In addition to the endless hours of fun and instruction we can get from anecdotes of other foreigner’s mistakes, some careful listening and a little intuition can turn your Chinese friends’ English mistakes into hot Chinese-language tips.
Chinese people often speak English as if it were Chinese, but with English words. This often causes mistakes (called L1 interference). If you have Chinese friends whom you are comfortable talking to about their mistakes in English, it can be extremely valuable for both parties. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about:
Make a Dream
You can often just guess what the Chinese would be from the English mistake. For example, when my student said:
- Last night I made a dream
I asked if he meant:
- zuówǎn wǒ zuò mèng 昨晚我做梦
He looked surprised and said “exactly!” I was then able to tell him in English we “have” dreams instead of “making” them like you do in Chinese. What I didn’t tell him was that was the first time I learned how to say that in Chinese.
I used the same technique to learn that the part of the leg from your knee to the ankle is called:
- xiǎo tuǐ 小腿 [little leg]
A student said she’d hurt her “little leg” and I guessed she wasn’t just talking about her overall stature. As I’m sure you could guess, “thigh” is “dà tuǐ” 大腿 [big leg].
Survey = Investigation
Other vocabulary mistakes may come from something called “divergent concepts.” That means in one language there are two words for two different things, but in the other language there’s only one word for both things.
One of the most frustrating divergent concepts in Chinese has to be all the words for the English word “break,” depending on what kind of thing is broken (see here for a list–but not a usage guide). Conversely, there are words that have multiple English translations but are a single word in Chinese. Besides the classic “he/she” mix up, examples of mistakes that reveal divergent English concepts that are convergent in Chinese are:
- “I have a problem to ask you.”
(wèntí 问题 = question / problem)
- “I was so mad when my mother let me do my homework.”
(ràng 让 = let / make / ask)
A most unnerving example happed to me in my second week in China. The lady from the Foreign Affairs Office called to ask me some question for the “provincial investigation.” I immediately thought of police (remember this was my second week in China–I didn’t know what I’d done wrong!). The “investigation” turned out to be a one-question “survey.” I checked the dictionary and sure enough:
- diàochá 调查 = survey / investigation / poll
You can also learn about grammar from hearing mistakes. A classic example of a grammar mistake in English that shows how the Chinese language works is the sentence:
- Although it’s raining, but I still want to go.
That “but” shouldn’t be there in English, but when a Chinese person says the above sentence it should give us a clue about Chinese grammar. That “but” needs to be there in Chinese (and foreigners often leave it out when speaking Chinese). In Chinese the same sentence is:
How long have you bought it?
The other day I showed a student my new ping pong paddle. He asked me:
- How long have you bought it?
I immediately said, “Wait. We would never say that in English. Say it in Chinese.” He said:
- nǐ mǎi le duō jiǔ? 你买了多久?
Apparently that means “How long ago did you buy it?” which sounds a little awkward in English. We’d probably say, “How long have you had it?” I was able to use that strange English sentence to find out a useful construction in Chinese, and to tell my student a way to ask what he meant in English that would actually be understood.
The Point Is
There is a time and place for ignoring mistakes in the interest of accomplishing the communication task at hand. However, mistakes that our Chinese friends make can give us a clue as to how Chinese works. Also, the more we learn about the Chinese language, the more we have X-ray vision into the brains of Chinese learners of English and can help them understand the source of mistakes caused by L1 interference.
If anyone has an example of an English mistake that is caused by Chinese interference, or even a mistake foreigners make when trying to speak Chinese, please feel free to tell us about it by leaving a comment.