118
only they could communicate with and work for the foreign traders,
A familiar story is emerging.
In the first of his series of articles in the China Mail of 1958 entitled "Pidgin Languages", Robert Wallace Thompson theorized: “In 'simplifying', most speakers tend to use the language one employs when speaking to a small child. Hence the superficial similarity of Pidgin speech and baby talk." I do not believe in this theory.
The point is, the young makee-larn had to learn quickly. Any note-taking was confined by necessity to Chinese characters. The sounds had to fit the writing system available as best they could, and there was simply no time for the extreme complexities of English morphology, much of which was rooted in phonetic differences that Chinese people could in any case not hear, or only reproduce with great difficulty.
As it was, the foreign traders were almost universally impressed by the calibre and honesty of their Chinese domestic and Factory staff. For a business season which lasted a few months a year, no-one was about to quibble over ropey English. The most that was required was to keep the vocabulary of daily life to a moderate base of general and domestic terms, not to make great demands on the use of complicated grammar, and accept whatever Chinesifications became current. How did consistent Chinese forms of English become current? Both Leland and Hunter have quoted the same answer, and it must be presumed to be broadly correct:
—
"In the Canton Bookshops near the Factories was sold a small pamphlet called "Devil's Talk". On the cover was a drawing of a foreigner in the dress of the middle of the last century - three-cornered hat, coat with wide skirts, breeches and long stockings, shoes with buckles, lace sleeves, and in his hand a cane. I have now one of these pamphlets before me. It commences thus, "yun" and under is its "barbarian" definition, expressed in another Chinese word whose sound is "man". After many examples of this kind come words of two syllables-thus: "kum-yat", with their foreign meaning expressed by two other Chinese characters pronounced "to-teay" today-and so on to sentences, for which the construction of the language is peculiarly
118
only they could communicate with and work for the foreign traders,
A familiar story is emerging.
In the first of his series of articles in the China Mail of 1958 entitled "Pidgin Languages", Robert Wallace Thompson theorized: “In 'simplifying', most speakers tend to use the language one employs when speaking to a small child. Hence the superficial similarity of Pidgin speech and baby talk." I do not believe in this theory.
The point is, the young makee-larn had to learn quickly. Any note- taking was confined by necessity to Chinese characters. The sounds had to fit the writing system available as best they could, and there was simply no time for the extreme complexities of English morphology, much of which was rooted in phonetic differences that Chinese people could in any case not hear, or only reproduce with great difficulty.
As it was, the foreign traders were almost universally impressed by the calibre and honesty of their Chinese domestic and Factory staff. For a business season which lasted a few months a year, no-one was about to quibble over ropey English. The most that was required was to keep the vocabulary of daily life to a moderate base of general and domestic terms, not to make great demands on the use of complicated grammar, and accept whatever Chinesifications became current. How did consistent Chinese forms of English become current" Both Leland and Hunter have quoted the same answer, and it must be presumed to be broadly correct:
—
"In the Canton Bookshops near the Factories was sold a small pamphlet called "Devil's Talk". On the cover was a drawing of a foreigner in the dress of the middle of the last century - three-cornered hat, coat with wide skirts, breeches and long stockings, shoes with buckles, lace sleeves, and in his hand a cane. I have now one of these pamphlets before me. It commences thus, "yun" and under is its "barbarian" definition, expressed in another Chinese word whose sound is "man". After many examples of this kind come words of two syllables-thus: "kum-yat”, with their foreign meaning expressed by two other Chinese characters pronounced "to-teay" today-and so on to sentences, for which the construction of the language is peculiarly
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.