PIDGIN EKGLISH. 171 



bling our own) and the rude substitutes adopted. All native 

 dialects have I. he, we, you, and they, the possessives (in Man- 

 darin) being regularly formed by the addition of ti, of: thus, 

 wo, 1 ; wo ti, mine. The article and conjunction are entirely 

 dispensed with hi "pidgin" as they are colloquially in Chi- 

 nese, the word "together" being used as a copulative only in 

 extreme cases. Verbs are in b "pidgin English " conjugated 

 by the use of such words as hdb, by*me-bt/ &c. Thus "I saw him" 

 becomes "my hab lookseehe"; "T shall get it" is "myby'me- 

 by catchee he." The infinitives of most words are made to 

 e u d in e e : I i k ee, want s ee, w c 1 1 k e e . T h e w ord b e I o i tg or Kiev < / 

 also does duty as an auxiliary "T am a Chinaman" being 

 " my b'long Chinee. " The subjunctive also is formed by ad- 

 cling this wo'rd belong ; *■ you should go " being expressed as 

 ■■you b'long go." " If I go" is " sposee my go ;" and be- 

 yond this there are no means of expressing the other tenses 

 except by clumsy combinations. "If I had gone" is tk sposee 

 my have go." B'long, of course, stands for " it belongs to 

 your business to." 



The comparison of adjectives is effected by prefixing the 

 words "more" and "too muchee," though the ordinary com- 

 parative form is often used in conjunction with the first- 

 named: thus. good, more better (pronounced bettah), too 

 muchee good; largee (also pronounced laligee), more largee, 

 too muchee big. The Chinese form is simple enough: "I am 

 better than he is" being " I, than, he, good;" or, in the 

 superlative, "that is the best," "that, than all, exceeding 

 good." Pidgin English uses our own handy h \yes" and fck no" 

 in place of the awkward "it is," "'it is' not/' of Chinese. 

 These examples show that, as regards grammatical structure, 

 " pidgin" is in the main an imperfect adaptation of our own 

 rides. But the general construction of sentences is essenti- 

 ally Chinese. "Go to the post-office and bring me a letter"" 

 would be rendered just as it would be translated in a native 

 dialect : "You savee that post-officee ; go looksee have got one 

 chit b'long my ; sposee have got you makee bling." The 

 absence of a relative form necessitates the cutting up of all 

 Long phrases ie.to short sentences both in Chinese and pidgin 

 English. 



Such being, in short, some of the most important gram- 

 matical peculiarities of this dialect. let us turn to its pro- 

 nunciation. There are certain sounds which the Chinaman 

 has from custom an inherent difficulty hi pronouncing. Thus. 

 he cannot sound the final ge of "large" except as a separate 

 syllable, so he adds an e and makes it largee?. A similar dis- 



