I’ve been living in China for a while — long enough to observe the long-term deterioration (退化)of my own native language abilities, as well as those of my fellow English speakers. This deterioration can take different forms, one of which is the non-standard usage of the words. Its source is, specifically, Chinese culture, and its target is native English speakers. Below I give some of the common ways that the Chinese environment strikes down the native speaker’s linguistic competence (语言能力) .
