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speakers that the difference was unimportant. As you can hear from the Chinese names for the Chartered Bank and Chater Road, (ja-da, je-da), English aspirated sounds normally came out as unaspirated in Chinese transcriptions.
Turning to the vocabulary of Pidgin, it is clear that a very small base of common words filled a wealth of meanings. Where technical words were in everyday use, Pidgin used them. In other cases, an approximation of the meaning was assembled from a limited stock. For example, "You have no occasion to fear, I have been a tea broker for ten years. I have never given any dissatisfaction to anyone," is rendered as "You no gar-san mat-gi fer-ya. My hap dou di bou-luk-ga tan ya, mai nu gat wan dim mat-gi na ba-lap-ba bi-jin”
The vocabulary of book-keeping is resolved like this-
“You mix up your accounts. Put all the receipts on one side; put all the payments on another side; deduct the payments from the receipts and you will know the balance in hand '
“You mai-ki mik-si you gon-da, A-la mun-ni gam yin you but wan sai; mun-nı bai na-da man but na-da sai; mun-ni hap, git-ji so mar-ji tik-gi aap hap bat so mat-ji; you gen sa-bi hot ba-loen-sı.”
門
時沙
巴倫時
妖吽沙比喝
巴味 治鴨梳捫
文擱
烟柽
合ㄝ尼体尼
天鐺
拿跛
梳結
打韋
品
乜其治
西打
西甘
妖米其竟士
肤
千米
妖干打
烟妖砵温西
鑄捫尼甘
Fig. 2. The accounting example Pidgin in Chinese characters
i