The Law of the Letter

Barnson, Misery. I stared at the back of the student’s windbreaker as he sat in front of me during the field day events and struggled to decipher the butchered English. Next to him sat several guys and gals with the long-eared Playboy logo on their jackets, over their hearts, where friends back home in the States might wear alligators or horses. Did they understand the emblems they wore like badges? I chuckled and then, eureka! Branson, Missouri!

One of the joys of teaching English in China was reading all the butchered English from my students: on signs, in books, anywhere that English was printed. We affectionately called the mistakes “Chinglish.” One day I passed a crew of workers putting up a sign on the Bureau of something or other. They had all the letters but not in the right order. I salvaged the crew leader’s reputation from criticism when I stopped and had them change Bareuu back to its proper spelling. Little did I know I saved him from future legal problems.

Last month, Fox News ran an AP story that caught my attention. In an effort to crack down on irregular English, Chinese authorities have laid down the law and beefed up security surrounding Beijing in anticipation of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Apparently, private businesses and others who have dealings with foreigners are simply not following the rules.

According to Liu Yang, head of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program, a language hotline is in the works to encourage the public to report nonsense English. The standard by which each case is judged is to be found in a two-pound stack of regulations detailing proper English usage in advertising.

The problem, however, is not just with advertisers. Evidently the taxi drivers are also failing in English. Liu said Beijing taxi drivers must pass an English test to keep their licenses. But he acknowledged, "The taxi training courses are not working effectively, and there is a problem of taxi drivers missing classes.” Despite the problems, Liu said one-third of Beijing's 15 million residents speak some English, a claim that was challenged by a local reporter from China's state-run CCTV.

"I think 5 million is a big number," the reporter told Liu.

Liu stood by the figure, but conceded the vast majority of the English speakers fell into a category he labeled "low level."
Said Liu, "They can have very simply conversations, like: `Who am I? Where am I going?"'

This blogger wishes she could have simple conversations in English, like: “Who am I? Where am I going?” For more fun, read this then scroll down the link for some more classic “Chinglish.”

Derecho

The morning after the storm, we walked along the creek, hoping for signs of the cleansing rain, marveling at the broken tree limbs, the high water debris along the creek banks, the carpet of leaves torn from their branches and strewn like confetti under our feet. We stopped to examine a dead bird with flies on its belly, most likely fallen from its nest or tossed by the wind against a tree. Only days before, we'd saved a bird ensnared by string and caught in branches of spruce. It limply lay in my cupped hands as I unthreaded the twine, in and out, between bird feathers and a delicate neck. The girls hovered like nervous mothers, gently stroking the head with a fingertip until it sensed the release of string and flew free.

I wondered how many others had been displaced or killed by the strong Derecho winds that toppled their trees and wrenched apart carefully woven homes. The branches, split, cracked, hung in helpless surrender, upside down to the sky. We walked in surreal silence, that morning after the storm, and stopped along the banks of the creek, watching water runnel and pool and rush ahead. Bethany began whimpering: fire ants. I snatched her up and stuck her feet in the cold creek water, my feet now lodged in the mud, feeling the stinging bites between my toes. I tripped over rocks trying to get in the water and set Bethany down, whereupon she lost her footing and sat in the mud. She looked distraught and I had to laugh. "It's an adventure," I said. "I don't want to go home, yet," she said.

Further up the path, our resident cardinal flitted among a broken Live Oak but Bethany's eyes scanned the ground. "A ladybug!" She tried to capture it, with fingertips that had stroked a bird's head, but it scurried behind leaves and we headed for our own home, untouched by winds. Bethany skipped down the path, forgetting the ant bites itching her feet and legs. From the parking lot I heard an argument. A domestic dispute. Angry words, obscene epithets. F words and B words, and Bethany stopped. "Let's go," I commanded, hurrying down the walk, angry at the invasion, angry for the words crowding out our reverie, lost innocence, the fall, strings in trees, Derecho winds.