Chingerland and the Chinglish Challenge

"Beckham!" extolled the driver when I told him I was from the UK. Last year there was even an encased waxwork model of Beckham in Nanjing Road East in downtown Shanghai. I'm not entirely sure who most Chinese will be supporting in the World Cup - but judging by the England track suit tops and T-shirts and the fact that it is the number one selling football strip in China I think England will get strong support. Officially, China will support their North Korean comrades - the Chinese government is paying for 1,000 supporters to go to South Africa on North Korea's behalf despite the fact that North Korean border guards shot three Chinese soldiers dead last week.

Football apart, the English language continues to be highly popular in China. The impact of English is now causing concern to the Chinese government and legislative advisers who have been calling for preventive measures to "preserve the purity of the Chinese language." A department which exercises control over Chinese broadcasting has instructed CCTV (the multi-channel national broadcaster) and a number of city and regional TV companies have been told to stop using English abbreviations. So "GDP" and "WTO", for example will be substituted with their Chinese pronunciations / translations. At least the Chinese will still be able to advertise in English if they want to which is against the law in France.

"If we don't pay attention and don't take measures to stop mixing Chinese with English, the Chinese language won't remain pure in a couple of years," said Huang Youyi, editor-in-chief of the China International Publishing Group. And whilst such warnings about English are sounding forth, the 25 finalists of the National English Speaking Competition were competing in the final round of the 15th China Daily "21st Century Cup". Besides delivering a prepared speech the finalists were also asked to deliver impromptu speeches and to answer questions from English language experts. The winner was Li Yi, a finance major from Xiamen University who wins a scholarship in the UK and an internship at the BBC. And this is not the only such competition. Recently I saw the repeat of the finals of the CCTV Cup English Speaking Contest which was held in November 2009 (an event I'd obviously missed). The Contest was in an 'X Factor' show format with celeb presenters, star panel and 'whoopie' audience. There had been many rounds to the contest covering thirty municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions. Those contests generated ninety winners who then competed at the semi-final and three rounds of finals at the Foreign Studies University and CCTV studios in Beijing. The final nine candidates (all university students) expressed their pride at being in the final and were then asked to talk on a subject followed by interviews. I lost interest after a few minutes so cannot give you a blow-by-blow account. It was another example of the growing pride in English speaking accomplishment in China.

In response to the announcement by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television that English abbreviations should not longer be used by the media, an American commentator wondered whether the new rules would require KFC to be translated into Chinese as (literally) "Chicken Frying Company from Kentucky" or whether the NBA will need to be "the American national association that organises basketball".

However there is probably legitimate concern for the way in which Chinese sentences are getting broken up by an English word just to be cool such as replacing hen shimao (very fashionable) by "hen fashion".

I think the moves are too late for the emerging generation who choose to wear England team T-shirts or tops with somewhat obscure English slogans rather than Chinese and use the English alphabet to access Chinese characters for their text messages. Yesterday I saw someone sporting a T-shirt which referred to a Chinese garden as "the garden of England" - ?? The only question is which English will prevail? The English of Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and the UK - or the "International" English of the Americans. For more on the battle between Oxford English and "Disney English", see my Blog date 16.02.10