A Child's Garden of Chinglish, or "Honey, have you seen the forfex?"

(posted by Dave)





China, as you may well know, is chock full of Chinglish - weird hybrid poorly translated bits of English that make absolutely No Sense Whatsoever. Since my spoken Chinese isn’t even at the kindergarten level yet, to say nothing for my written language skills, I’ve refrained so far from posting any examples. Learning a new language is tough enough, let alone having to write an advertisement, menu item, public sign, etc. in it.

However, I think I can safely make an exception in this case. This is a scan from a kid’s picture book, designed to teach the little tots a few words in English. In this case, our budding young scholars are treated to words like “ball”, “satchel”, “feeding-bottle”, and “pram”, all with large happy photographs of the vocabulary in question. Oh, and also “forfex”, “houselet”, and “backresk”.

Now, I could see giving up on “HamiGua” and calling it a “Hami Melon” instead of a cantaloupe. I don’t even know how to spell cantaloupe. (thanks, spell check!) And “houselet” for dollhouse is a touch of genius. But “forfex”? Someone was most definitely asleep at the switch...