N. B. Dennys

“ Such are the lingua franca of the Mediterranean, and the gitano or gypsey language of that vast tribe, of Hindoo origin. which still exists in every European country, its members, like Ishmael of old, having "their hand against every man, and every man's hand against them." The most recent of these bastard dialects, and necessarily less perfect in its individuality than those above-mentioned, is the Pidgin English under notice, which at the present day is spoken by some hundreds of thousands of Chinese upon the seaboard of their empire, and even threatens to extend to the coasts of Japan. ”

“ These examples show that, as regards grammatical structure, "pidgin" is in the main an imperfect adaptation of our own rules. But the general construction of sentences is essentially Chinese. “Go to the post-office and bring me a letter" would be rendered just as it would be translated in a native dialect: "You savee that post-officee: go looksee have got one chit b'long my; sposee have got you makee bling." The absence of a relative form necessitates the cutting up of all long phrases into short sentences both in Chinese and pidgin English. ”

“ No great growth of this speech has been noticeable since the rebellion was crushed: but it bade fair at one time to contribute another to the already numerous varieties spoken in different parts of the empire. ”

“ The subjunctive also is formed by adding this word belong: "you should go" being expressed as "you b'long go." "If I go" is "sposee my go" and beyond this there are no means of expressing the other tenses except by clumsy combinations. ”

“ Still, with all this granted, none of the dialects or languages I have mentioned are precisely analogous to "pidgin English" which, broadly speaking, chiefly consists of the words of one language more or less mutilated. put together according to the idiom of another. ”