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.

爷爷年轻的时候就从苏北老家去上海闯荡，替一位宁波籍的老板办事，他天资聪颖，常常为老板办理一些涉外，颇得赏识，在此过程中也学得一口洋泾浜英语。

爷爷学英语的条件不能说好，也不能说坏。当年没有课本，没有教师，条件当然好不到哪儿去，但有个得天独厚的优势，就是直接跟老外打交道，经常有不花钱的“外教”现教现用。

他每天晚上拿个小本子，把当天学到的“英语”记在上面。这些所谓的“英语”，其实全是汉字，一个英文字母也没有。他每天再晚也要把这些内容读上几遍，直至背出。

一开始，他不知道怎么去记忆，后来慢慢地找到窍门，可能就是当代人所说的“形象记忆法”，例如你好（How do you do），他记成了“好豆油多”。那个年代油很金贵，而豆油是食用油里的上品，早晨跟人见面，互相来一句“好豆油多”，开始的是多么吉利的一天啊。

吃中饭（have lunch），他在本子上写的是“喊狼来切”，我们老家人说吃饭的“吃”，发音正巧是“切”。旧社会穷人肚子里个个都是空荡荡的，就餐时的吃相估计是狼吞虎咽。

晚上用的灯（light），他标注的音是“拉拖”，当时的电灯开关都用绳子拉，而绳子一般从上面拖挂下来，这两个字可谓形象生动。

爷爷的“英语”记忆方法实在让我大开眼界，有些单词标注的读音还让你不得不佩服他的想象力。像汽油（gasoline），他叫“开四轮”，四个轮子的汽车得加上汽油才能开动，这个发音估计谁想记不住都很困难；收款的“收”（collecting），他发音为“客来客厅”，这是因为他经常看到老板在客厅里收钱的缘故；他把对账（checking）读成“欺客”，把交易（trade）读成“缺德”，旧社会生意场上的尔虞我诈，在爷爷的“英语”里可见一斑。

据爷爷自己说，他的英语能与老外进行一般性对话，交流比较顺畅，互相都能听懂所说的意思。

（摘自《江都日报》）

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 “喊狼来切” 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“开四轮” 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 来 客 厅 ”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)

翻译PK

为增强本刊读译互动，本期《特别关注（英文版）》特为文章《爷爷的洋泾浜英语》提供两个译本，以供读者评议对比。请有兴趣参与我们翻译活动的读者将您的评点意见发送至邮箱special.focus@qq.com。如果您的意见有独到之处，我们可能会将其发表于下期刊物或微信平台上，并为您奉上免费样刊一本。

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.