Word: pidgin
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...Characters. "Early mornings, pushing his fish cart up and down the long main street of North Plymouth, Mass., ringing his bell, chatting with housewives in Piedmontese, Tuscan, pidgin English, Bartolomeo Vanzetti worried about the raids, the imprisonment of comrades, the lethargy of the working people. He was an anarchist . . . Between the houses he could see the gleaming stretch of Plymouth Bay, the sandy islands beyond, the white dories at anchor. He was planning to go into fishing himself in partnership with a man who owned some dories. About three hundred years before, men from the west of England had first...
...Chop" is pidgin-English for "quick." The Chinese call these implements kwaitsze, literally "the quick ones." The etiquette governing their use is elaborate. To lay them crossed upon the bowl is a sign that one wishes to leave the table. During a period of mourning chopsticks are usually put away, and the mourners eat with their fingers...
...Since many Japanese policemen know a few words of "pidgin English," there is no improbability in the verbal misunderstanding...
...efficiency of the Japanese is, unbeknownst, giving the death-blow to a tradition of comic literature. The bow-legged English of the Oriental schoolboy has long held its place in the humorist's schedule. Whenever the public mouth seems inclined to relax to a comfortable position, a letter in pidgin English restores to it the contortion of lips which passes current for an appreciation of humor. Certain Japanese, with the connivance of Americans, are trying to teach in their schools English "as is" English...
...intensely melodramatic moment in the last act, Bruce Norton ends his speech by uttering in a hoarse whisper "Damn him!", and the doctor hoarsely whispers back "My God!" Whereupon the audience bursts out laughing. Nevertheless melodrama is melodrama, and it would never do for the heroine to talk pidgin-English without a steady flow of "damn" and "hell". For the audience loves...