[
    {
        "id": 213549,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 145,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "114\n\nof it are hard to come by One of the best-known sources in English, whose descriptions I shall speak of later, is Charles G. Leland. In his book, \"Pidgin-English Sing-song\" published in 1876, Leland polishes off his introduction to the language with the words:\n\n\"There are, in all, not more than thirty altogether foreign or strange words in ordinary use, and a number of these are familiar to all persons of the least general information. What remains can present no difficulty to anyone who can understand negro minstrelsy or baby talk\"\n\nTo the modern person who has not lived in the Pacific Islands or Papua New Guinea, Pidgin English brings to mind partly apochryphal stories of Duke-of-Edinburgh worship and terms like \"mixmaster-bilong-Jesus\" (a helicopter) and \"big-man-box-you-bash-him-teeth-he-cry\" (a grand piano).\n\nWe have set the background to the article. Before we go further, let's just remind ourselves what China Coast Pidgin English spoken in the later part of the last century really did sound like. Listen carefully for the baby talk.\n\n\"O-lo dim Hongkong sai hab dou-mat-ji man tok-gi Ying-li-sı a-la sim mai. Je-sı naau no hap gat; a-la daat man go dai. Je-si naau mai ding-ki you no gen hi-ya wan pr-si Chee-na man tok-gi long daat o-lo dim man sim, fa-san.\n\n++\n\nHistorical background\n\nMacau was occupied by the Portuguese in 1557. They had previously been trading with south China for many years from a place called, in Portuguese, Lampacau\n\nDr Graciete Batalha, who has carried out extensive research on the Portuguese dialect of Macao (Glossario do Dialecto Macaense, Instituto Cultural de Macau. 1988 from original articles published from 1971-1977), has formed the opinion that during this early period of the development of the Macau \"patoa”, the formative influence was not so much the way that Chinese people learned to speak Portuguese, but the manner in which the Macau Portuguese formed the habit of speaking to the Chinese in the Portuguese language.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
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    {
        "id": 213565,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 161,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "130\n\nThere has been some speculation that the group of words ending in -um (de-lam, ki-lam, etc) represent a specific grammatical form. But in Tong, these words are given as a basic form and in nearly all cases are derived from English words which end in -l or -ll; si-bui-lam (spoil), de-lam (tell), go-lam (call), gi-lam (kill), bui-lam (boil), and se-lam (sell). It is worth noting that all these are verbs. I speculate that these were first introduced into Pidgin in their present participle form (-ing) and that through an East China dialect, the syllable in (lam in Cantonese) was used to represent -ing in English. Let's look at some other well-known Pidgin words with less obvious derivations.\n\nChop\n\nHobson Jobson and other major sources give as the origin the Hindi word, chhap, a word denoting an official stamp or the act of emprinting. Macau patoa: chapa - Documento oficial emanado das autoridades chinesas. Marca, selo, carimbo. (G. N. Batalha). Tong Ting Shue lists the word as a measure (chop) of tea. The character used is chaap, “to insert”.\n\nChop chop\n\nMost sources give as the origin of chop-chop a Chinese word with a similar sound. Hobson Jobson offers a number of dialect pronunciations of the word pronounced in Cantonese gap. None of these is particularly near to the sound chop.\n\nTong writes it as jap-jap, the characters for \"to pick up\". This does not help. We have searched a number of Chinese dialect vocabularies and failed, so far, to find any Chinese word in any dialect denoting “quick, fast” which sounds as if it could have been the origin of chop-chop.\n\nChop-sticks\n\nThe OED and all other major sources are persuaded by the argument that the word is connected to the Pidgin chop-chop, meaning quick. That is, the Chinese eat with sticks, the sticks enable them to eat fast, therefore they should be called \"fast-sticks\". The Macau patoa word is faichi.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213566,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 162,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "131\n\nThe Chinese have two words for chopsticks. The common one, found in Mandarin, the Wu dialects, Hakka and Cantonese, is kuaı-zi. The other word, appearing in Classical Chinese and the Min dialects, is Zhu.\n\nChinese etymological works relate that the classical term, zhu, rhymes with the word in the Wu dialects for \"becalmed\", and therefore superstitious sea-faring folk in that region adopted the word kuar to avoid a taboo word. If this seems far-fetched, it should be noted that such derivations of words in Chinese are commonplace.\n\nIt is therefore possible to establish that the concept of “speed\" and \"chop-stick\" are related in Chinese, but not because anyone ever found chopsticks quicker to eat with.\n\nWhile we do not wish to overturn the folk-etymology (indeed, we have no evidence for doing so), we should like to point out an alternative: seventeenth-century craftsmen used the word \"chops\" both for \"jaws\" and \"vice\" (like the ones you lick). See the OED for evidence on this.\n\nChopsticks were known to Western writers from c. 1540 (Portuguese), and the English word “chopsticks” appears in 1711 describing Chinese eating habits in an account of trade with India.\n\nChow\n\nThe word, meaning \"food\", is given in Tong Ting Shue as jaau-jaau. It may be related to the word “chow-chow\", meaning \"mixed”.\n\nDr Batalha defines a Macau Patoa word, chau-chau, as a Chinese fried food in a sauce, a mixture of different things, or a muddle. She gives as the origin the Cantonese word chaau, to stir-fry.\n\nIt seems clear that two different words existed, one of Indian origin, meaning \"mixed condiments\" or just “mixed”, and the other meaning \"food\".\n\nBut Tong Ting Shue uses jaau-jaau, employing the Chinese characters for “a cover\"; he was clearly not struck by any similarity.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213567,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 163,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "132\n\nwith the Chinese word for \"to fry”. \n\nCumsha \n\nThis word denotes a payment, tip or alms \n\nA wealth of folklore has grown up around it. One stream has it that the word derives from the payment made to boat people to “come ashore\" from a ship at anchor. Another popular theory is that it derives from a Chinese dialectal word for “thank you”. \n\nDr Batalha describes a word in Patoa, cumesse (or camesso). She gives as the origin a Chinese term gam se, meaning a tip or present. Dr Batalha's explanation would be convincing if it could be shown that the Chinese word existed. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it ever did: we suspect that the word is apocryphal. The existence of a word corresponding to the Cantonese gam je, (to feel grateful), but in another dialect with a pronunciation like cumsha is more plausible. Unfortunately, I cannot discover what that dialect is. \n\nTong does not list Cumsha at all, but Hunter mentions that the Chinese wrote the Pidgin word with the characters for “gold sand”, so that it would have been pronounced “gam-sa”. \n\nThe following information in Hunter is, we think, significant; \n\n\"Before she (any ship) could open hatches, the formality of “Cumisha and Measurement\" had to be gone through. The first word signifies \"present\", and was a payment made by the earliest foreign vessels for the privilege of entering the port;\" \n\nIf this information is reliable, it indicates that the word was applied from early times (i.e. to the vessels of the Portuguese traders), and was considered - notwithstanding Hunter's definition of \"cumsha\" - an official levy - not just squeeze or a gratuity, \n\nIf this is so, then we think that the correct origin should be the Portuguese word, comissāo, which means \"commission, agency, percentage, gratification, recompense, brokerage, factorage.\" This covers its application in Pidgin admirably.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213568,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1995",
        "page_number": 164,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "133\n\nJoss\n\nThis word is supposed to be derived from the Portuguese Deos. The Anglicised written form, Joss, appears in many sources, and Tong does not have a Chinese form.\n\nTwo sources dated 1672 quoted in Hobson Jobson are intriguing.\n\n\"But the Devil (whom the Chinese commonly called Joosje) is a mighty and powerful Prince of the World..\", and\n\n\"In a four-cornered cabinet in their dwelling-rooms, they have, as it were, an altar, and therean an image. This they call Joss.\"\n\nWhat is striking is that the latter is clearly describing a household ancestral altar for the worship of ancestors. Moreover, the former quotation, which gives the word used by Dutch writers, joosje, is the pronunciation of “ancestors\" in the Wu dialects. There is a possibility, then, that Joss has a Chinese and not a Portuguese origin.\n\nMaskee\n\nThis word basically means \"whatever\", “never mind” or “perhaps\" in Pidgin. Tong gives it as maskee. Batalha lists a Patoa word, masqui, and says that in the meaning of \"all right” the word is commonly used in Creole. She concludes that there is no basis for some assertions that the word is derived from the Cantonese m sai.\n\nAPPENDIX I\n\nSelected Pidgin Dialogues Quoted in 19 C. Western Sources Bits of Old China. William C. Hunter. Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. London 1855.\n\nPage 5\n\nOlo flen. My savee you last voyagee My savee you two, te-lee voyagee.\n\nPage 6\n\nMake look see",
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