Grandpa’s Pidgin English

By Yu Jidong

When my grandfather was young he ventured out from his home in northern Jiangsu Province to scrap out a living in cosmopolitan Shanghai,where he worked for a boss from Ningbo.He was a naturally bright and capable individual, who was adept at ingratiating himself to others, and as such he was often sent out on tasks involving dealings with foreign nationals, and in the process he picked up some Pidgin English.

Grandpa was neither a particularly capable English learner, nor was he incompetent. And anyway in those days there were no textbooks, no teachers, and of course no immersive language environment in China. But, he did have one coign of vantage—he had direct contact with foreign on a regular basis, and the “free language lessons” he got by having face-to-face conversations with them allowed him to pick up English in real time.

Every night he would pull out his notebook with the “English” he had learned that day scrawled about in random jigjagged configurations on the page. Actually,there wasn’t an English letter to be found in the whole book, as the “English” was all written in Chinese characters. So there he was holed up in his apartment late every night diligently reciting words and straining his brain to memorize them by rote.

爺爺年輕的時候就從蘇北老家去上海闖蕩，替一位寧波籍的老板辦事，他天資聰穎，常常為老板辦理一些涉外，頗得賞識，在此過程中也學得一口洋涇浜英語。

爺爺學英語的條件不能說好，也不能說壞。當年沒有課本，沒有教師，條件當然好不到哪兒去，但有個得天獨厚的優勢，就是直接跟老外打交道，經常有不花錢的“外教”現教現用。

他每天晚上拿個小本子，把當天學到的“英語”記在上面。這些所謂的“英語”，其實全是漢字，一個英文字母也沒有。他每天再晚也要把這些內容讀上幾遍，直至背出。

一開始，他不知道怎么去記憶，后來慢慢地找到竅門，可能就是當代人所說的“形象記憶法”，例如你好（How do you do），他記成了“好豆油多”。那個年代油很金貴，而豆油是食用油里的上品，早晨跟人見面，互相來一句“好豆油多”，開始的是多么吉利的一天啊。

吃中飯（have lunch），他在本子上寫的是“喊狼來切”，我們老家人說吃飯的“吃”，發音正巧是“切”。舊社會窮人肚子里個個都是空蕩蕩的，就餐時的吃相估計是狼吞虎咽。

晚上用的燈（light），他標注的音是“拉拖”，當時的電燈開關都用繩子拉，而繩子一般從上面拖掛下來，這兩個字可謂形象生動。

爺爺的“英語”記憶方法實在讓我大開眼界，有些單詞標注的讀音還讓你不得不佩服他的想象力。像汽油（gasoline），他叫“開四輪”，四個輪子的汽車得加上汽油才能開動，這個發音估計誰想記不住都很困難；收款的“收”（collecting），他發音為“客來客廳”，這是因為他經常看到老板在客廳里收錢的緣故；他把對賬（checking）讀成“欺客”，把交易（trade）讀成“缺德”，舊社會生意場上的爾虞我詐，在爺爺的“英語”里可見一斑。

據爺爺自己說，他的英語能與老外進行一般性對話，交流比較順暢，互相都能聽懂所說的意思。

（摘自《江都日報》）

When my grandpa was young, he left his hometown in Northern Jiangsu for Shanghai to try to make his way in the world. He found a job working for a guy from Ningbo. Being naturally gifted, he even helped his boss take care of dealings with foreigners and was very much appreciated for it. Throughout his time there he even managed learning how to speak Pidgin English.

It can’t be said that the circumstances for my grandpa to learn English were good, yet,it cannot be said that they were bad either.In those days, there were no textbooks, nor were there any teachers, so the learning environment, relatively speaking, couldn’t be that great. He, though, had an exceptional advantage in being able to directly have dealings with foreigners, like having a foreign teacher that you don’t have to pay.

Every evening he would write down the new “English” that he had learned that day in a small notebook. The so-called English that he wrote down was actually all written in Chinese characters; a single English letter couldn’t be found in any of his notes. Each night after making his notes, he would read his new words over and over aloud until he had memorized them.

At the beginning he did not know how to go about memorizing these new words, but after a while he got a knack of it, perhaps using what people then called “visualization

In the beginning he didn’t have the foggiest clue how to commit words to memory, but he gradually discovered a technique that we in modern times now call visualization and association. So for instance,if he wanted to remember the phrase, “how do you do,” he would say, “a heaping helping of succulent soybean oil,” as the corresponding Chinese “hao dou you duo” sounded an awful lot like the English greeting. Back then soybean oil was exceedingly expensive, and was the highest grade and best tasting oil used in food preparation. As people greeted each other boisterously at breakfast time, the crisp morning air would be filled with the snappy phrase“hao duo you duo” thus ringing in the bright new day.

For the phrase, “have lunch, ” he wrote in his notebook, “crying wolf brings cuts, ” which is pronounced “han lang laiqie” in Chinese—a fitting mnemonic considering that older Chinese people don’t pronounce the word for eat in the standardized Mandarin Chinese pronunciation “chi,” but instead with a heavy regionally influenced twang “qie” that sounds exactly like the Chinese word for “cut.” And what made it all the more brilliant was that the famished poor of old China would always wolf down their food at mealtimes.

The annotation in his book for the word “light”—the kind used when it’s dark—was, “pull down” and pronounced “latuo”; and actually the light switches used in those days were the kind with a string that you pull on to turn on the light, so the word brings a really vivid picture to mind.

Grandpa’s “mnemonic devices” for new English words were really eye-opening and some of the sounds he chose to represent the English words truly leave the listener in awe of his creativity. His word for “gasoline,” was “drive four wheels” pronounced“kai silun” in Chinese. A four-wheeled vehicle—a car—needs to be filled with gasoline before being driven away. The word is virtually impossible not to remember with a mnemonic like this.

Or how about his word for “collecting” that was “come to the parlor” and pronounced “ke lai keting,” which was due to the fact that he often saw transactions take place in his boss’s private parlor where he sat collecting money from the guests who arrived there.

“Qike” is what he called a “check,” which translates to “cheat the customer,” and “quede”in what he called “trade” in his personal pidgin language, which means “bamboozler.”And actually, in old-time China,trade was nothing but two-bit hucksters and scammers trying to h o o d w i n k e a c h other.

Apparently my grandfather’s E n g l i s h w a s pretty average,but I think his own words, the Chinese ones not the English ones, put it best; as long as his English was able to get the job done, if it could facilitate the free flow of information between two parties, then at the end of the day that was all that really mattered.

(From Jiangdu Daily. Translation: Chase Coulson)memory techniques.” For instance, he took “How do you do?” and wrote it as “好豆油多 ,”which literally means: good-soybean oil-many. At that time, oil was very expensive, and soybean oil was one of the highest grades of cooking oil. Greeting people in the morning with a nice, “premium soybean oil is plentiful,” certainly puts a lucky spin on the day.

He wrote “have lunch” down in his book as “喊狼來切” which literally means: call-wolves-come-cut,but the funny thing is that in our hometown the way we pronounce “cut” is the same way we pronounce “eat.” In old China, poor people’s bellies were all empty,you can imagine how they would ravenously devour their food at meal time.

The word “light”he transcribed as “拉 拖 ” which literally means:pull-drag. The switch for electric lights at that time was operated by pulling a rope and the rope was usually dragged down from up above. These two Chinese

characters are certainly quite stark in their imagery.

My grandpa’s method to memorize English broadened my horizons greatly. His transliterations of certain words left me reeling in admiration. Take the word “gasoline” for instance, which he wrote as“開四輪” which literally means: drive-four-wheels.A four-wheeled vehicle can only be driven when gassed up and the pronunciation that goes along with it, anyone who would want to forget it couldn’t ever do so.

The word “collecting,” he wrote as “客 來 客 廳 ”which literally means: guest-come-living room, he wrote it this way because every time he wanted to collect money his boss would get him to go to his living room.

“Checking,” he wrote as “欺客 ,” literally: swindlecustomers. “Trade” he wrote as: “缺 德 ,” immoral.Business in former times was just a game of mutual deception, as my Grandpa’s English goes to show.

My grandpa claims that he can still have a normal conversation with foreigners and that communication isn’t an issue, both sides can understand what the other is trying to say.

(From Jiangdu Daily. Translation: Sam Bowden)

翻譯PK

為增強本刊讀譯互動，本期《特別關注（英文版）》特為文章《爺爺的洋涇浜英語》提供兩個譯本，以供讀者評議對比。請有興趣參與我們翻譯活動的讀者將您的評點意見發送至郵箱special.focus@qq.com。如果您的意見有獨到之處，我們可能會將其發表于下期刊物或微信平臺上，并為您奉上免費樣刊一本。

To help more readers join our bilingual world, the January 2018 Issue of Special Focus provides two translated versions of the article “Grandpa’s Pidgin English,” so that our readers can compare the two and make comments. You’re welcome to send your comments to special.focus@qq.com. If your comments are unique or inspiring, we may publish them in our next issue or on our WeChat platform and send you our next issue as a free gift.