Chinese Pidgin English
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Chinese Pidgin English is today a Pidgin language of Nauru and other countries in Asia and Oceania. Before, existed an extinct variety of the same name "Chinese Pidgin English", which existed from the 17th to the 19th century in the Yue-speaking part of China. Chinese Pidgin English is spoken by thousands of persons, most of them not living in Nauru. Chinese Pidgin English is heavily influenced by Chinese languages.
[edit] History
Historically, it was a modified form of English developed in the 17th century for use as a trade language or lingua franca between the British and the Chinese. Chinese Pidgin got its start in Guangzhou (Canton), China, after the British established their first trading post there in 1664. Because the British found Chinese an extremely difficult language to learn and because the Chinese held the English in low esteem and therefore disdained to learn their language, Pidgin English was developed by the English and adapted by the Chinese for business purposes. (The term Pidgin is commonly said to be a corruption of the English word business.) It continued in use until about the end of the 19th century, when Pidgin came to be looked upon by the Chinese as humiliating (because English speakers considered it ridiculous) and so preferred to learn standard English instead.
Chinese Pidgin English was based on a vocabulary of about 700 English words, with a small number of words from other sources. Grammar and syntax are simple and positional; that is, grammatical categories are indicated by the position of words in the sentence rather than by inflectional endings, prepositions, or the like (e.g., in English “John loves Mary” is distinguished from “Mary loves John” by the position of the words in the sentences). Typical sentences in Chinese Pidgin are Hab gat lening kum daun “There is rain coming down”; Tumolo mai no kan kum “Tomorrow I can't come”; and Mai no hab kachi basket “I didn't bring a basket.”
[edit] Usage today
Chinese Pidgin English today is a common term for a variant of English spoken by Chinese immigrants or other persons whose mother language is Chinese and whom learned English as a second language. It is often used as slang for Chinese people in the United States who speak with an accent.
The word "pidgin" itself is believed to have been a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business. There have been many forms of Pidgin English, often with common elements because of the wide range of contacts made by commercial shipping.
Certain expressions from Chinese English Pidgin have made their way into colloquial English. The following is a list of some of these expressions and the Chinese expressions they were literally derived from:
- long time no see
(很 久 不 見 , meaning "haven't seen [you] in a long time") - look-see
(看 見 , meaning "to see, to perceive") - no can do
(不 能 做 , meaning "to be unable to do") - no-go
(不 行 , meaning "not OK" or "option not taken").
[edit] See also
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