​PIDGIN (Chinese corruption of Eng.business), orPigeon English. A mixed language much in use in the ports of China, as a medium of oral communication between foreigners who cannot speak Chinese (merchants, sea-captains, sailors, etc.) and such Chinese servants,shopkeepers, compradores, boatmen, etc., as they may have to converse with. It is also occasionally used by natives from different ports whose own dialects are so different as to be mutuallyunintelligible. It consists of a mixture of Englishwords, mostly monosyllabic, with corruptedChinese, Portuguese, Malay, and other terms and expressions, arranged according to Chinese idiom. These words are “uninflected” except to theextent that vowel-endings such aso oree arefrequently added after certain consonants which the Chinese in common with the Japanese areunable to pronounce without a following vowel; for example:washee forwash;largee forlarge;s'posee forsuppose;wifo forwife. Owing to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce initialr,l takes its place, and ‘rice’ becomeslice;‘American’ becomesMelican; ‘friend’ becomesflen’, and ‘try’ becomestli. Among thecorrupted Chinese words arebobbery, noise,disturbance, abuse, scold, either noun or verb, as “you makee too muchee bobbery”; “how fashion you bobbery my?”Chop is a mark, brand, or device;chop-chop means ‘quick! make haste!’ and the samechop occurs inchop-sticks or ‘hasteners’used in eating.Chow-chow means food or eat; andmaskee (probably of Malay or Portugueseorigin), ‘never mind! no matter!’Belongtakes the place of ‘be’;my is equivalent to I, me,my, mine (“no belong my” = I didn't do it, or it is not mine).Savey means ‘know’; ‘not’ is replaced byno, and the opening sentence ofHamlet's famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be! That is the question,” is simply rendered by “Can do,no can do! How fashion?”Joss-pidgin means religious ceremony, andJoss-pidgin man, a priest, clergyman, or missionary. In the same way a tourist or sightseer becomes alook-see man, and ‘get’ is expressed bycatchee. Consult Leutzner,Wörterbuch der englischen VolksspracheAustraliens und der englischen Mischsprachen (Halle, 1891).