PIDGIN ENGLISH.
“Pidgin-English” is a singular form of speech which the Chinese language assumes when the natives are first attempting to use English. Pidgin means business. You are made by it to think of the dialect which we fall into in talking to infants. If any one can explain why infants are supposed to understand us better when we make our words terminate in ee or y, he may proceed and explain the natural philosophy of Pidgin-English. In talking to a Chinaman you find yourself, as it were, addressing an infantile capacity, imitating his own Pidgin way of speaking, even in talking to an adult. I will give one or two specimens of pidgin-English, which I found in print. The first is Norval’s Narrative, taken, as the reader hardly needs to be informed, from the Rev. Dr. Home’s tragedy of “Douglass.”
NORVAL’S NARRATIVE.
My name is Norval. On the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flock, a frugal swain,
Whose constant cares were to increase his store
And keep his only son, myself, at home.
For I had heard of battles, and I longed
To follow to the field some warlike lord.
And Heaven soon granted what my sire denied.