September 26, 2015

Funny Chinese transliterations to help remember English words

Some Chinese guy with too much free time came up with interesting Chinese transliterations of some English words. Part of the list is as follows, with my English translation of the transliterations in parentheses.

救护车 ambulance 俺不能死 (I can't die)
雄心 ambition 俺必胜 (I must win)
强壮 strong 死壮 (die strong; this Chinese "word" only exists as a transliteration for English "strong")
羡慕 admire 额的妈呀 (Oh my God; literally, my mom; 额 is a dialectal pronunciation of 我)
脾气 temper 太泼 (too surly or boorish and rowdy)
经济 economy 依靠农民 (rely on farmers)
海关 customs 卡死他们 (block them to death)
怀孕 pregnant 扑来个男的 (a man throws himself down on me)
地主 landlord 懒得劳动 (too lazy to work)

What's special about these phonetic transliterations is that they are meaningful phrases or sentences on their own and there's semantic connection, although no equivalence, with their English counterpart. An "ambulance" doesn't mean "I can't die", but imagine what the person being transported is saying to himself. "Customs" ("custom" in the original posting) maps to "block them to death", consistent with the practice of economic protectionism.

English-speaking people learning a European language, particularly a Romance (Latin) language, can greatly benefit from etymology.[note] When etymology fails to help, some sort of mnemonics may be conjured up, unless the learner prefers rote memory, as young children tend to do. Alison Matthews and Laurence Matthews' Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters does exactly that to help English speakers learn Chinese words. The book exists because there's too little etymological connection between English and Chinese. To go in the other direction, a Chinese cramming English vocabulary has to rely on mnemonics as well. I only hope to see a more complete list of Chinese transliterations than the one shown above, ideally published as a pocket dictionary, so the student can look up a word to read the suggested mnemonic while enjoying the fun that serves to strengthen the memory.

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[note] In fact, I've been writing my book Learning Spanish Words Through Etymology And Mnemonics for almost a year, inspired by this idea. See here for more information.