Using a “Spoken English” book to review Chinese phrases

[abcdefg]

I’ve been helping a friend of a friend polish her spoken English in preparation to her going to America to do advanced studies. She will soon complete a Masters program in Law here in Kunming. Like so many intelligent and well educated Chinese, she can read and write decent English, but freezes like a deer in the headlights when attempting casual conversation.

We use a simple enough textbook entitled “Everyday English.” Subtitle is 英语口语大全 – 常用英语. It was written by a team of Chinese professors for use by native Chinese speakers and published in December of 2010 in 西安。(ISBN 978-7-5612-2970-5.) The foreword and all explanatory notes are in Chinese.

I thought I might be able to “reverse engineer” this little book and use the Chinese portions as a review of some simple social phrases along the way, but I am now questioning whether that is a good idea because the Chinese translation of many of the simple English phrases is not the way I would normally say those things in Chinese.

So my question is: Are these Chinese phrases just different, perhaps more sophisticated or more "native," ways of saying these daily things? The language seems somewhat stilted to me even though it is being presented as 口语. Maybe the 口语 I have previously learned is "dumbed-down foreigner Chinese.” I’m also wondering if some of these phrases might even represent regional approaches. For what it’s worth, all are printed Simplified script 简体字.

I’ll give some examples from an early chapter:

1. Go down the street and turn left at the traffic light.

沿这条街走，到红绿灯处左转弯。

2. Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me where the bookstore is.

劳驾，我不知道你否能告诉我书店在哪里。

3. Cross the street, walk on and take the first turn on the left.

穿过马路，一直向前走，然后到第一个路口向左拐。

4. Sorry to trouble you, but could you please direct me to …?

打搅一下，你能给我说一下倒 。。。？

5. It’s next to the department store.

挨着商场。

6. It’s only a 10 minute walk from here.

从这儿走过去只需十分钟。

Does anyone else find the Chinese used here a little unusual in places as 口语?

[Kenny同志]

Go down the street and turn left at the traffic light.

沿这条街走，到红绿灯的地方向左转。(处 is used in written Chinese to mean 地方)

Excuse me, but I wonder if you could tell me where the bookstore is.

打搅您一下，请问到书店怎么走？（劳驾 is old-fashioned or outdated）

4. Sorry to trouble you, but could you please direct me to …?

打搅一下(or麻烦您一下)，您能给我指一下到那里怎么走吗？(倒should be 到)

The rest Chinese translations are okay to me.

[abcdefg]

Thanks Kenny.

After looking at more of this book, I'll bet the problem really is that while the English is 口语，the Chinese is not.

[Kenny同志]

Why not make a note of the expressions your Chinese friends usually use. I think it will be more reliable and useful than the book (in terms of colloquial Chinese only).

[abcdefg]

Why not make a note of the expressions your Chinese friends usually use. I think it will be more reliable and useful than the book (in terms of colloquial Chinese only).

Yes. I've already done that. The main use of this book is to help my friend practice her English.

[anonymoose]

So why don't you just ask your friend if those sentences are 地道 or not?

[Kiz]

They are not 地道. It sounds weird for speaking. The first instinct is that they seem mostly to appear in some Chinese novels translated from other languages. = =

[Lu]

The first few seem to be too literally translated from the English. Which is not bad IMO for a book aimed at Chinese people learning English, it can help seeing the structure of the English sentence.

I think one can probably learn plenty Chinese from this book, but there are probably more suitable books that one can learn even more from.

[歐博思]

I am curious, you native speakers that feel the sentences are awkward Chinese, how would you translate them yourself?

[abcdefg]

So why don't you just ask your friend if those sentences are 地道 or not?

We met again yesterday evening and I did that. She said lots of the Chinese sentences sound sort of weird when spoken because they use old fashioned, stiff, or rather uncommon words or overly complex expressions. She would comment "I suppose you actually *could* say it like that, but most people here would say it another way instead." Then she would say it in a more 地道 way.

The English phrases are actually pretty well written, so that part of things is working out well and we will continue to use this book for that reason. The main goal is to help her with her English and my Chinese review is only a secondary aim, so I'd prefer to stay with only this one book.

We are doing this as a language exchange: one hour of English and one hour of Chinese. So what I now do for the Chinese hour is just take the English sentences as a rough "topic guide" and tell her how I would say those things in Chinese. Then she corrects me, usually saying “我们一般说。。。” and we go on to make up small dialogues. I no longer try to read the Chinese sentence translations.

[gato]

Maybe the book was originally written in English. I have't heard anyone say "劳驾" for "excuse me".

[knickherboots]

劳驾 is sometimes used here in Beijing, especially by middle-aged and older people biking through 胡同 who don't have a bell (or don't want to use one) and mean it in the sense of "Please make way" or "Coming through!" As a bell-less bicyclist, I use it myself. It is a little old fashioned, and I didn't hear it used in the 1990s, but that might be because I wasn't paying attention. I've also heard Chinese use it to introduce a question directed at a stranger, akin to how I, as a foreign student, was taught to use 请问. In my experience, though, most Chinese in Beijing ask for directions without any sort of introduction, just establishing eye contact and barreling through with something like "你知道去东直门站怎么走吗？"

[Kiz]

yeah, most Chinese don't pay much attention to mannerly introduction. And 劳驾 is really rare to be heard. I just know such word exists but never really encounter one.

And I'd to do a language exchange thing with somebody,too. But I never find one.

Can <<< abcdefg shed any light on how or where to get one? :huh:

[abcdefg]

And I'd to do a language exchange thing with somebody,too. But I never find one.

Can <<< abcdefg shed any light on how or where to get one?

This young lady is a friend of a friend, and that's who introduced us. But in Kunming, where I live now, they are not difficult to find through bulletin boards in the main university district or through an on-line forum such as www.gokunming.com.

[Kiz]

<<< abcdefg

Thanks for the tip. But in beijing, bulletin boards don't work. I'm still working on on-line forum.

[PanShiBo]

[spliced in from another topic]

but want a more structured opportunity

I agree with the concept of structure. Which better be called systematic education I think.

Most practical way in my own experience (after going to night school (too slow), practicing with 10-15 commercial tutors (boring), a few Chinese friends (bad idea), and a girlfriend (bad idea too)) was to buy a book titled "Practical English Usage" published in China for Chinese learning English.

The book demonstrates hundreds of sample phrases, in English and modern Chinese. Most important aspect is that Chinese samples are correct and written in fresh and elegant modern Mandarin grammar. Every day I learn five new phrases be entering them into my own computer flash-card system. That was the most structured approach that worked and still works for me.

[roddy]

Then why tell him to go to a teahouse

Brave decision to learn Chinese from a book that's been translated from English, by the way. Particularly one that was written to demonstrate English usages.

[abcdefg]

Brave decision to learn Chinese from a book that's been translated from English, by the way. Particularly one that was written to demonstrate English usages.

I tried something similar recently in the context of a language exchange. It has not worked well because, although most of the English parts were decent, the Chinese parts were not at all 口语。The Chinese parts were 书面 explanations of the English, not translations of them into equivalent Chinese 口语。The book worked much better in one direction than in the other.

Sounds like @PanShiBo's book is better than mine.

See this thread for more: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/32437-using-a-%E2%80%9Cspoken-english%E2%80%9D-book-to-review-chinese-phrases/

[PanShiBo]

Sounds like @PanShiBo's book is better than mine.

It had been inspected by native Chinese speaker and approved..

From my experience, books titled "Modern Chinese Grammar" (example) that are published outside China, are usually written by professors whose native language is not Mandarin and they studied Chinese in some traditional form (in Taiwan) 40-50 years ago, so for them 小姐 (xiaojie) is still a salesperson or a young lady, and they insist 同志 (tongzhi) has to be used as a comrade.

My native young Mandarin tutors were laughing making numerous corrections until I just gave up using such books. I got tired seeing funny faces using such grammar and having questions how really old I am.

[rezaf]

Although at beginner level our teacher told us about 小姐‘s new meaning, I actually think it is used in its normal meaning quite often in Shanghai. :rolleyes: Also in mainland on TV or other official communist party related things 同志 is used very often as "comrade". So at least for 小姐 I don't think the actual meaning is out of date.

I also tried a similar book so that I could improve my English and Chinese at the same time but as abcdefg mentioned the Chinese translation was too formal.