Cultural awareness and common errors in English

Compliments
Compliments are intended to create a positive effect on interpersonal relations and English speakers confirm solidarity with the previous speaker by agreeing with their assertion, e.g. A: It’s getting a bit chilly today.
B: Yes, it’s dropped to 15 degrees.
zLeech’s (1983) Politeness Maxim states that people agree with the speaker and their response to an utterance is an agreement to it. Leech’s Modesty Maxim, on the other hand, states that in some eastern cultures including the Chinese culture, people try to avoid self-praise.

Cher (2001) reported a research showing 46% of Chinese used non-agreement or scale- down type of responses to compliments while only19% of British people used this kind of response. On the other hand, 50% of the responses to compliments of English speakers are of the agreement type while only 25% of the Chinese falls into this category. This can be explained by looking at the conflict between the Politeness Maxim and the Modesty Maxim. When there is conflict, the Chinese take modesty as the overriding maxim and they tone down or reject the compliments. But the English speaking people treat agreement as polite and they accept the compliments readily.

An example of the differences between the Chinese and the English speaking people regarding the Politeness Maxim and the Modesty Maxim.

After a class observation, the visitor said:
It was really wonderful, very good indeed.
Chinese teacher:
I feel embarrassed, showing off.
English speaking teacher:
Thank you. I am so glad you liked it.

Even after a short meeting, English speaking people would thank their new friends, e.g.
It was a delight to meet you and share your vitality, enthusiasm and knowledge. Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I would have liked to spend more time with you, and learn more about your work. Next time.
I’m back now, in a cold, bleak-looking Auckland.

Here is the well-known joke about a Chinese lady’s rejecting compliments.
A Chinese lady went to a dinner party where foreign guests were present. She was wearing a very nice Chinese dinner dress and some English speaking friends greeted her with compliments when they met her.
“Hello, Lily. How nice to see you again! You look really very beautiful!”
“Oh, where? Where? “(那里, 那里! She translated the Chinese disagreement directly into English.”
“Oh, …everywhere.” (The English speakers were puzzled by her response and hesitated a bit before answering taking the question literally.)

What should we say when English speaking people praise you then? Just say Thank you nicely. Or you can return the compliment, “Thank you. You’re looking gorgeous too!” If people praise you for something you have done, you can say, “Thank you. I am so glad you like it.”

Another area of cultural awareness is to do with offensive statements/ acts. For the Chinese, being old is good and is respected. So the word old is used freely. For English speaking people, they consider age something private and has nothing to do with being respected or not. We should not ask others their age. In fact, they avoid using the word “old” and call old people “senior citizens".

How to disagree:

“That’s a very interesting point, but given the economic downturn, it may not be a good idea to implement such drastic changes.”

The Politeness Maxim in terms of agreeing to an earlier statement also plays a role in discussions when people reject points raised. Instead of expressing disagreement straight away, English people would say something positive first like this:
“You have a valid point there and I can go along with you to a certain extent. But I’m afraid the young people do not like dark colours these days.”


An analysis of texts produced by Chinese learners of English shows that the rate of errors is 0.06 and in general it is declining as the learners’ proficiency level becomes higher (Gui, 2001). It would be useful if teachers pick out the common errors and explain to students the proper usage to help them get rid of them. They can then communicate more effectively in English. The rest of this paper is to explain how some common errors can be eradicated.

First, let me share a true story with you. A teacher was annoyed that her Secondary One students were very much below average in English standard. She exclaimed, “They don’t even know the 26 alphabets!”

As a matter of fact, this teacher had made a mistake herself. There is only one English alphabet and it consists of 26 letters. The problem lies with the misguided translation: alphabet = 字母表 and letter = 字母.


If our teachers as well as our students can get rid of common errors, then native English speakers can understand us better and communication will be more effective. The following list of common errors come from Chinese learners of English. The errors occur because of direct translation from Chinese to English, a wrong concept or insufficient exposure to English.

What’s the difference?

• Mind your head.
• Mind your business vs Mind your job?
  

The sign “Mind your head 小心碰頭” on a bus is used to warn tall passengers not to bump their heads against the stairs or the door. But if our learners say “Mind your job” meaning “小心工作” then it is completely wrong. We do have “Mind your business”, but not “Mind your job”. Mind your business means 少管閒事 as in “Mind your business, and keep your nose out of mine!”

Some learners get confused between “funny” and “interesting”. They wanted to praise someone’s presentation as 有趣and said, “Your presentation is funny.” But the listener would be offended if he/ she interpreted that to mean 古怪 which was not the intention.

A final year student wanted to apply for a job and he wrote as the start in his application letter:
“Having attended the recruitment talk, your company impressed me a lot and I would like to apply for the post of management trainee.”

Here is a very common error even among native speakers. The phrase “Having attended the recruitment talk,” must be followed by the subject of the sentence. Here the student attended the talk, not the company and hence it should be “Having attended the recruitment talk, I was most impressed by your company…..”

Still on semantics, we have to be very careful with English words, no matter how simple they may look. For example, once a student said “Serve you right” to praise his friend because he thought it meant 為你的服務是對的. But in actual fact, this saying is very negative and it means 活該 or 抵死 in Cantonese.

Another pair that can easily confuse Chinese learners is “at last” and “lastly”. While “at last” can mean 最後, it has the additional sense of 終於, but “lastly” means 最後 in a series of steps. For instance,

• Now at last attention is turned to the real problem.
• Lastly, check that the four layers are firmly in place.
  
  
  Can you detect any errors in the following?
• Notice in a hotel during the SARS outbreak:
• During this period, for the safety of all our guests, all staff and visitors and all public areas are being disinfected regularly.
• Advertisement in UK newspapers right after SARS:
  Hong Kong will take your breath away.
• Advertisement in HK newspapers for a teacher:
  King’s International School
  Two Year Old Class Teacher
• On the shop window:
  Sale 50% UP 半價起

There was a beautiful poster with fireworks displayed over the Victoria Habour and the description went as follows: Hong Kong will take your breath away – intended to mean 香港令人目不暇給.

But unfortunately, this poster was put up when Hong Kong was experiencing SARS with everyone putting on masks everywhere they went. So the sentence Hong Kong will take your breath away could take its literal meaning 香港令你窒息

On the Chinese highway: 歡迎再次光臨
–Welcome the next time
(Please come again)