416 A NATURALIST OX THE "CHALLENGER." 



language has shown, and unless one knows the accepted terms 

 for things in it, one may be entirely at a loss to make oneself 

 understood by the Chinese. 



For example, I wanted to visit a Chinese theatre in Hong- 

 Kong. I tried the chair coolies with all kinds of explanations 

 and equivalents of " theatre " without success. At last I stopped 

 and got an old resident to explain. He simply said " singsong 

 walkey," and off went the coolies to the theatre at once. As is 

 well known, many of the words in Pigeon English are Portuguese 

 of ancient date, comparatively few are Chinese, though the 

 grammatical construction is all more or less Chinese. 



The ordinary visitor using the strange words derived from 

 Portuguese usually imagines that he is employing a Chinese 

 word ; but if he asks a Chinaman who can understand him well 

 he will in return tell him to his astonishment that the word is 

 English. The Chinaman using Portuguese thinks he is talking 

 English, and the Englishman using the same thinks he is speaking 

 Chinese. 



It is not only the uninstructed who misapprehend the 

 words of the " Business English." I have often been amused in 

 looking at a specimen of a book full of engravings of various 

 Eastern deities, which is exposed amongst the manuscript trea- 

 sures in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and labelled in Pigeon 

 English " Pictures of various Josses." Joss is a Chinese corrup- 

 tion of the Portuguese " Deos " (" God "). Most persons suppose 

 it is a sort of Chinese equivalent of the word Idol. 



People going from China to Japan usually try to force 

 Pigeon English into the heads of the Japanese. The Japanese 

 language and its construction is of course utterly different from 

 the Chinese. Hence, Pigeon English is probably more difficult 

 for a Japanese to understand than English itself, and the lan- 

 guage is really not current in Japan. 



I found my servant, on arrival at Japan, attempting to make 

 the washerman understand a series of instructions, in what he 

 rather prided himself as good Pigeon English, though it bore 

 little resemblance to the real article. The Japanese could not 

 understand a word, but he at once comprehended a few words of 

 plain English from me. 



