EFL

'Are you waiting for the 11C?' asked a lady in her mid-40s in Chinese, leaning slightly too close to me. And for a split second I hesitated, not because I wasn't sure which bus I was waiting for but because I wasn't sure which language to reply in. After 15 years in the UK, I often find myself more comfortable expressing myself in English than in Cantonese, which in a sense is my first language. But at that precise moment, to answer in English to another Chinese seemed unnatural, if not a little arrogant. Most Chinese people I know over here, seem to go through the same thing, as well as the fact that I am always a bit unsure as to which dialect they would speak in, they are from Shanghai, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and HK, clumped together in the British dispora. I glanced around, as if checking to see if she was really talking to me, and having ascertained that 'yes Gabby, it's you she's talking to', I finally answered, in Chinese, 'I'm waiting for the 11A, 11C is on the other side of the road.'

Chinglish!