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The Phonetic Manifestation of Chinglish

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The Phonetic Manifestation of Chinglish
Abstract
Chinese and English are two quite different languages that belong to two language families. When Chinese students study English, they tend to lose sight of the differences between the two languages. As more and more people begin to learn and use English, an unsatisfying problem appears. That is Chinglish, which appears in learners’ pronunciation, writing and translation. This term is familiar to every Chinese student. However, students don’t know the origin of Chinglish—the pidgin, let alone the difference between Chinglish and China English. Although there are several aspects which should be addressed to analyze the Chinglish and China English, such as phonetic, phonological, lexical, semantical, and syntactical aspect, the writer will only focus on phonetic aspect in this term paper. When the analysis on this aspect is presented, the quality of English teaching and the efficiency of English learning will be improved.
Key words: Chinglish, China English, pidgin, phonetic aspect

The Origin of Chinglish and China English and Their Phonetic Manifestations

1 Introduction When speaking English, Chinese students always mistakenly pronounce the phonemes in the same way as they pronounce Chinese phonetic alphabets. When writing English essays, students unconsciously use the writing ways that Chinese teachers once taught us. When translating, students just rigidly translate the original words into English literally, and their translation turns out to be obscure and hard to understand. As a result, the Chinglish came into being. It has the character of China and is also called Malformation of English (Kachru and Nelson, 2006, p.19). This term paper will only focus on the pronunciation aspect. In the following parts, some background information of Chinglish will be presented including its definition, history as well as the difference between Chinglish and China English.

2 Review of Chinglish and



References: Kachru Yamuna & Nelson Cecil L (2006). World Englishes in Asian Contexts. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Nida, Eugene A & Taber Charles (2002). The Theory and Practice of Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Language Education Press. Rod Ellis (2003). Second Language Acquisition. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. 曹宁(2005)。 也论中国英语和中国式英语。《南华大学外国语学院》,12 (5)。 何善芬(2002)。《英汉语言对比研究》。上海:上海外语教育出版社。 胡壮麟(2001)。《语言学教程》。北京:北京大学出版社。 李文中(1993)。中国英语和中国式英语。《外语教学与研究》,4,12—13。 骆贤风(2002)。从中国式英语看母语的负迁移。《重庆山峡学院学报》,3,2-3。 王弄笙(2000)。汉英翻译中的Chinglish。《中国翻译》,5,15—16。 赵德梅(1995)。《英汉比较语音学》。青岛:青岛海洋大学出版社。

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