第一章 中式英语
Chapter One: The Dynamics of “Chinglish”
以我为鉴
中文（普通话）是我的第二语言，因此我在成都生活了几个月之后，就听得懂四川话了。四川话与普通话，发音相近，语调却大不通。学说四川话，着实花了我很多时间。主要是因为，在说每个字之前，我都要在心里反复酝酿，才能找准语调。一开始的时候真的很纠结，每要开口，必先将普通话与四川话之间的语调转换规则在脑子里过上一遍。这一纠结可就是七年啊！于我而言，知道这些规则，有好处也有坏处。好处是，我可以利用这些规则，先将普通话的语调转换成四川话的语调，再用我所知道的普通话词汇来讲四川话。说它不好是因为，每说一个字我都要动用这些规则进行加工，久而久之便产生了依赖。结果就是，在很长一段时期里，我讲四川话来总是磕磕巴巴的。现在想想，坏处还要大些。
An Analogy
As Mandarin is my second language, it took me a few months to understand Sichuan dialect while living in Chengdu. The pronunciations are mostly the same between Mandarin and Sichuan dialect but the tones are different. It took me longer to learn to speak it, though. That was because I depended a lot on my mind to process the proper tones in pronouncing the words in Sichuan dialect. Initially, it was a big struggle as my mind worked on the rules in changing the tones from Mandarin to Sichuan dialect for more than seven years! Actually, knowing these rules was both a blessing and a curse. As a blessing, it taught me how to switch the tones of the Mandarin words into Sichuan tones so that I could use existing vocabulary of my Mandarin in speaking the dialect. It was a curse because I had to process the changes a word at a time in my mind and I became dependent on these mental processes. Consequently, for a long time, I could not speak Sichuan dialect fluently. In retrospect, it was more of a curse than a blessing.
刚开始那几年，每回讲四川话至多不过三五句，后来有一天，我跟一位男士谈业务，整整一个下午嘴巴不停地说。我根本来不及进行语调转换，只能张口就来，一切全凭感觉（纯用方言思考，不再依赖普通话）。有了那次经历，再讲四川话可就流利多了。当然，个别地方我做得还不够好，想是说得还不够多吧。要是还沿着以前的老路走，怕是到了今天我也还是说不好，就算勉强讲得来，想必也是干巴巴的，索然无味，搞不好还会沦为“哑巴四川话”，连嘴巴都张不开。以我为鉴，大家或许可以得到一些启示，说到底，中国人想学好英文口语，一定要习惯英语思维，一味用中文思考是行不通的。
Previously, I never had to speak Sichuan dialect for more than five sentences in one encounter. Till one day, I had to discuss with a gentleman on a business matter throughout an afternoon in Sichuan dialect. I was forced to stop doing the mental processing and started to speak from familiarity of the pronunciation (thinking in Sichuan dialect and no longer dependent on Mandarin), my spoken Sichuan dialect became more fluent (albeit some tonal inaccuracies still persist due to infrequent use). Had I continued to depend on processing Mandarin to Sichuan tones in my mind, I would never have been able to speak it fluently. Whereas the result at best was rather tedious and jerky, at worst it was “Mute Sichuan Dialect” (哑巴四川话). This is the closest analogy I can come up with for Chinese learners trying to speak English by thinking in Chinese instead of in English.
我来中国没多久就听说了“哑巴英语”，然后是“中式英语”（Chinglish）。这让我想到了新加坡人讲的“新式英语”（Singlish）。新加坡人喜欢讲英语，新式英语自然也有很多人讲，可讲归讲，笔下却不常见。中式英文就不同了。本来中国人就很少开口讲英语，因而讲中式英语的就更少。讲的人不多，写的人却不少——学生在作文里写，就连企业高管发邮件也照写不误。
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