Self-doubt about English vocab affecting native speaker

[metal.lunchbox]

I have a simple question. In China there is a kind of standard English vocab, everyone seems to learn almost the exact same vocabulary and the same one-to-one translation of those English words with Chinese. I'm oversimplifying it, but there's a lot of Chinese-style English that I see everywhere. For instance you'd be hard-pressed to find a Chinese university student who didn't learn to say, "I go there by bus" (instead of "I take the bus" or "I ride the bus"). Other examples are "enthusiastic" when it appears from context that they really mean "warm-hearted". I'm sure if you've lived in China for a while you can think of plenty of Chinglish words and expressions which have made it into the textbooks. I've been exposed to this Chinese-style English so long and so consistently that I sometimes am no longer sure what is proper English and what isn't.

 

Chinese students often use the word "senior high school" contrasting with "junior high school", perhaps more often they give the Chinglish "senior middle school". I told a student today to talk about "high school" and "middle school" instead, but then I started doubting myself. These are Chinese students in Chinese schools so they are talking about "高中“. Am I correct to say that we call this "High school"? In English we don't call it other things? "Senior high" is a word, but it sounds like an antiquated American word that no one actually uses anymore. Is this simply regional variation. I know that English is diverse, so I hesitate a lot saying that we never use this word or that. And "Senior middle school" is just Chinglish right?

[ChTTay]

Where are you from?

Isn't "junior" and "senior" high school an American thing? There are definitely seniors and juniors when referring to a person ... Not sure they say "senior high school" exactly. I have American friends who say "My senior year" or "He's a senior".

Sounds like they just applied the high school junior/senior division to middle school. I don't see too much of an issue with that really.

Some Chinese people do overuse certain words but I put this down to a lack of English vocab, not any Chingish/English thing. Everyone says convenient and comfortable way to much. It's got to the point I overuse them too when speaking to Chinese colleagues. This makes sense though in a way as Chinese people do tend to say 舒服 and 方便 a fair amount in everyday speech.

For using enthusiastic instead of "warm hearted" ... just a lack of vocab, no?

I do see some words in email I have no idea where they learned them from. A good one recently was "if you have any questions, ask freely".

[yueni]

It's used in this fashion (at least where I went to school in the US). When I went to middle school and high school, they were moving from junior highs to middle schools. The original was:

 

grades 1-6 = elementary school

grades 7-9 = junior high

grades 10-12 = senior high

 

When they moved to a middle school system, it was changed to:

 

grades 1-5 = elementary school

grades 6-8 = middle school

grades 9-12 = high school

 

I don't know the reasons for the change or if there was any deeper reason for it. The use of junior/senior in high school only starts in high school. It is also used in college, and it is as follows:

 

grade 9 (aka 1st year of HS) = freshman/frosh

grade 10 (2nd year HS) = sophomore

grade 11 (3rd year HS) = junior

grade 12 (4th year HS) = senior

 

These transfer almost perfectly to a 4-year college, so you get college freshman, sophomores etc.

 

To answer the OP, I think the move towards middle schools has made the use of "senior high" somewhat old fashioned and/or archaic. And in any case, even if there was a junior high, the high school is still... "high school".

[Demonic_Duck]

Re: 受到ing the 影响 of Chinglish

 

Yes, this is inevitable, and it happens to all of us. I suspect that a reasonably short period of time back in an English-speaking part of the world would be enough to remedy it though, at least for things that are considered incorrect as such.

 

The main effect that I can imagine remaining for a long time is the difference in frequency of word usage - I'm sure I say things like "troublesome" (麻烦) and "you're not wrong" (没错) much more often now, neither of which is considered incorrect or unnatural, and as such, neither of which I see any reason to change.

 

Re: stages of schooling

 

I'd say a rough correspondence is

 

小学 primary school (UK) or elementary school (US)

初中 middle school (UK) or junior high (US)

高中 secondary school (UK) or senior high (US)

中学 as a whole would be secondary school (UK) or high school (US)

 

Bear in mind that the "中" is not in reference to an English term, it's in reference to the progression from 小学 to 中学 to 大学. Hence, "middle school" for 中学 is Chinglish, although it's also very widespread, so descriptively you could make the case that it's OK to call them that. It will inevitably be misunderstood by people who aren't familiar with Chinese education, though, so I'd say "high school" is still a safer bet.

 

Cf. 红茶/黑茶 vs. black tea/dark tea. The difference here is that almost all Chinese people who've learned English know about the lack of correspondence between the terms.

[michaelS]

I just spent my weekend doing 33 speaking exams for a well-known English exam, very popular in China, and can safely say that students have no trouble saying 'warm-hearted' when they in fact mean - well, something actually used in English?

 

Also, they may say 'comfortable' all the time, but that's certainly no indication of understanding what it specifically means, as per my frequent questioning:

 

How can we make long journeys more comfortable?

Take a book

But more comfortable?

Play games on a phone

But what about making them more comfortable?

Sit with your friends

 

(n.b. I don't write the vacuous questions)

[metal.lunchbox]

Chinglish (eg, senior middle school) and Chinese influenced English ( using troublesome a lot) are of course different things. One of the points I'm making is that in addition to preferring some vocabulary over others, there's also a fair number of unusually common mistakes, that I think are the result of the standardization of the English curriculum, not just because they all have the same native language. Perhaps you recognize, "I go there by bus". My point about enthusiastic is that it actually has a different meaning. The reason that they are consistently choosing that word is that they are taught that it is the proper translation of 热情. There are many other words that suffer in the same way. I'm having difficulty thinking of examples, but I very often hear students say "open the air-conditioner" ("open" instead of "turn on") after more than five years of English study. This suggests to me that they are being taught it this way.

 

I've spoken to college students who are passing the CETB-4 which tests 4000 words and they are masters of Chinese-style English, often misuing words, not for a lack of vocabulary, but because the national curriculum defined the word wrong, like "bean curd". When I first arrived in China I spoke to a man who had studied English for a little more than 15 years. When he offered to order a dish with bean curd, I was ready to eat something very exotic, only to find out it was nothing more than common tofu.

[Demonic_Duck]

As for things it seems all students are taught in school, the main one that annoys me to no end is "how to say ____?" as a standalone question. Whenever I've had students say this (which is close enough to 100% of the students I've taught, regardless of level), I've always called them out on it, yet they always repeat the same mistake because it's so deeply ingrained from the education they've already received.

[abcdefg]

In China there is a kind of standard English vocab, everyone seems to learn almost the exact same vocabulary and the same one-to-one translation of those English words with Chinese.

 

@Metal Lunchbox -- Don't you think the same thing happens with us foreigners who are learning Chinese?

[Pingfa]

 

 

that I think are the result of the standardization of the English curriculum

Pretty much. This is in large part because they are used to learning by rote memorization - the way many Chinese go about learning English is to recite a vocabulary list over and over, so they have a tendency to translate too literally, word-by-word rather than by general context.

[skylee]

I agree with #8.

[anonymoose]

Skylee, would you please give some examples.

[Matty]

You have 3 levels of pre-university in the UK and the US?

 

In Australia: (pre-school not included)

Primary School  : Kindergarten, 1 - 6

High School : 7 - 12

 

So can freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior actually be used for defining your university year?

None of which I can ever remember anyway...

 

In Australia: 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year, 4th year student. <= Most courses only have 3 years.

 

Some of what they learn... One Chinese boy said he liked to eat "c*ck", referring to chicken when we were talking about what we like to eat. He got very shy and quite after an explanation on why he should never use that word again.

[Yadang]

 

 

In China there is a kind of standard English vocab, everyone seems to learn almost the exact same vocabulary and the same one-to-one translation of those English words with Chinese.

@Metal Lunchbox -- Don't you think the same thing happens with us foreigners who are learning Chinese?

 

This is what freaks me out about using textbooks...

[Silent]

 

I know that English is diverse, so I hesitate a lot saying that we never use this word or that. And "Senior middle school" is just Chinglish right?

 

Though there is a lot of poor English out there (by natives and non-natives) I feel many people are offensive by calling correct English Chinglish (or some variety of that) only because it sounds odd due to vocabulary/grammar use that though technically correct natives would rarely use.

 

The systematic shifts that may be seen in vocabulary/grammar among populations can largely be explained by their background. Education is often to some extend standardised and more important, some vocabulary/grammar structures may feel much more natural due to lingual and cultural background. E.g. when learning Chinese HSK vocabulary will be prefered by many students even if natives would use a different word with roughly the same meaning. Simply because many students use HSK as a guide for vocabulary learning.

 

In case of education there is the added complexity of different educational systems that may be hard to compare specially if you're not intimately familiar with them and that may change over time. Senior high sounds valid to me, whether it's correct depends on the system described. Whether it feels good depends also a lot on your background and familiarity with the system.

[metal.lunchbox]

I actually don't think this standard un-natural Chinese happens to us foreigners learning Chinese. I'm not talking about common mistakes that learners make as they are learning, but rather mistakes that become enshrined as canonical in the standard curiculum. Folk in the U.S. studying Chinese don't have any kind of standard curriculum, although there are a few textbooks that are very popular. In general foreign language education works in a dramatically different way in the west, with far more authentic materials and more carefully edited textbooks, which are more simply copied endlessly from a centralized non-native source. I can't speak for all learners of Chinese, but my teachers were all exceptionally knowledgable and proficient about the language, in stark contrast to the majority of English teachers I have spoken to here in China, who are uncomfortable conversing with a native speaker after the scripted parts of the conversation (introductions) are complete. I was not taught to memorize and repeat endlessly, although all language learning surely involves some memorization work. Anyways, my point is not to criticize the Chinese system, only to say that this is part of how it works, and it's affecting me. I think I said "how you say ___?" the other day, but more importantly it is my job to try to help Chinese students speak English in a more correct and effective way.

 

I don't teach my student freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. It's good for listening comprehension in some situations, but so are thousands of other obscure words they don't need to know yet. I teach them to say first year student, second year student

 

@silent: I say "senior middle school" is Chinglish not because it is awkward but because we have one or more established words for that and this mutation is both not one of them and potentially confusing. Also it's a question, so don't get offended too quickly. Not eveyone has to speak the same way I do, but I hope that after so many years of study they can tell someone what they do without making them stop to ask a clarifying question.

[JayXZ]

Have you tried "kindergarten"? It's different in China too.

[Silent]

 

This is what freaks me out about using textbooks...

Why does that freak you out? To me a language is a formal or informal selection of vocabulary and grammar rules. Textbooks are essentially the same but go further so a student is exposed to manageable amounts of new vocabulary and grammar. In a sense this is good. By all learning the same vocabulary instead of a random synonym per concept communication is facilitated. Students know largely the same words so they have a better chance to understand each other and natives can get a better understanding of what a non native is likely to understand. 

[Silent]

 

I say "senior middle school" is Chinglish not because it is awkward but because we have one or more established words for that and this mutation is both not one of them and potentially confusing.

I don't know which more established word you mean, but that word is rooted in a certain school system. In a different school system it may make sense to use different vocabulary to avoid the associations related to the school system the word came from.

[metal.lunchbox]

@silent: The Chinese school system isn't sufficiently unique in its division of school years and levels to merit its own vocabulary. By that logic the Chinese should use a different word for just about everything in China when speaking English.

[imron]

I was ready to eat something very exotic, only to find out it was nothing more than common tofu.

Was it delicious?