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It wasn’t until December 2010 that China’s Communist government began to dig out from the English onslaught. It ordered Chinese publishers and website owners to say bai bai to all foreign words, particularly English ones, as well as the concoctions of Chinglish. Radio and TV outlets were already working under such restrictions. The government said the flood of foreign words had “seriously damaged” the purity of the Chinese language and had caused “adverse social impacts” on the cultural environment.35

However, some people familiar with the situation in China feel that English already has too many roots to be pulled up by force. Roscoe Jean-Castle Mathieu of Shenzhen, China, told BBC that “almost everyone has a self-chosen English name, and they refer to each other with English names, such as Billy Cheng and Vivian Wong.” “JR” of Nanjing added that he still hears lots of English acronyms such as OL for “office lady” and DINK for “double income, no kids.”

SIDEWALK SOPHIE

Anna Sophie Lowenberg, a young American resident of Beijing, made a video showing herself asking random Chinese on the sidewalks of that city if they had an English or American name. Almost everyone she asked said yes. Names included “Samanfar” (for Samantha), “Tony,” and “Smacker,” an odd one for a young woman. Lowenberg spotted a young male store employee wearing a name tag that said “Susan.” He laughingly told her that his boss had put it on him.36

A complete ban would hit one city especially hard. This is Yanshuo, a hiking and rock-climbing hub in southern China, with English-learning schools on nearly every block. Eleanor Terry, a New York teacher, reported in 2009 that the city was teeming with international college students “running around with teams of Chinese schoolchildren in matching neon colored t-shirts asking tourists, ‘Do you have time to help us? What’s your name? What is your favorite food? and Do you like China?” She said the Chinese children were spending the summer—like a summer camp—learning English.37

She added that the city was very Western friendly, with a restaurant/bar “that plays only country music and serves a dozen different types of hamburgers”—with side orders of Chinglish.

CRAZY ENGLISH: SHOUT IT OUT

You’ve heard of Shouting Methodists. Now there are shouting Chinese. They yell in English in order to learn it. The idea was conceived—and patented—by Li Yang who scored well on an important English test in college by practicing it at top volume.

Believing that anyone can learn another language by shouting it out, he started his teaching method in 1994. He also wants everyone to know that he has more than 20 million practitioners. Let’s hear it.

OTHER RESISTANCE

In 2008, an influential Italian cultural organization, the Dante Alighieri Society, called for elimination of anglicized words in Italy like il weekend and lo stress, which it called Anglitaliano and others call Italglish. An informal poll by the society cited other English words that Italians have used for years, such as shopping and bookshop. The society’s plea was drowned out by more Americanisms.

In Slovakia, using an English sentence or two on the air in 2010 could lead to a severe penalty, according to The Slovak Spectator. Andy Hillard, a British musician living in Bratislava, found that out when he appeared on a Slovak TV show.38 When Hillard appeared not to understand a question, host Stefan Hrib switched to English, and Hillard answered in English. The brief Q&A was not translated or dubbed.

Three years earlier, Slovakia’s Council for Broadcasting and Retransmission had lifted the BBC’s radio license to broadcast in Slovakia because its content was in English, a violation of Slovak law.

ALL THINGS WIKI

Amglish is akin to the wiki world, because the two concepts share the same type of freedom, simplicity, and international power. Ward Cunningham, who sired the wiki family, chose to name it after a “Wiki Wiki” airport shuttle in Honolulu where the word means fast.

The progenies include Wikipedia and Wiktionary, both free