RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v The number 78 is mentioned at the beginning, but its meaning or context is not provided in the given text. The text discusses the representation and romanization of Chinese words in various publications, including novels, newspapers, and magazines. The examples given illustrate how Chinese words are often italicized and glossed in texts to help non-Chinese readers understand their meanings. For instance, in Clavell's Noble House, terms like "Tai-fun" (Supreme Winds), "Tai-tai" (supreme of the supreme wife), and "ma-foos" (stable hands) are explained within the narrative. Further examples from different sources, such as the South China Morning Post, Asia Magazine, and the Waikiki Press, demonstrate the practice of providing glosses for Chinese terms like "see-fu" (master), "fook" (all-embracing luck), and "Bok coy" (a type of cabbage). The text also highlights the issue of lack of standardization in the spelling of Chinese words in romanized form. Different spellings are used for the same word across various publications, such as "kylin" or "ch'i-lin" for the Chinese mythical beast, "lychee" or "litchi" for a type of fruit, "tai chi ch'uan" or "tai chi chuan" for a form of exercise, and "wan tun" or "won ton" for a type of dumpling. Examples from different sources, including the Waikiki Press Beach Press, an advertising magazine, the University of Hong Kong Bulletin, and the South China Morning Post, are provided to illustrate this variation in spelling. Additionally, the text touches on grammatical issues related to the use of Chinese nouns in English texts, such as whether they should be treated as countable nouns with plural endings or remain unchanged. The discussion concludes with an observation from The Noble House, where the writer is seen to vacillate between different forms for certain Chinese nouns, such as "quai." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 81 is the name of a city, or that kowtow comes from a verb plus noun construction in another language, or that chin chin derives from a Chinese salutation or greeting. As English verbs they behave like verbs in English, so that one can say 'He loves to kowtow to people in high places', or 'A lot of unfortunate people were shanghaied against their will', or 'They were chin-chinning each other'. There is the tendency for English speakers to borrow whole units from Chinese, rather than individual morphemes, without regard to the grammatical classes to which the borrowed morphemes belong. For example as I have said kowtow is a combination of verb + noun, but not only does neither kow nor tow appear in any other combinations or singly, the verbal infliction for tense comes at the end of what was the noun part of the borrowed term, hence kowtowed, not kowed the tow when the word is used in the past tense form. In the process of assimilation into the borrowing language, a loan word may undergo semantic change: it may become more general or narrower in meaning. For example, kung fu from is the term for Chinese martial arts but now it often collocates with shoes, and kung fu shoes refers to flat cloth shoes not necessarily used in doing kung fu. Thus kung fu as premodifier for shoes has been generalized in meaning. A very interesting case of a word broadening its meaning through insufficient information about the lending language is gweilo , which among all but the most knowing expatriates, is taken to be a generic term for foreign 'devils', both male and female. In Clavell's Noble House we find ‘any quai loh woman' (p. 712). We often hear Western women referred to as 'gweilo lady'. In fact, the second morpheme of 'gweilo' is masculine, a coarse term for 'man'. The feminine equivalent is, and the Chinese term for an expatriate woman would be, the transliterated form of which gwei por is gaining some currency at least in the spoken language of expatriates. In becoming more like a word of the borrowing language, the loan word may become less and less like the 'model' in the lending language, in pronunciation, in written form, in grammatical function and in a few cases in meaning. Perhaps we can take it that a word has become an integral part of the language ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 83 * For example, Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, London, 1795. James Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, 4th edn., Hong Kong 1903. John Barrow, Travels in China, London, 1806. J.F. Davis, Chinese Miscellanies, London, 1865. C. Toogood Downing, The Fan-qui in China in 1836-1837, London, 1838. James Bromley Eames, The English in China, London, p. 82. Mary Gertrude Mason, Western Concepts of China and the Chinese 1840-1876, New York, 1938. + * See H. Kwok and M. Chan, "Where the Twain Do Meet", General Linguistics, Pennsylvania, Vol. 2, #2, 1972, pp. 63-82. K. Luke and J. Richards, "The Role of English: Status and Function", paper for RELC Conference held in Singapore, 1982. A survey on English Language Use in different fields is being undertaken in the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature by K. Luke and K. Bolton with the aid of a research grant from the University. Findings should be published shortly. * Charles F. Hockett, A Course in Modern Linguistics, New York, 1965, pp. 393-423. Partial Listing: David Bonavia, The Chinese, London, 1981. J. Clavell, Taipan, London, Joseph, 1966. Noble House, London Hodder and Stoughton, 1981. Eric Cumine, Ways and Byways, Hong Kong, 1981. R. Elegant, Dynasty, New York, Fawcett Crest, 1977. Manchu, New York, McGraw Hill, 1980. R. Hughes, Borrowed Time, Borrowed Place, London, Deutsch, 1968. Maxine Hong Kingston, China Man, London, PAN, 1981. Woman Warrior, New York, Knopf, 1976. T. Mo, The Monkey King, London, Deutsch, 1978. Sour Sweet, London, Deutsch, 1981. Ian Steward, The Peking Payoff, Middlesex, Hamlyn, 1978. 10 In Webster we find this definition: 'enthusiastic, cooperative, enterprising, etc. in an unrestrained, often naive way.' Collins gives the definition: 'U.S. slang, excessively, or foolishly enthusiastic (c. 20th Century — pidgin English from Mandarin, Chinese kung work + ho together.) The Chinese morphemes involved would seem to be [gung] 'work' and [ho] 'together'. The term may well be pidgin English, as Collins suggests, since the expression [gung ho] does not in fact occur in Chinese. 11 * K. Luke and J. Richards, op. cit. **L. Bloomfield, Language, New York, 1933, p. 461. This is the O.E.D. spelling of the word derived from Chinese. In Hong Kong the word is usually written wui, reflecting the Cantonese pronunciation. Wu is used with this spelling as a technical term in the New Territories Ordinance. "The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicized Words and Phrases, compiled by C.A.M. Fennell, C.U.P. 1982. 15 A.J. Bliss, op. cit. 16 R.W. Langacker, Language and Its Structure, Some Fundamental Linguistic Concepts, New York, 1968, pp. 177-194. 17 Eric Cumine, Hong Kong Ways and Byways: A Miscellany of Trivia, Hong Kong, 1981, p. 177. Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 223 the 'Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade', A romantic web has been woven around Jardine's, far more than any other western firm in the Far East. This romanticism stretches to fiction, and Taipan and Noble House, both written by James Clavell, are reputed to be based on the 'Princely Hong'. Also a play named Poppy, about the Opium War of 1840, with comic Gilbert and Sullivan style songs, was staged in London in the early 1980s. Another better-known song, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' written by Noel Coward in 1932, has it that: "In Hong Kong They strike a gong And fire a noonday gun There is no agreement, however, as to where the Hotchkiss Mark I, three-pound, quick-firing naval gun came from. Some say documents prove that before 1961 it was owned by the Hong Kong Marine Police. Others believe it came from the Royal Navy although Jardine's maintain the Senior Service has no record of the gun. The colourful myth that appears in guidebooks is that a penalty was imposed on Jardine Matheson by an irate British admiral because the firm fired a salute to its chief manager as he sailed into the harbour. Another tale has it that the gun was fired to honour the arrival of its opium-carrying fleet. From then on, so both stories go, the Navy compelled Jardine's to fire a gun daily. As A.I. Diamond, previously of the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, wrote: "Neither version explains by what authority the Navy could have compelled Jardine Matheson and Company to fire a gun at all let alone daily at noon, presumably in perpetuity." The true account is quite different. In the British Empire the armed forces used to fire guns at set hours to signify the time. In Hong Kong this practice stopped in 1869 because, by then, many people owned watches, and to save the cost of gunpowder. An extract from the Hong Kong Daily Press, dated January 3, 1870, records: It is interesting and just to note that the renewing of the ================================================================================