14 BEACH-LA-MAR. 
to be what they are more than likely to denominate good grammar. 
Only lately my good offices were sought by a correspondent who 
asked a favorable decision on the phrase ‘‘ whom he may be’”’ as but- 
tressed by this parsing: “‘he is the subject of the sentence, may be the 
predicate, and whom is the object of the verb be.’’ This from a person 
of education, at least she had studied stenography and typewriting 
and held a job. 
I am not charging up these grammatical sins to the sailors by 
reason of their briny yet fresh air profession; I merely note for the 
purposes of this treatise that they are sinners in a fashion which has 
left its mark on the jargon. From the marks thus made we may find 
an interesting note of the variation which our language may undergo 
and remain a means of communication; we find the irreducible mini- 
mum which is felt to underlie all the refinements of vocabulary and 
syntax. The English element of the jargon is vulgar English because 
it is contributed through a vulgar channel; it is the English of the 
ignorant, who have neither knowledge of canons which we regard as 
essential to comprehensibility nor scruple about violating them. We 
shall find ourselves far from English undefiled. 
We are safe in crediting the beginning of Beach-la-mar to the fore- 
castle. In its further development under the stimulus of the labor 
trade we are to recognize the introduction of a new element. The 
sailors who made up the crews of these legalized slavers were recruited 
from the slums of the seaports of Australia, particularly the havens 
of Queensland from Moreton Bay to Cooktown. It would be wide 
of this inquiry to speculate into causes; the system (long in force) of 
penal transportation comes into mind at once as a possible explana- 
tion, but the fact remains that the common speech of the Common- 
wealth of Australia represents the most brutal maltreatment which 
has ever been inflicted upon the language that is the mother tongue 
of the great English nations. Under such influence the poor kanaka 
remained for his term of labor, a man to whom toil was absolutely 
unknown; and this term was never less than three years, and so 
much longer as he might pass unheard of the authorities who were 
supposed to see that he was promptly returned to his own island. 
In this labor their overseers communicated with the islanders through 
the jargon. Among themselves, in the multitude of languages which 
the chance of capture and of sale might fling together upon any one 
plantation, the jargon became the only means of intercommunication. 
It is not a difficult tongue to acquire, three years in the barracks of a 
plantation were the equivalent of a university course.* 
*Denn jeder Mensch im Schutzgebiet weiss, dass der Melanesier sich nach 4- bis 8- 
wochentlicher Dienstzeit leidlich im Pidgin-Englisch verstandigen kann. Jeder Polizei- 
Junge und jeder Arbeiter kann am Ende seiner Dienstzeit Pidgin-English sprechen und 
kann Reis kochen. Da er immer wieder Gelegenheit findet, diese seine Kenntnisse auf- 
zufrischen, so bewahrt er sie zumeist bis zum Ende seiner Tage. Diese beiden Punkte 
sind charakteristisch fiir den ausgedienten Melanesier.—Friederici, 99. 
