发现了一个有点微妙的事：

我们去国外，我们和老外说英语。

老外来中国，我们和他们说英语。

……这是为啥？

 

 

来中国的歪果仁越来越多了。这其中不乏中文水平不错、或至少努力在学习中文的。

但也有一些老外，来中国明明很多年了，就是不愿意学中文，非要用英语死磕到底。

尤其是在北上广这类大城市，当说英语并不妨碍他们正常沟通生活时，那更是懒得一塌糊涂，坚决不学中文……

微信？这么普遍的交流工具那是要用的。

但即使微信有翻译功能，但也非得要在各个群里说英语——即使群里明明有中国人。

这种情况，让最近给我们投稿的一位美国汉子看不下去了。

他把这类在中国却不学中文的老外称为：社会型发育迟钝。

来看看他是咋说的——

Christopher, the US

One of the greatest things about WeChat is how I can share Shanghai and China with my family directly. They get it fresh without filters.

微信这玩意儿吧，最大的有点在于，我可以直接通过它和家人分享上海乃至中国的见闻。他们能从我这得到新鲜热乎的资讯，没有任何过滤的那种。

They get their dose of Bund fun or Fuxing Park action strait-up and live from my pictures, voice messages or live chats. Last week was no exception to remind them that China is on the move, as they live in a southern California bubble and need reminding now and again.

外滩，复兴公园……他们可以跟着我的照片、语音消息和视频聊天一起浪遍上海。家人们生活在南加州的泡沫里，他们需要时不时地被提醒：中国和他们想象的不一样，它在日新月异地前进。上周发生的事儿也不例外。

Following November 11, China's newly famous "Singles Day" aka Double 11, I sent my sister in southern California a direct link to a story about the $30-billion trade done that day - all online and from a company named after an 18th-century Arabian folk tale headquartered in a little Chinese city called Hangzhou.

上周轰轰烈烈的“双11”——中国最近知名的“光棍节”结束了，我发了一个链接给在南加州的妹妹（或姐姐）看。这个链接关于双11这天中国多达300亿美元的交易——而这笔巨额交易全来自线上，出自总部坐落在中国一个名叫“杭州”的小城市里、有着18世纪阿拉伯民间传说同款名字的公司。

My sister does online sales and was flummoxed by reading how much money was banked in just 24 hours. She texted back "Crazy!" The timing was fortuitous, as a few days prior she'd asked me if my Chinese wife would help her access China's vast online market. I told her she could text my wife directly about this. After all, my wife speaks and reads English fluently.

我这妹妹就是做网络销售的。当她看到仅仅24小时就能有这么多钱时，她整个人都懵了。“太疯狂了！”她回复到。“双11”的新闻来得好不如来得巧，毕竟前几天她还问过我，我的中国太太能否帮她进军中国巨大的电商市场。我当时告诉她，我太太的英语还是挺不错的，可以直接发消息问她这事儿。

But I forgot to tell my sister that, by subscribing to WeChat, she could put her own QR code online and access our social networks in English and Chinese. I neglected to note how my wife can utilize both Taobao and WeChat to fuel demands for her beauty products. We're working on those details now.

不过我倒是忘了告诉我妹妹，她可以自己订阅微信、把二维码放网上去、访问咱们中英双语的社交网络。我也没注意到我太太在淘宝和微信是上怎么对美容产品长草又拔草的。我们正在琢磨这些细节。

Why mention this? Because I was talking to an expat friend in Shanghai who recently expressed dismay at several foreigners in Shanghai and elsewhere in China who are adopting "English only" policies in their WeChat forums. "Say what?" I asked incredulously.

为什么会提这个呢？因为我最近和一枚在上海的老外盆友聊天，他说对一些在中国的歪果仁在微信群里“只用英语”的法则感到挺沮丧的。“你说啥？”我有些不解。

From small foreign-owned F&B establishments to freelance acting troupes, I've heard that numerous expat WeChat groups are now enforcing an English-only policy. When asking them why, some of these group managers admitted to me that it was just a ploy to hook Chinese users who want to learn English at informal lessons.

从外资的小型餐饮企业，到一些自由演出剧团，很多老外的微信群都是只用英语的，这个我有所耳闻。而当我问他们原因时，一些群主表示，“只用英语”是一种策略，可以以此吸引到一些中国人加入。这些中国人往往是想通过（微信聊天这类）非正式的渠道来学习英语的。

That way they can skirt Chinese visa laws by teaching English out of their homes from clients they poached for private lessons from these same WeChat forums. "Oh..."I responded.

有了这样的第一步，歪果仁们就可以绕开中国的签证法律，把微信群里的中国人挖出来，变成自己教英语的私人客户。“这样啊……”我恍然大悟。

Not only is this poor marketing (making them bilingual seems a far more realistic gambit to attract clients), it smacks of racism. It also shows basic technological ignorance of WeChat, which has a built-in translation tool for Chinese into English and vice-versa. So why are so many of these little groups managed by schoolmarm-made WeChat minders enforcing English only?

这个套路不仅是糟糕的市场营销（用双语岂不是吸引客户更现实的方法么？），还带着点儿种族歧视的味道。不仅如此，它还显示出了这群人对微信最基本的技术都一窍不通，毕竟微信自带翻译工具，能实现中英文的互译。那么问题来了……为啥还会有那么多装得一本正经的群主要勒令大家只用英语呢？

One expat friend of mine with nearly two decades clocked in the country calls it the "Reverse Dashan Reaction Syndrome." Unlike Canadian Mark Rowswell (the brave student who came to Beijing in the 1980s to study Putonghua and became a famous TV celebrity... and an inspiration to millions of foreign and Chinese language students), many millennial expat newbies arriving in today's China are recoiling against the culture and unwilling to learn the language.

我有一位在中国工作了近20年的老外盆友，他说这是一种“反大山效应综合症”。啥意思呢？大山咱们都知道，他是加拿大人，本名马克•罗斯韦尔（就是80年代勇敢地来北京学普通话的留学生，后来成为著名电视明星的那位……他激励了很多人去学习语言呢）。而如今，很多千禧一代的年轻老外来到中国，和大山不同的是，他们不愿意学习中文，对中国的文化也有些抵触情绪。

They see no reason to bask in the beauty and complexity of this ancient language, and instead cling to their native lingua like a life raft. They do not have any desire to advance themselves in this society and, thus, do not value adapting to the culture or language. I call this "social retardation."

他们觉得没啥理由沉浸在这古老语言的优美繁复之中，倒是像抓住救生筏一样紧紧抱住自己母语不放。他们没啥在这社会中进步的渴望，所以也不重视去适应中国的文化或语言。这些人啊，我称他们为：“社会型发育迟钝”。

Linguist impotence could easily be remedied should these exclusionary WeChat groups use the proper tech tools to stimulate their communication potency. But they won't! I think weeding out these expats in China and sending them back to their home countries is sage advice, as the wrong sort of foreigners continue to flock to China, abusing its warm hospitality and advanced technology to create their own culturally aloof cabals.

如果那些微信群们能机智点，适当利用一些技术工具来刺激他们的沟通能力，或许这群人的语言水平还不至于那么“萎”。但人家就是要“萎”！我觉得把这群人给淘汰掉、送回自己国家倒是挺好的。要不然，老是这类“发育迟钝”的老外涌来中国，仗着中国的热情好客和先进技术，搞着在文化上越来越冷漠疏离的把戏。

It is my hope that responsible WeChat users will eschew these "English Only" policies and properly utilize this awesome technology for its maximum impact - bridging borders for friendship and family and, incidentally, maybe also getting a slice of that yummy $30-billion cake that was made in one day. My sister certainly now is, and she doesn't even live here!

希望那些负责任的微信用户们，能无视这个“只用英语”的奇怪法则，并适当利用微信这一美妙的技术，发挥出它最大的影响力——为友谊与家庭架起桥梁。顺便说一句哈，搞不好哪天，你就能从300亿美元交易额的美味蛋糕里分一杯羹。看吧，我妹妹即使她人都还不在这里，现在已经深谙其道了！

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