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Hong Kong newspapers, stories and reports mentioning or quoting Pidgin (or Anglo-Chinese, as it came to be called) gradually disappear in the 1960s. The most recent book we have been able to obtain which teaches English in Pidgin pronunciation is "English and Chinese Dialogues" or "Ying Yue Chi Nam" by Wong Lui Hing, first published in 1927, and re-published continually until the 17th edition in 1974. The character set used to spell English in this publication are the same as those in Tong.
What was China Coast Pidgin of the last century like?
First, it was not pronounced in a consistent way by Chinese and English speakers, nor was it pronounced consistently among the Chinese themselves. When first learned by Chinese, words would be pronounced as their individual Chinese characters. As the speaker got more experience of speaking to foreigners, he would mould his pronunciation closer to the English, as far as he was able.
Tong's materials show that there was no contrast in Pidgin (as he spoke it) between aspirated and unaspirated consonants, even though such contrasts exist in both Chinese and English. Thus in the word for “price”, pou-laai-si and bou-laai-si were in free variation, “Proper” is rendered ba-lap-bu, pou-lap-ba or pa-lap-ba. The stock of consonants used in Tong are b/p, d/t, g/k, h, j/ch, l, m, n, r/l, s, v/f, and w. One of the innovations claimed for Tong's book was that he was the first to draw attention to the full range of proper English pronunciation, in contrast to the conventions of Pidgin.
The vowels are those of standard Cantonese. However, long and short vowels and diphthongs are not generally contrastive (although Tong points out on one occasion that the English word "die" should be pronounced daai in English but dai in Pidgin).
We believe this reflects quite accurately the perception by the average Cantonese speaker not frequently exposed to English: the timbre and energy used in distinguishing aspirated and unaspirated sounds in normal English is much less than that in Chinese. Lacking the reinforcement of the printed word, the distinction must have been largely lost on the learner. Likewise, long and short diphthongs are not contrastive in English, and it would have occurred correctly to Cantonese