A POETRY AS THE FONSECA.
Pidgin English is the name given to the dialect extensively used in the seaport towns of China as a means of communication between the natives and English and Americans, and is a very rude jargon in which English words are very strangely distorted. It is very limited, the Chinese learning Pidgin with only the acquirement of a few hundred words, the pronunciation and grammar of which have been modified to suit those of their own language. The word Pidgin itself is derived through a series of changes in the word Business. Early traders made constant use of this word, and the Chinaman contracted it first to Busin, and then through the change to Pishin it at length assumed the form of Pidgin, still retaining its original meaning. This at once shows the difficulty which a Chinaman has in mastering the pronunciation of English words, and as business or commerce is the great bond of union between the Chinese and the foreign residents, it is not to be wondered at that this word should give name to the jargon formed in its service. The Chinese have great difficulty in using the letter r, pronouncing it almost always like l, as loom for room, cly for cry; and for the sake of euphony often add ee or lo to the end of words. Galaw or galow is a word of no meaning, being used as a kind of interjection; chop, chop, means quick, quick; maskee, don’t mind; chop b’long, of a kind; topside galow, excelsior, or “hurrah for topside”; chin chin, good-bye; welly culio, very curious; Joss-pidgin-man, priest. With these few hints the reader may understand better the following version of “Excelsior,” which originally appeared in Harpers’ Magazine in 1869,—the moral, however, belongs solely to the Chinese translator:
Topside-Galow.
In connection with these linguistic curiosities we take the following from an old number of Harpers’ Magazine: “A practical parent objects to the silliness of our nursery rhymes, for the reason that the doggerel is rendered pernicious by the absence of a practical moral purpose, and as introducing infants to the realities of life through an utterly erroneous medium. They are taught to believe in a world peopled by Little Bo-peeps and Goosey, Goosey Ganders, instead of a world of New York Central, Erie, North-Western Preferred, &c. &c. It is proposed, therefore, to accommodate the teaching of the nursery to the requirements of the age, to invest children’s rhymes with a moral purpose. Instead, for example, of the blind wonderment as to the nature of astronomical bodies inculcated in that feeble poem commencing ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star,’ let the child be indoctrinated into the recent investigations of science, thus:
“Then, again, there is the gastronomic career of Little Jack Homer, which inculcates gluttony. It is practicable that this fictitious hero should familiarise the child with the principles of the Delectus:
| ‘Studious John Homer, Of Latin no scorner, In the second declension did spy How nouns there are some Which ending in um Do not make their plural in i.’ |
“The episode of Jack and Jill is valueless as an educational medium. But it might be made to illustrate the arguments of a certain school of political economists: