The New International Encyclopædia…
“ Owing to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce initial r, l takes its place, and ‘rice’ becomes lice; ‘American’ becomes Melican; ‘friend’ becomes flen’, and ‘try’ becomes tli. Among the corrupted Chinese words are bobbery, noise, disturbance, abuse, scold, either noun or verb, as “you makee too muchee bobbery” ”
