English for Chinese

Moving to new site

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:45:47 GMT

I've never liked this Microsoft blog site. My browser constantly uses near 100% CPU when I write a blog. Google Blogspot is a little better. But the worst may be Weebly.com.

Anyway, I decide to move this site to
http://english-for-chinese.blogspot.com
Please go to that site from now on. Thanks for your visit.

老外眼里的中式英语 Chinglish

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:36:39 GMT

Note: ① the original Chinese; ② Chinglish (allegedly); ③ correct English

① 永远记住你 ② remember you forever ③ always remember you（没有人能活到forever）

I don't see any problem with "remember you forever", although "always remember you" is probably more common.

① 祝你有个... ② wish you have a ... ③ I wish you a ...

"Wish you have" is wrong. "Wish you had" is correct but does not mean 祝你有个

① 厕所 ② WC ③ men's room/women's room/restroom

"WC" is widely used in countries other than the US. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Americans not familiar with the word WC should wake up and travel around the world. America is not the only English speaking country. In fact the word "restroom" will be grossly misunderstood in some European countries.

① 真遗憾 ② it's a pity ③ that's too bad/it's a shame（it's a pity说法太老）

I believe "It's a pity" is still widely used in Britain.

① 应该 ② should ③ must/shall

"Should" is sort of advisory, not as strong as "must". This is clearly differentiated by Internet RFC (request for comments) documents. Those in the IT industry know what I'm talking about. Translate 应该 to "should" is correct.

① 尽我最大努力 ② try my best ③ try/strive（try的本意就是try my best）

"Try my best" is perfectly OK.

...

① 直到现在 ② till now ③ recently/lately/thus far

This may be the most important correction Prof. Chuck Allanson made. I clearly remember in my life one Indian coworker and one Dutch lady both made the same mistake. So it's not just Chinese. See my blog about "up to now" and "up till now":

http://english-for-chinese.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!BA7595BCCBA9D7BF!145.entry

Don't omit that "that"

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:43:44 GMT

> He tried to isolate the germ he thought was causing the disease.
> 这句话来自某年的考研吧
> 我认为 i thought 是插入语，插入语在句中不做任何成分，所以这句话在was前是不是缺了一个that 呢？

I agree. The word "that" should not be omitted.

Also see this:

"There're too many people make such mistakes."

Indeed many Chinese say that because it's a direct translation from Chinese. The word "that" (or "who") after "people" should not be omitted. Or just say "Too many people make such mistakes."

农民 is peasant or farmer?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:59:55 GMT

"Peasant" is almost derogatory nowadays. "Farmer" is neutral. If the person does not have a farm (as is the case in China), you can still say "farmer" to show your respect.

Which forum is the best?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:54:47 GMT

I usually go to
http://bbs.wwenglish.net/index.asp?boardid=99
and
http://www.hjbbs.com/forum-52.htm
to answer questions. But the forums are becoming increasingly hard to use. The wwenglish.net starts to have a human moderator review your posting before it's posted. So some of my messages somehow didn't get passed the review and I wasted time writing the answers. The HJBBS is just dog slow (unless I access the site late at night China time), full of silly Javascript fanfare. What other good Chinese English forums are out there? I'm willing to help but the platform for me to help on is not user friendly.

Yong Huang

English study

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:30:31 GMT

> 大家对我进一步学英语有什么好建议！

There's no trick in studying a foreign language. The basic skill in it is almost linearly proportional to how much time you use the language (use = read, write, listen, etc.), except for accurate pronunciation, which some people have innate capability to do better than others. (The advanced skill, literary writing for instance, is like pronunciation; it needs genius, and so does not linearly improve with study time.)

"..., won't you"

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:54:33 GMT

> You'll go to the picnic, won't you! Yes : not to ; No: go
> ....., 不是吗？是的，我不去；不，我去。 [/quote]

A: "You'll go to the picnic, won't you?"
B: "Yes, I will."

You can't say "Yes, I won't". That's a common mistake some Chinese make, because the Chinese language allows you to have one positive and one negative part in the answering sentence.

Wrong sentence: "How to speak these in English?"

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:57:33 GMT

> How to speak these in English?

That's a gramatically wrong question very commonly asked by the Chinese studying English. Do not say "How to say...?" or "How to speak...?" as a whole sentence. Say "How should I say...?" instead, or "Can anybody tell me how to say...?"

为什么单词都会，却无法组成句子？

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 02:33:54 GMT

>> 为什么别人说的一句英文中的单词自己明明都知道，可是让我看着中文翻译英文，
>> 却总是支离破碎的呢？特别是什么时候有do does 什么助动词的，自己完全不
>> 明白有人说这是背单词的时候不背词性的原因，是这样吗？还是基础太差了
>
> 基础太差了，连基本的语法都不懂怎能造句呢。如果句子是一条珍珠项链，单词是
> 一粒一粒的珍珠，那语法就是把珍珠连成项链的绳子。这样说你应该很明白了吧，
> 造成这种情况的原因是缺乏语法!

Grammar is absolutely important. But humans are not machines or computers. To learn a human language, a human student needs more practice than studying grammar. In contrast, for a computer to study a human language, *it* only needs grammar rules.

Re: 诚求英语单词速记法

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:06:13 GMT

> 小弟在学校过程当中感觉那英语单词实在难记，记前忘后现象很明显，小弟特在此
> 请教各位高手达人教小弟几招好使的方法，一解脱小弟困惑，不胜感谢！

http://yong321.freeshell.org/misc/LearnChinese.html

Read the "怎样记字最快？" section. I wrote that about learning Chinese. But the ideas apply to learning any foreign language.

Old style English

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:46:33 GMT

> > > > > > "Often times they consider our way of business practice rather aggressive and we consider their process
> > > > > > of decision-making time-consuming."
> > > > > > often times是个短语吗?在句中做状语?
> > > > >
> > > > > I am afraid the authour is guilty of committing a common error in spelling oftentimes as two words.
> > > > >
> > > > > of·ten·times adv. Frequently; repeatedly
> > > > >
> > > > > tx
> > > >
> > > > "often times" has > 4 million hits on Google search. "oftentimes" has < 3 million. In fact, I didn't
> > > > even know the one single word "oftentimes" till I saw tx's posting. Well, maybe I saw that before
> > > > but I forgot.
> > > >
> > > > Yong Huang
> > >
> > > I try my best to stick to dictionary spellings. I am painfully aware that, the the years, I've
> > > become more and more a liguistic purist when it comes to my own writing, for one quickly learns that,
> > > in an adopted scociety, one has to be better than better just to be good. However, I am definitely
> > > not a defender of linguistic purisms, for, as you've so aptly pointed out, a living language is
> > > defined by its usages after all.
> > >
> > > tx
> >
> > Thanks, tx. You sound like a 19th century British gentleman!
> >
> > Yong Huang
>
> Ha ha! Oftentimes I feel older, much older. :)
>
> tx

That was extracted from
http://bbs.wwenglish.net/dispbbs.asp?boardID=99&ID=288709&page=1
a forum I often go to. tx is a frequent poster, probably a senior English teacher. Sometimes I find his English interesting because it reminds me of the language you read in last century, actually, last before last century, English books. One of the most salient features of this old style may be the usage of "for" to mean "because" or "since". Nowadays you rarely see that in English, except in poems. People say "because" or "since" now, or "in that" sometimes in writing.

"will be leaving school" vs "will leave school"

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:52:33 GMT

> It's only a few months until he will be leaving school for college.这个句子来自ADVANCED GRAMMAR IN USE (2005 edition), unit 11（练习3）。我有两个疑问：

> 1。应该能够用before取代until吧？

> 2. 为什么until时间状语从句中用将来进行时？还有别的时态可用吗？
"1": Yes.
"2": There's nothing wrong with it. People say "I'll be working on my car" or "I'll work on my car" or "I'm going to work on my car" interchangeably.

In colloquial English, many people use future continuous tense where technically they're supposed to use the simple future tense. The meaning is exactly the same. Let's call that superficial or fake future continuous tense. A sentence using a real future continuous tense cannot be changed to a simple future tense. Here's an example:

A: What will you be doing at 10am tomorrow morning?
B: My buddy asked me to work on his car at 9. I expect it to be a two-hour job. So at 10, I'll still be working on his car.

If you change A's question to "What will you do at 10am ...?", it's still grammatical but slightly harder to understand. Whoever hears it may wonder why you don't say "What will you be doing..." because you're talking about a point in time, or they think you're asking what you'll *start* to do at 10, which has a different meaning. And if you change B's answer to "At 10, I'll work on his car", again, it sounds like you'll *start* to work on it at 10.

曾经 is ever, or not?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:48:37 GMT

>> 在我去美国之以前，我曾经去过英国
> before I came to USA, I'd ever been to England

Many Chinese use the word "ever" to mean "曾经", and most of the time it's very wrong!! "Ever" is about equivalent to "曾经" only if it's used in a question (or sometimes in a negative sentence), as in "Have you ever been there?". In a non-question positive sentence, "ever" simply means "always" or "all the time", and it's not commonly used alone, i.e. not in a compound word like "ever-lasting" or a phrase like "ever since". Here's one example from dictionary.com: "He is ever ready to find fault". It sounds old-fashioned and maybe too literary.

The above Chinese sentence can be translated as "Before I went to the U.S., I went to the U.K."

"in [with] regard to" ,"regarding","concerning", "about"

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:47:19 GMT

> Can i use them as a sentences like the followings?
>   1) I have set bunch of ideas as regard the problem.
>   2) With regard to the problem,i have set bunch of ideas.
>   3) I have set bunch of ideas with regard to the problem .
>   4) In respect to the problem, i have set bunch of ideas.
> Are those sentences correct?

There's no difference between these words or phrase ("in regard to" ,"regarding","concerning", "about", and "with regard to"). But it sounds weird when you mix formal words ("with [or in] regard to") with informal words such as "bunch of". And obviously whoever uses formal words should never write "i" when he means "I". Many Chinese and Indians have this horrible yet easily correctable mistake in not using capital letters when they should.

I don't think you can say "bunch of" not following "a"; "a bunch of" is correct but "bunch of" is probably not. "As regards" is heard. I'm not sure if anybody says "as regard".

请问possibility和probability有什么区别

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:34:17 GMT

Here's a good example to show the difference:

Person to relocate: How safe is it to live in Houston? I mean, is it possible you could be killed late at night on the street?
Relocation agent: Oh, it's always possible for anybody to be killed at any time in a big city. But it's not likely or probable. Come on, man, you don't want to decide not to move here just because a Hispanic guy killed a Chinese a few days ago.

Chinese address translation

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:38:37 GMT

> "辽宁省沈阳市大东区北洮昌街36-1号4-4-2" 编写成 "4-4-2 NO.36-1,beitaochang street,shenyangshi,liaoning"?

Either "4-4-2 NO.36-1" or "Room 4-4-2, 36-1" is Chinese convention. It's perfectly fine since the reader of this address will be the post office workers in China. If you prefer the convention in English speaking countries (at least the U.S.), say "36-1 Beitaochang Street #4-4-2, Dadong District..." Your American friend knows 36-1 is the street number and 4-4-2 is the suite number. But then it may cause slight confusion on the Chinese post office side.

Translation into English

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:27:11 GMT

> 在国外，我从来没有真正的感到舒适过，我思念祖国的一切``

In this foreign land, I've never truly had the feeling of comfort [or feeling of being at home]. I miss everything in my own country.

> How about "I never felt comfortable abroad,and I miss everything about China."?

That's good. "abroad" is better used with a verb. How about "I never felt comfortable living abroad."? Also, that word does not carry the affection as in Chinese. I mean it's a purely technical term. So if the original sentence needs a little human touch, avoid "abroad".

"tell me where do I find" vs "tell em where I find"

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:09:44 GMT

> Why is it not "... tell me where I find" in this song?
> Some many people
> all over the world
> tell me where do i find
> someone like you girl...

Sometimes a sentence is constructed in a way that the question stands out, perhaps because the writer wants to emphasize it and because the question is long. In this case, the first letter of the question word is often capitalized and the sentence ends with a question mark. For example, "Now the question becomes Why do we need the government to implement such a complicated system with little effect on people's welfare?"

Your song lyric may be better written as
...
Tell me Where do I find
Someone like you girl?

But songs are songs. Like poems, they don't always closely follow grammar.