[CHAPTER XII]
PIDGIN AND CONGENERS
§ 1. Beach-la-Mar. § 2. Grammar. § 3. Sounds. § 4. Pidgin. § 5. Grammar, etc. § 6. General Theory. § 7. Mauritius Creole. § 8. Chinook Jargon. § 9. Chinook continued. § 10. Makeshift Languages. § 11. Romanic Languages.
XII.—§ 1. Beach-la-Mar.
As a first typical example of a whole class of languages now found in many parts of the world where people of European civilization have come into contact with men of other races, we may take the so-called Beach-la-mar (or Beche-le-mar, or Beche de mer English);[48] it is also sometimes called Sandalwood English. It is spoken and understood all over the Western Pacific, its spread being largely due to the fact that the practice of ‘blackbirding’ often brought together on the same plantation many natives from different islands with mutually incomprehensible languages, whose only means of communication was the broken English they had picked up from the whites. And now the natives learn this language from each other, while in many places the few Europeans have to learn it from the islanders. “Thus the native use of Pidgin-English lays down the rules by which the Europeans let themselves be guided when learning it. Even Englishmen do not find it quite easy at the beginning to understand Pidgin-English, and have to learn it before they are able to speak it properly” (Landtman).
I shall now try to give some idea of the structure of this lingo.
The vocabulary is nearly all English. Even most of the words which ultimately go back to other languages have been admitted only because the English with whom the islanders were thrown into contact had previously adopted them into their own speech, so that the islanders were justified in believing that they were really English. This is true of the Spanish or Portuguese savvy, ‘to know,’ and pickaninny, ‘child’ or ‘little one’ (a favourite in many languages on account of its symbolic sound; see Ch. XX § [8]), as well as the Amerindian tomahawk, which in the whole of Australia is the usual word for a small axe. And if we find in Beach-la-mar the two Maori words tapu or taboo and kai, or more often kaikai, ‘to eat’ or ‘food,’ they have probably got into the language through English—we know that both are very extensively used in Australia, while the former is known all over the civilized world. Likkilik or liklik, ‘small, almost,’ is said to be from a Polynesian word liki, but may be really a perversion of Engl. little. Landtman gives a few words from unknown languages used by the Kiwais, though not derived from their own language. The rest of the words found in my sources are English, though not always pure English, in so far as their signification is often curiously distorted.
Nusipepa means ‘a letter, any written or printed document,’ mary is the general term for ‘woman’ (cf. above, p. [118]), pisupo (peasoup) for all foreign foods which are preserved in tins; squareface, the sailor’s name for a square gin-bottle, is extended to all forms of glassware, no matter what the shape. One of the earliest seafarers is said to have left a bull and a cow on one of the islands and to have mentioned these two words together; the natives took them as one word, and now bullamacow or pulumakau means ‘cattle, beef, also tinned beef’; pulomokau is now given as a native word in a dictionary of the Fijian language.[49] Bulopenn, which means ‘ornament,’ is said to be nothing but the English blue paint. All this shows the purely accidental character of many of the linguistic acquisitions of the Polynesians.
As the vocabulary is extremely limited, composite expressions are sometimes resorted to in order to express ideas for which we have simple words, and not unfrequently the devices used appear to us very clumsy or even comical. A piano is called ‘big fellow bokus (box) you fight him he cry,’ and a concertina ‘little fellow bokus you shove him he cry, you pull him he cry.’ Woman he got faminil (‘family’) inside means ‘she is with child.’ Inside is also used extensively about mental states: jump inside ‘be startled,’ inside tell himself ‘to consider,’ inside bad ‘grieved or sorry,’ feel inside ‘to know,’ feel another kind inside ‘to change one’s mind.’ My throat he fast ‘I was dumb.’ He took daylight a long time ‘lay awake.’ Bring fellow belong make open bottle ‘bring me a corkscrew.’ Water belong stink ‘perfumery.’ The idea of being bald is thus expressed: grass belong head belong him all he die finish, or with another variant, coconut belong him grass no stop, for coconut is taken from English slang in the sense ‘head’ (Schuchardt has the sentence: You no savvy that fellow white man coconut belong him no grass?). For ‘feather’ the combination grass belong pigeon is used, pigeon being a general term for any bird.
A man who wanted to borrow a saw, the word for which he had forgotten, said: ‘You give me brother belong tomahawk, he come he go.’ A servant who had been to Queensland, where he saw a train, on his return called it ‘steamer he walk about along bush.’ Natives who watched Landtman when he enclosed letters in envelopes named the latter ‘house belong letter.’ Many of these expressions are thus picturesque descriptions made on the spur of the moment if the proper word is not known.