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A note on ‘pidgin’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Eric P. Hamp
Eric P. Hamp
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The Random House Dictionary (College Edition 1968), p. 1004 s.v., attributes this word ‘perhaps (as) representing Chinese pronunciation of business’. In a recent well-informed and broadly based volume (Hymes, 1971) David DeCamp reproduces (p. 15) the ‘traditional etymology … from English business’, although mentioning that this has been challenged by Kleinecke and Hall. Nevertheless DeCamp settles comfortably for the fact that pidgin as a term for a contact vernacular was first applied to Chinese pidgin English. While it may be true that this is our earliest recorded use of such an application, it is still far from certain exactly how far back and in what regions this meaning denoting a type of vernacular extends in oral tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , December 1977 , pp. 389 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

REFERENCES

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