When I first fell in love with Chinese culture it was through fantasy shows like Charlie Chan, Kung Fu and many others. All the Chinese people in the movies, especially those portraying smart detectives, members of the royal court of even Xiao Lin Monks used big words … like “Auspicious” or talking in false fortune cookie like phrases of wisdom.
Even as recently as Crouching Tiger, Hidded Dragon… the English sound track is dripping with this stuff. My wife who is Taiwanese could not make heads or tails of the English soundtrack. Now… why. do I bring this up…
I find English sounds more “Chinese” and less direct then the Chinese language.
Example
English: I’m going to take the dog to do his business. Chinese: I’m going to take the dog for a shit/crap.
That food was ok I no like the food.
Your presence add sadness to my heart and your life may be in danger. Fuckoff and get out of here before i run you through with my big blade.
I try to ask my students not to use 10 dollar words when I twenty-five cent one would do. But they just like to pile on these big words.
It’s mostly because of the way Chinese is taught here.
The fraction of the population with a good command of the written language is actually surprisingly low. This is compounded by teachers (who don’t necessarily have a good command of the language either) teaching students to use as many big words as possible and marking normal words incorrect (whereas in reality Chinese is very like English - there’s a time and place for big words, and a certain type of grammar that needs to accompany them).
They take the methods they’ve had to memorise for writing ‘good’ Chinese pieces and translate them over to writing English. This is further compounded by a cultural difference - in Chinese, if you feel a piece of writing is unclear it means that you’re stupid, in English, it means the writer’s an idiot who can’t express himself clearly.
What you should tell your students is that we speak English like we write Chinese (round and round in circles and skirting the real point (in general conversation anyway)) and we write English like we speak Chinese (to the point).
Whereas in the West we’re taught that, when it comes to rhetoric, “less is more”, the Chinese are taught that “more is more”. They then try to apply this concept to English, and it comes out sounding odd.
The problem is that the students do not have enough vocabulary. They simply do not know any better.
The word “bathroom” is likely not taught. So, “WC”, “Toilet” are used instead.
In my senior year graduation trip, one classmate of mine who is now a Senior VP in ShangHai working for a large international trading firm, said to a female English teacher, “Can we go take a leak?” Now, this is likely not very appropriate. But, this is how he knew to say.
I think their Chinese teachers encourage them to use high-falutin’ words in Chinese, so they think the same is always appropriate in English. My Chinese teacher at TLC would shout ‘wrong’ when I said something in correct Chinese, but with words that were not ‘advanced’ enough in her opinion.
Yeah, but they’re cheating. They just miss out a few spaces.
I’ve seen schoolkids on the MRT memorizing, from A to Z, the entire contents of an English dictionary, or a list that looks like it’s been copied from one. They don’t have the foggiest idea what those words are for (how they’re supposed to be used) but some misguided teacher has told them to learn lots of vocab, so they do. It’s no wonder the poor kids can’t manage to string an actual sentence together. ‘Excrescence’. There’s a good word.