Word: pidgin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sometimes 20 hours a day, living in a slum on tea and biscuits, he saved enough money to take a full-time accounting course and move to London. There he found the color barrier even harder to penetrate. He landed a factory job by pretending to speak pidgin English-"Me good worker, guv'nor. Give me job." When his opportunity finally came, he was almost too alienated to recognize it, but he rewarded that first real employer ("an angel") with exceptionally hard work...
...ways of farmers and fishermen die hard, two old men squat before a home altar and chant prayers carefully entrusted to them by their ancestors. The ritual is intense and moving. But something is askew. The rite is partly Buddhist, partly Christian. The language sounds odd, a sort of pidgin Latin. And what do the ancient prayers mean? One of the worshipers admits, "I don't understand a word of this...
...language barrier is what confounds the average tourist in Moscow. One is reduced to the most basic sounds and gestures to get around the city. Curious pidgin words, rather the way the Sioux talk in old western films, are produced-to no effect whatsoever. My first attempt at a conversation in Russian -just to say that I had tried-was with an elderly fisherman staring morosely at the tiny float of his line in the murk of the Moscow River. I rehearsed behind him, peering into my pocket dictionary, and when I thought I had the word right...
...secessionist movement is headed by Jimmy Stevens, 58, who drove bulldozers before emerging as a separatist leader of Espiritu Santo. "Moli" (chief), as his supporters call Stevens, was elected Chief Minister of Vemarana after the takeover. Holding court in a former dance school that now bears the pidgin-English sign VEMARANA OFIS, he told TIME Correspondent John Dunn: "Time is not important here. We will be open for business in a few days. We want to be free to make our own decisions, to run our own economy and have a picnic when we feel like having...
...stage at the Hasty Pudding Theatricals is a character called Ed Foo Yung. The script describes him as "one of them Chinamen...with the scrawny little mustaches." He is "slimy" and "disgusting." As he enters, Ed is hunched over, pigtailed and inhuman. He mumbles in pidgin English, and leers at the blond Mae. Too weak to defend himself, he is thrown around the stage by his pigtail and must die for proclaiming his desires for "the pretty white lady...