Chinese English

Chinese English

Introduction

With the enhancement of globalization, English has been playing a more and more important role in China’s interaction with the outside world. Therefore, it would be exciting and interesting to look into the usage of English in China. This variety of English is named as China English by most scholars, but I prefer Chinese English as Professor Moody suggested. Its speech community is composed of Chinese people who can understand English and use it to speak, read and write. In this essay, three major dimensions including the form, status and function of Chinese English would be discussed in detail.

Form

Accent and pronunciation

As we know, Chinese people tend to be more reserved, so most of them speak English with a relatively flat intonation, which is very similar to the way they speak standardized Putonghua. Also, people from different geographical regions speak with different accents influenced by their own dialects. For example, people from the Sichuan province has a very distinctive accent. Additionally, a distinguishable common feature for most Chinese English learners is that they usually pronounce [ð] in [d] or [z] , [θ] in [s], and [v] in [w] because there are no such sounds in Chinese Pinyin, which requires more effort to pronounce correctly.

Lexicon

With the rapid development of China, it has become more and more influential to the other parts of the world. Therefore, English is not simply an instrument for China to interact with the world, but also a platform to show its charm and identity in every aspect. There are many English words which convey particular meanings of Chinese politics, economy, culture and society. For example, “One belt, one road”, “Chinese Dream”, “Dragon Boat Festival”, “Daoism”, “red-pocket”, “Kungfu” etc. Many of these words have been included in the dictionary, which indicates that Chinese English vocabulary have gained recognition around the globe.

Syntax

According to my personal observation, the adverbial (especially time adverbial) is usually placed before the subject sentence in Chinese English. For instance, “ On Saturday morning, I went swimming with my friends.”, “Because I think English is interesting, I enjoy studying it.” Actually, this is affected by Chinese syntax to a great extent, where people are accustomed to putting adverbial before the subject sentence. Apart from this, there are some “wrong” sentences following the Chinese syntax pattern, for example, “Long time no see”. However, with the development of Chinese English variety, those sentences become correct ones and accepted by the native English speakers.

Status

At present, English is popular and prevalent among people in China. However, during the process of its usage, new concerns have arose. For