YANGJINGBANG:The Story of Pidgin English
Print Edition
AFTER the Opium War, Yangjingbang’s riverfront teemed with Chinese and foreign traders. Mutual unintelligibility spawned “Yangjingbang English”: Chinese syntax with English words. The place-name soon stood for the hybrid tongue itself.
Origination & Development of Yangjingbang English
Originates in Guangzhou
In the mid-16th century, the Ming Dynasty opened the Guangzhou port, and the Portuguese were the first to gain trading rights. The earliest Sino-Western pidgin language, “Canton Portuguese,” emerged from trade. As the trade of Britain and the United States in China increased, from the mid-18th to the 19th century, “Canton English” gradually replaced “Canton Portuguese” as the main foreign language used by Chinese interpreters in trading. The commonly used phrase “Long time no see” originated from this period.
Prospers in Shanghai
In the late 19th century, as foreign trade shifted north, Cantonese interpreters brought their “Cantonese English” to Shanghai. Blended with the local dialect, it became “Yangjingbang English,” a pidgin that soon stood for any Chinese-English hybrid and seeded lasting loanwords in Chinese.
Fades in New China
After 1949, as state firms were flourishing, standard English ruled, with “Yangjingbang English” being marginalized. A handful of its words still color Shanghainese, becoming tiny cultural fossils of the city.
Characteristics of Yangjingbang English
Hybridity
Yangjingbang English is a linguistic mosaic. It blends Shanghainese, the earlier Canton English, and multiple strands of English — British, American, Portuguese, Indian, and more. Many words drift far from their original English meanings.
Orality
Passed mouth-to-mouth, it left no written form; rhymes and ditties nailed the stock phrases to memory.
Simplification
The vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar of Pidgin English have all been simplified. Polysemy is very common. According to research, Pidgin English has only about 700 words, and a single word has to cover the meanings of several or even a dozen standard English words.
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