Tailish (Taiwanese English)

Anyone hear of Taiwanese English?
I heard if quite often.
Here are some:

  1. Who bird you? Shei niao ni! Who care about you?
  2. You give me remember? Ni gei wo jizhu! You watch out!

If you have anymore like this
please share to the forum

regards
anton xie

The all time classics

You think too much (Ni xiang tai dou)

This one below is taught in the standard textbooks in high school apparently.

I have ever been…

Taiwanese think the positive form of I have never been… is the above

HeadhonchoII: yes, you are right. almost everyone i have met uses this way of speaking: “I have ever been to paris, I have ever been to Canada.”

I am curious: which textbook offers this nonsense, and can you tell me the name of the book and the publisher. I want to contact the editor and find out why. Thanks. Note info here.

HeadhonchoII wrote: "This one below is taught in the standard textbooks in high school apparently.

I have ever been…

Taiwanese think the positive form of I have never been… is the above"

QUESTiON: do japanese speak this way too, and mainland Chinese or just Taiwan, due to the textbook fiasco? ANybody know. I have ever heard of this kind of stuff before, and it puzzles me.

They also speak like that in Indonesia. Because Indonesian sentence construction need the word “ever” as in a marker for “le” in chinese.

Sample Indonesian:
Saya pernah ke Paris
I ever to Paris. (I have ever been to Paris)
I’d try to correct them to “I’ve been to Paris” but for beginner in English, “have+been” construction is not easy to grasp.

In Japanese, the love to use already for all completed sentence.

I’ve had dinner = I already eaten.
I’ve finished my work= I finish work already.

This strange english is also used in Jakarta and elsewhere where japanese broken english is predominant:)

cheers

anton xie

this is also a nice one, courtesy my co-worker

blue who shit and whose
不入虎穴,焉得虎子

regards
anton xie

here’s another one:

let me thing thing.
rang wo xiang xiang
讓我想想

cheers

ax

here’s another one

Tiger me
fool me, or trick me.
虎我

Cheers

ax

Ton,

“xiang yi xiang” is exactly the same in Indonesian “pikir-pikir”…:slight_smile:

“Ni Hen Ji Che” ==> You’re so motorcycle
Means “Ni Hen Ma Fan”

Borutesu Faibu,

if all slang is included
what about:
you are qianshuiting = you are a submarine=you are low class.

regards

ax

Thai people also use the “I have ever been to…”

This comes from the the Thai language where they say “I ever go…”

“I have ever been” should be okay.

Like in:

“Wow, Disneyland is the best place I have ever been.”
“These past months spent with you have been the happiest I have ever been.”

Non?

[quote=“BAH”]“I have ever been” should be okay.

Like in:

“Wow, Disneyland is the best place I have ever been.”
“These past months spent with you have been the happiest I have ever been.”

Non?[/quote]

Non non! :smiley:

Your usage is fine, meaning “ever in all of my life”.

The problem is using ever to signal a particular time or times. In that case the ever is redundant. The problem seems to be that NNS, understandably, conclude that ever is the opposite of never, which it isn’t.

I asked my colleague at work and she said that’s what was in the high school textbook (don’t know which grade) and that that is listed as the correct positive answer to a question such. If they didn’t answer I have ever been they would have incorrect according to the textbook and lost marks in any exams

Have you ever been to Paris?

No, I have never been to Paris.
Yes I have ever been to Paris.

More Taiwanese English

Player.
People who like to pick up lots of girls. Seems to be a very common
phrase to call foreigners here. I don’t know if it comes from Chinese though.

I heard another one today:)
Going
勾引 (gou yin)
means to seduce in english

antonxie

A variation of the “u give me remember” I have heard is: “U give me father remember”, which someone told me is stronger.

I don’t think anyone is “teaching” NNS in Taiwan to use ‘ever’ incorrectly in positive sentences. NNS do this because ‘never’ and ‘ever’ are similar and they plausibly but incorrectly infer that ‘ever’ is the opposite of ‘never’. Reinforcing this is the use of ceng2jing1 before verbs in Taiwanese Mandarin to show that an event happened at some unpsecified time in the past (well, that’s not quite right, but it will do for the purposes of this discussion).

NNS=?

Just saw a TV show called: FUN