{"id":7239,"date":"2010-04-07T13:24:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7239"},"modified":"2010-04-07T13:39:50","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T17:39:50","slug":"not-quite-chinglish-not-quite-a-pun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/not-quite-chinglish-not-quite-a-pun\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Quite Chinglish, Not Quite a Pun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From his vantage point of working with the English language behind the Bamboo Firewall, friend of <em>RAMH<\/em> Froog wages what must at times feel like <a title=\"Froogville: Posts labeled 'Chinglish'\" href=\"http:\/\/froogville.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Chinglish\" target=\"_blank\">a lonely battle<\/a> against Chinglish. (For the uninitiated, this is the generally mangled result of applying Chinese grammatical rules, pronunciations, and mindset to ideas expressed in &#8220;English.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>I have no wish to steal her punchline, so I will just point you to <a title=\"The Intern: a special message from Confucius\" href=\"http:\/\/internspills.blogspot.com\/2010\/04\/special-message-from-confucius.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Intern&#8217;s recent post<\/a>. It&#8217;s an exquisite example (even if just a joke, or a PhotoShopped image*) of a related but different phenomenon: a phrase in &#8220;Chinese&#8221; which <em>sounds as if it means<\/em> something wildly (in)appropriate in English.<\/p>\n<p>________________<\/p>\n<p>* Not a joke, apparently: Someone <a title=\"Snopes.com forum, on Wong Fook Hing Book Store\" href=\"http:\/\/message.snopes.com\/showthread.php?t=58221\" target=\"_blank\">on a snopes.com forum<\/a> has tracked it down. It&#8217;s currently listed (about halfway down <a title=\"Oxford University Press (China): retailers\" href=\"http:\/\/www.oupchina.com.hk\/retailers\/kowloon.asp\" target=\"_blank\">this page<\/a>) as a retailer of books for Oxford University Press (China).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From his vantage point of working with the English language behind the Bamboo Firewall, friend of RAMH Froog wages what must at times feel like a lonely battle against Chinglish. (For the uninitiated, this is the generally mangled result of applying Chinese grammatical rules, pronunciations, and mindset to ideas expressed in &#8220;English.&#8221;) I have no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,94,250,37,713],"tags":[1727,1728,1729],"class_list":{"0":"post-7239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-02_in-the-news","8":"category-art","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-humor-writing_cat","11":"tag-chinglish","12":"tag-the-intern","13":"tag-puns","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1SL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7239"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7240,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7239\/revisions\/7240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}