: even though they are closely defined by rules and involve head-to-head competition, they are traditionally treated as sports not games. This is perhaps because a further element in the concept of a 'game' is that the victory conditions involve the achievement of some artificial object such as scoring a goal or making a basket. In martial arts, though the scoring systems may be quite elaborate, the fundamental aim is far simpler and more direct, less abstract: it is the physical domination of one's opponent - a fairly straightforward objective, more akin to running fastest in a race, or throwing furthest in the discus event.

The combined term sports games exists only in the Universe of Chinglish.


This is another of those occasions where Chinese only seems to have one common verb for use with all forms of physical exertion - and it always gets 'translated' into English as play.

Sorry, folks, that doesn't work. You have to be aware of the distinction between sports and games -

you play games but you do sports.

(Occasionally, we also use go with a few sports - I go swimming, I go running - to indicate that we are leaving the house to take part in them, just as we do with activities like shopping or hiking.)

Similarly, players play games; sportsmen do sports. Usain Bolt is not a player, because his event - sprint racing - is only a sport, not a game; he is a sportsman. David Beckham can be described as either a player or a sportsman, because football is both a game and a sport.

I had hoped that with the splurge of 'sports English' language training initiatives that popped up in the run-up to the Olympics, these stubborn Chinglishisms might at last be displaced - but, if anything, they seem to have been becoming even more entrenched.

It even bleeds through into the way some expats speak English: I've heard friends saying things like, "I'm going to play tai chi on Sunday." No, you're not; you're going to do tai chi. Please, remember the beauty of your mother tongue! Don't let it get tainted by this morass of Chinglish we find ourselves surrounded by.

War on Chinglish (15)

join hands


Whenever there is an announcement of an overseas company embarking on a new collaborative project with some Chinese enterprise, you will always encounter these words. I assume it is a set phrase in Chinese that is just being translated literally. As I've complained before, if the Chinese read more authentic English, and read it more attentively, they ought to develop a better awareness of the contexts in which phrases like this are used - and thus of why it sounds so wrong here.

AA members join hands to show solidarity with each other at the end of their meetings.

Eco-protesters join hands to form a protective human chain around a threatened tree or duckpond.

Bible-lovin' American families join hands before a meal to channel the power of prayer.

Maria and the Von Trapp children join hands to go gambolling across Alpine meadows.

International businesses do not join hands.

They partner with

or cooperate with

or establish a joint venture with.

Surely this is simple enough? Only people can join hands, not institutions. And mostly only very touchy-feely people.

So, please, if you are writing legal English or business English or academic English or even plain old journalism, ditch all this happy-clappy drippy hippy tree-hugging crap about joining hands.

[This is, in fact, just one instance of a much wider problem that Chinese writers of English are usually oblivious to different registers of language, and are far too prone to wanting to use language that is inappropriately emotive, metaphorical, colourful, or colloquial.]

War on Chinglish (14)

Only several...


Mandarin doesn't seem to differentiate between several and few (there's a common word - I think it's 几, ji - that's used for both). Anyway, Chinese speakers of English never seem to differentiate between them. Certainly the Chinese-produced English teaching materials that I am asked to edit or record never do.


Both words mean an indefinite small number, but several implies a slightly greater number: whereas few strictly means only "about 3" (and is rarely used of more than 4 or 5), several tends to mean something in the 5-10 range (there is a common - though I suspect false - belief that it is related to the word 'seven', and thus originally implied "about 7"; I'm afraid I don't have an etymological dictionary available to me at the moment to look into that).

In common usage, the key distinction is that several emphasises that the number, though unknown, may tend towards a higher range, may become significant. Therefore, it is illogical to use it in combination with the limiting adverb only, which should emphasise its smallness or insignificance.

If your boss tells you he needs to talk to you "for several minutes" , it means that the conversation is important and may drag on to take up quite a chunk of your time. If he says he needs you for "a few minutes" (or "just a few minutes" or "only a few minutes"), he is emphasising that it should be a very brief chat, reassuring you that it won't be an inconvenient imposition on your time. In practice, such a conversation might well take about five minutes, regardless of whether the boss has suggested it would take "a few minutes" or "several minutes": it's not the actual length of time of the meeting that matters so much as the attitude and expectation surrounding it - is it an important or difficult topic, is it possible that the conversation could take longer than you'd planned or hoped?

Occasionally, you get several used in an inappropriate situation, even without the rogue only. The other day in the recording studio I came upon this example: "My father is much better now. He will come home from hospital in several days."

You just wouldn't use several in an instance like that. It doesn't matter how many days it will actually be (unless you know precisely, in which case you'd say so: "in a week" or "in three days" or "next Friday"); if you want to say something positive, to emphasise how agreeably short the timeframe (or how small a number) is, you'd say "only a few". "My father is making a quick recovery. He should be out of hospital in a few days."

If it's definitely going to be a fairly small number, and it's good that it's going to be a fairly small number, say a few (or only a few or just a few). If it might be a slightly bigger number, and it's bad that it could be a slightly bigger number, say several. NEVER use only with several. Simple enough, surely?

I often feel there's something strangely apposite, however, about the Chinese quirk of saying things like "I'll be only several minutes late" or "This editing job should take you only several hours". It seems to fit the common attitude here: never being able to plan or foresee how long things will take; having no concern for the magnitude of the imposition they make on you; trying to make light of things that are actually a pretty goddamn big irritation. All too often, phrases like this decode as "I'm probably going to waste half your day, but you can't possibly have a problem with that, can you?"

A study tip for my Chinese readers

In a spirit of seasonal magnanimity....

Here is the number one piece of advice that I have given to (and had ignored by) my Chinese students over and over again in my years of teaching here.


Learn how to use a dictionary properly when 'learning' new words.


The Chinese education system stresses rote-memorization (I suppose it's the only way to learn the character writing system), and many Chinese do indeed have impressively well-developed memories.

Unfortunately, rote memorization is not a good way to learn vocabulary in another language. Many of my students have bragged to me about how they can "learn" 10, 20, or even 50 new words at a sitting. They are sadly deluded. No, you can't.

The problem, as I touched on in my last War on Chinglish post (further highlighted in the comments) is that errors so easily creep into dictionaries and word lists, and such errors are then quickly hardwired irrevocably into usage if students rely on parrot-like repetition of lists of definitions as their only means of assimilating new vocabulary. Often the definitions they learn are not outright wrong (though often they are), just incomplete or misleading. But most Chinese students will never become aware of these shortcomings because they don't refer to English dictionaries very much, or pay attention to how the words are actually used in the authentic listening and reading passages they encounter. For rote learning, students want to have a simple Chinese equivalent for each English word - and, much of the time, no such equivalent exists. And so, for example, we find Chinese students unable to distinguish between give, send, bring, take, carry, and see off because they are all identified with the single Mandarin word song, 送.

Trying to learn long strings of words is a waste of time. However good your memory is, new words won't 'stick' if you try to absorb too many at one time. Focus your efforts on a more manageable number. I usually recommend 5 or 6 at one time as a sensible maximum to attempt.

Learning one-word Chinese 'equivalents' of English words is a waste of time, and will lead you into numerous Chinglish errors. By all means, try to relate new English words to your native vocabulary (especially when you are a beginner), but be wary in doing so; always try to refer to an English-only dictionary as well. In order to truly 'know' a word and be able to use it appropriately you need to know not only its basic meaning but its range of meanings and the circumstances in which it most commonly appears; rules of use, common collocations, its synonyms and how it is distinguished from them. You can only get that from an English dictionary, not from an English-Chinese dictionary.

I usually also recommend my students to try the following exercises every time they're learning a new word:

a) Copy out the English dictionary definition of the word.

b) Try to write a definition or an explanation of the word in your own words in English.

c) Following example sentences in your dictionary and/or textbook, write a few sentences of your own which clearly illustrate the meaning of the word.

d) Try to write further sentences in which you can imagine you might actually use the word yourself.

e) Read these sentences aloud, to practice saying the word (and begin assimilating it into your listening & speaking vocabulary).

Do try this, please. It really helps.

Just memorizing lists of Chinese definitions of new English words does you more harm than good.

War on Chinglish (13)

Bring, take and send     Mandarin, it would seem, has one common word that it can use for all forms of 'despatch', moving something from one place to another.  (I'm not sure about this.  I merely extrapolate from this invariable glitch in the Chinese use of English.  What would the word be, I wonder? 差, perhaps?   The Chinese thus never seem to grasp the fairly elementary distinction between take and send - that with send, the actor makes arrangements or issues instructions for a person or thing to be moved, but does not accompany them or it himself; while with take, he does accompany the person or thing.   This error most commonly manifests itself in sentences like...  "The ambulance arrived and sent him to the hospital."    Now, we might sometimes talk of a doctor sending someone to a hospital (e.g. in order to have further tests, after a consultation at the doctor's office); but at the scene of a road accident, the victims are usually incapacitated and have to be accompanied to hospital by ambulancemen or a doctor (or, sometimes, the police), and we invariably use the verb take in such cases.   There's a similar blindness about the bring and take distinction: bring implies a motion towards the place or event the speaker is focusing on - hence I might ask you to bring a bottle of wine to a party at my house; but I'd advise you to take an umbrella with you if you're going out on a rainy day.  Admittedly, this gets a little blurry sometimes: we might use either verb for things we need for going on a trip (because we may imagine we're already on the trip, thinking about what we've brought with us).  But there are occasions where it is clearly inappropriate to use one of them: we always use bring when we arrive at a place; we always use take when describing going to somewhere other than where we are now; we always use bring when there is clearly a motion towards something ("I've brought you some flowers"), we always use take when there is a motion away ("Take the trash out").  The Chinese just never seem to get this.   This (presumed) bleed-through from Mandarin seems to confuse all notions of 'despatch' - we often find people 'sending' newspapers, for example, rather than 'delivering' or 'carrying' them.   Sigh.  Teaching English in this country is a Sisyphean task.

War on Chinglish (12)

According to statistics....     This aggravating tic in Chinese writers of English is, I suppose, just one of the more common examples of the general tendency to inappropriately transfer over into English the Chinese language's predilection for beginning every sentence with an utterly redundant but context highlighting phrase or clause, sometimes called a 'topic clause'.  I assume this is deemed necessary in Chinese because the language is so replete with homophones that one's meaning often slides into ambiguity without such frequent heavy-handed 'signposting'.  In English, however, it's just clunky, inelegant, unnecessary.   Our example today typically manifests itself in academic or technical writing where the author wants to introduce objective data to support his argument, and will invariably say something like...   "According to statistics, 88.8% of Chinglishisms make Froog tear his hair out."   or...   "According to statistics, only 11.7% of central government spending this year has been applied to major infrastructure projects."     You see, those figures are statistics.  That is immediately obvious.  So, to introduce them with the word 'statistics' is entirely redundant.   One might also object that there is a rupture of logic here, since the statistic quoted is not "according to statistics": it is not derived from itself, but from some kind of survey or official report.  One might use this phrase to give the origin of the statistics (e.g. "According to statistics compiled by the World Health Organization, malaria infections increased by 8% worldwide last year."), but to say "According to statistics..." on its own is just ridiculous.   PLEASE stop doing it.     At least I got a new variation on this in the latest article I've been editing (much better than yesterday's):   "According to relevant statistics...."   Well, that's nice.  So much better than using the irrelevant ones, as so often happens with my Chinese authors.  Or the ones that are just completely made up.

War on Chinglish (11)

been and gone It's a curious little quirk of English that we use the Present Perfect tense of 'be' rather 'go' to talk about whether we have ever had the experience of visiting a place.  Hence: He has been to New York several times. He has been to the opera twice this year. We haven't been to the seaside since we were children. This enables us to create a useful distinction whereby the Present Perfect of 'go' is only used for trips which are still in progress. He has been to the doctor's means he has finished his consultation and come back with his prescription for medicine.  He has gone to the doctor's means he is still absent from work, might still be sitting in the doctor's waiting room for his appointment. He has been to Paris means he had a holiday or a business trip there once, some time in the past.  He has gone to Paris means he is there NOW (or is on his way there). The Chinese usually seem to have a complete blindspot about this usage.  If they pick up on it at all, they tend to start thinking that 'be' can be used interchangeably with 'go'. In the recording studio this morning we had an instance where somebody's absence from the office was explained with the phrase:  She's just been out for a little while. That would have been fine, if this lady were now back; but the context made it fairly obvious that she was still supposed to be out of the office.  Clearly what was meant was She's just gone out for a little while. It occurred to me (so conscientious am I in my efforts to avoid having to re-write anything) that the script as written could possibly have been interpreted to mean  She has only recently announced that she is a lesbian. But I very much doubt if a Chinese educational publisher would be addressing topics like that....

War on Chinglish (10)

You live in a house, but you stay in a hotel.     The Chinese only have the one common word for all forms of 'residing', so they are incapable of differentiating between long-term and short-term accommodation arrangements.   This can occasionally be - discombobulatingly - charming.  I have been greeted by Chinese hotel receptionists with the warm wish: "I hope you live a long time."  In fact, it was their own commercial advantage rather than my longevity that they had in mind.   This is an error - using 'live' instead of 'stay' when talking about holiday accommodation -that comes up all the time in the recording scripts I work with.  And my partners and I painstakingly amend the faulty scripts, pointing out that they should say 'stay' in instances like this; although we have little expectation that anyone at the publishing houses will ever pay any attention.   And when they do pay attention, as often as not it just backfires on us.  Today we had a whole clutch of uses of 'stay' where people were almost certainly talking about their home addresses.     Further little footnote here - when we're talking about our present arrangements for temporary accommodation, we usually use the Present Continuous Tense: I'm staying at the Hilton until Friday.   This really shouldn't be very difficult, but....

War on Chinglish (9)

All robbers are thieves, but not all thieves are robbers. (And 'stealer', though it does exist, is just about never used.)

The Chinese seem to be completely unaware of these useful distinctions. You find the word pickpocket (a stealthy thief who tries to remove things from your bag or your pockets without you noticing) occasionally, but burglar (a thief who breaks into a building to steal things) is completely unknown; and, in general, robbery is much more commonly used than theft (while burglary is never seen), and the perpetrators of such crimes are invariably called robbers rather than thieves. The difference is simple enough (and I'm sure there must be similar variations in the Chinese lexicon): robbery involves confrontation and threats or actual violence, whereas theft can occur without the property owner's knowledge - robbery is a kind of theft, but theft+violence.

We also sometimes run into problems about how to use the verb forms with direct and indirect objects - we steal (or rob, or burgle) something (from someone): He stole a watch from me. He robbed some money from the bank.

It's not really conceivable that a person could ever be the direct object of one of these verbs* (well, we have another specialised term for 'stealing people' - kidnapping!).

[This image from The Chinglish Adventures Of Chairman Mao, a blog by an American English teacher who was working in China last year, and has recently visited us here on Froogville and left a couple of comments.]

If I'm really going to be thorough on this topic, I suppose I should mention the following points as well:

With steal, you can use a direct object only (the thing stolen); but with rob, you always need to specify the victim/source of the stolen property as well; and with burgle, the lone direct object is usually the place stolen from, not the thing stolen: They burgled her apartment last week.

And thieve is archaic, and rarely used. It is applied to the activity or profession of being a thief in general, not to a particular act of theft (and is thus usually intransitive, used without objects): He's been thieving again. He thieves for a living.

* Ah - the awkward distinction that catches out ESL learners! Rob (and burgle, though more rarely) can also take the victim as a direct object (instead of the thing stolen); steal cannot: Someone robbed Jeff. They're robbing the bank. They've burgled me.

Thus, if we want to create a passive construction, with the crime victim becoming the subject of the sentence, we can say

They are being robbed.

or

We've been burgled.

but with steal, we have to use the more roundabout

I've had something stolen (from me).

It's a little tricky, I know, but do your best.

War on Chinglish (8a)

This is not really an example of 'Chinglish' as such, but I thought it a useful and necessary footnote to last week's observations on the prevalence among the Chinese of using 'Of course' to give an affirmative reply to a question.

I led off that post by saying, "It's OK to say 'Yes'."

I stand by that. A simple 'Yes' is far preferable to the hugely irritating (and borderline rude) 'Of course' in most cases.

However, replying with a single word in English - particularly replying to a sequence of questions in such a minimally communicative way - is also unusual, and apt to seem rude.

This is one of the key points I have tried to get across to students I have coached for various English speaking exams: don't make it into an interrogation. The examiner is giving you opportunities to talk, to show off how good your English is. Use them. Try to answer with a complete sentence every time. Sometimes - if the question gives scope for it - you can even attempt a mini-paragraph of three or four sentences strung together.

Far too many students, however, retreat into sullen monosyllables - like seasoned but dumb criminals afraid of the wily policeman prompting them to compromise their alibi; -

"What did you do last night?"

"Nothing."

"You must have done something."

"Stayed home."

"And what did you do at home?"

"Watched TV."

"Which TV programme did you watch?"

"Football game."

"Oh, what was the score?"

[D'Oh!!]

Always try to answer with a complete sentence.

If a simple negative or affirmative seems to be enough (and trust me, it isn't), you should at least use what we usually term a 'short-form answer' - i.e., in addition to saying 'Yes' or 'No', you repeat the verb (or at least, the auxiliary part of it) in your answer, and omit the noun or replace it with a pronoun.

If the nice man (or lady) asks you, "Have you seen Titanic?", don't just say "Yes."

Say, "Yes, I have."

Or, "Yes, I've seen it."

Or (don't get too carried away now, baby steps and all that; but this really isn't so much of a stretch) try to provide a bit more information, try to build up your answer into a full sentence.

"Yes, I watched that on DVD a couple of years ago. I really enjoyed it."

There, that's no so hard, is it? Give it a try next time.

[Note: Most foreign examiners have got used to the fact that everyone in China has seen Titanic, that everyone liked it, and that no-one has very much else to say about it. For now, let us not worry about trying to form and express worthwhile opinions on the film such as, 'Well, the CGI was a bit dodgy in places. The Billy Zane character was ludicrously two-dimensional. And I don't believe there's any historical basis for that officer shooting a passenger. And surely Kate Winslet would have died of hypothermia long before the ship sank?" That can wait for an 'Advanced Class'.]

War on Chinglish (8)

It's OK to say 'Yes'.

Unfortunately, most Chinese seem to have developed the habit of invariably answering questions with 'Of course'.

Now, this is possible. But it is used fairly sparingly, usually reserved for occasions when we want to reassure people about something or express our enthusiasm in responding to a request to do something, or a suggestion, or an invitation. "Can you get that report finished by Friday?" "Of course." "Would you like to come for dinner at my home next weekend?" "Of course."

When replying to a simple question - such as "Did you know the meeting has been put back to Friday?" or "Do you like Manchester United?" - saying "Of course!" can sound somewhat abrupt, even rude. Especially when you do it all the time.

It seems to imply: "This is really obvious. You must be a complete idiot to ask me that."

In a word, DON'T.

War on Chinglish (7)

Could you tell me about it in details?

No, I couldn't.

In English we use the plural, details, in phrases like Give me the details. We can also use an adjectival form, detailed, in phrases like I look forward to receiving more detailed information from you.

But in detail is a set phrase, and it is ALWAYS singular. As with so many of these Chinglish eccentricities, this wouldn't be at all a difficult usage to recognise, remember, and assimilate if people here actually bothered to read very much authentic English (rather than the Chinglish drivel that most of the domestic educational publishers churn out), and read more attentively, more actively.

And, once again, I am fairly certain - because of its astonishing ubiquity - that this error has been propagated by a bad high school textbook.

I wish I could describe the history of this aberration in more detail for you, but I haven't yet been able to identify the book or books in question.