I SAY IT IN PIDGIN
At last the time came when my vanity was tickled to the verge of
hysteria; I had actually learned pidgin English. To the native English
is pidgin, and if you do not speak it with classic exactitude he
simply fails to understand you. Once I had thought that I could pick
it up in a week or two, it sounded so like laundry Chinese. Studying
it, I learned how iron-bound its rules of idiom and grammar actually
are. Twice, before I had mastered the lingo, I had tried it on native
audiences and had been, as the actors say, laughed off the stage. But
I was tired of having my lectures hashed by casual interpreters; I
knew that I must talk straight to the people in the trade language
which was common over the larger part of Melanesia. It took a year of
hard grinding to learn it. Superior natives, kindly missionaries and
District Officers were my tutors.
I must be fair to the reader and show him a few of the simpler twists
in the language, and interpret a few peculiarities. Otherwise, the
forthcoming sample of what became my standard pidgin hookworm lecture
might be difficult to understand.
The verb “go,” for instance. The future is “by-and-by me go,” and the
past is “me go finish.” “Finish” is trickily used to express finality.
When a boy is “dead finish” he is dead. When you bury a body you “plant
’im finish.” (When a houseboy says he is “killed” it merely means that
his mistress has taken a stick to him.)
“Him” is masculine, feminine or neuter, generally pronounced “im,”
but sometimes “um.” “Im” may be joined to a verb, as in “lookim,” or
separated as in “look im,” (“look at him”).
“Fellow” or “feller” is another tricky one. “Feller” precedes almost
every noun--“One feller house,” and so on. “Me go three feller Sunday”
means “I was gone three weeks.”
A man is usually a “boy,” a woman a “mary.” But often, linguistically,
a man’s a “man,” for a’ that. The personal pronoun is always masculine:
“Dis feller mary he go.” Repetition gives a verb an increasing value.
When you say, “He go, go, go, _go_, GO,” that’s a long, tired journey.
Then for effect you add, “long way too much.” “Too much” means “very.”
Example: “Him good feller too much”--quite a compliment.
“Senake” is “snake” or “worm,” and in hookworm lectures you refer to
hatched larvae as “pickaninny senake.” “Gelass” is “glass,” and refers
to a microscope, telescope or anything else with a lens in it.
The frequent use of “belong” (or “belonga”) is confusing, and “along”
is worse. Loosely speaking, “belong” is possessive. “Knifie belong me”
is “my knife” and about the only way to translate “Dis fellow knifie
belong dis fellow mary belong house belong Keop” would be “The knife of
the native woman who lives in the Captain’s house”--a pretty clumsy way
of making your point. “Along” generally expresses movement or approach:
“Ship stop along place.” On some remote islands, God is expressed by
“Big Feller Walk along Top.”
“Blut” is blood (German), and is combined with “sabe” (Spanish) in “You
altogether fellow, you sabe string belong blut?” when you want to know
if everybody understands the nature of the blood stream. “Altogether
fellow” expresses “everybody.”
“Kaikai” is “eat.” Your heart is a “pump,” your lungs “wind,” and when
you show a hookworm picture in your lecture the “illustration” is a
“ficshure.”
Their use of “behind” doesn’t express much until you are informed that
it may mean either “afterward” or “pretty soon.” “Behind me show you
dis feller” equals “After I have shown you this.”
To the uninitiated, pure pidgin does not make the slightest sense.
German priests have learned it--and naïvely used its Chaucerian
obscenities--without knowing a word of English.
In giving you just a flash of my first public success with the
language, I assure you that I have anglicized it down to a point where
the pidgin-wise native would have a hard time making head or tail out
of it. But head or tail would be lost to the reader if I gave the
unedited version.
* * * * *
When I returned to the native hospital at Rabaul and told Colonel
Honman that I was prepared to lecture in pidgin, he gnashed pleasantly
and said, “Try it on them.” Honman was behind me in everything now.
A packed audience was gathered that night to hear my attempt at a new
and dreadful language. I mopped cold sweat from my bald spot. Jerope
had hung the hookworm chart to a post; it was like nailing your flag to
the mast--fight or sink, no turning back. Assistants had passed around
our two property bottles, pickled hookworms and ascarides. The natives
always admired the bottled ascarides most; they were larger and looked
more dangerous. The pause settled my stomach. My natural brazenness
returned and I bawled for order.
“You altogether boy, you listen good. Me come talk along one big feller
sick....”
I felt the listening silence. They were taking in every word.
“Altogether boy he got um plenty senake he stop along inside bell’
belong boy, he kaikai bell’, blut he come, he kaikai blut. Blut belong
boy him kaikai belong senake.
“Place belonga me him stop long way too much. You ketchum one feller
steamer, you go one feller Sunday, now you come up along Sydney. Now
you ketchum one feller steamer, big more (larger), now you go, go, go
three feller Sunday, now you come up along place belong me....”
In the native mind I had visualized the distance I had traveled
from New York to New Guinea. And now for a word picture of John D.
Rockefeller, Senior:--
“Master belonga me him make im altogether kerosene, him make im
altogether benzine. Now he old feller. He got im plenty too much belong
money. Money belong him allesame dirt. Now he old feller, close up him
he die finish. He look about. Him he tink, ‘Me like make im one feller
something, he good feller belong altogether boy he buy im kerosene
belonga me.’ Now Gubment (Government) he talk along master belonga me.
Master belonga me him he talk, ‘You, you go killim altogether senake
belong bell’ belong boy belong island.’”
(I passed around the bottle of pickled hookworms.)
“Now, you boy, lookim good along dis feller bottle. Dis small feller
senake he bad feller too much.... He got im tooth belongim. He kaikai
bell’ belong altogether boy. Blut he come he kaikai blut....”
(Turning chart to enlargement of male and female hookworms.)
“You look along dis feller ficshure. Two feller senake. You look;
one feller he man-senake, one feller him he mary-senake. Dis feller
mary, him he bad feller too much. Him he stop along inside bell’; him
he kaikai blut; him he makim too much small feller egg. Boy he makim
something along ground. Egg he come out. Dis egg he small feller too
much....”
Open eyes and open mouths confronted me. And now to describe a
microscope in pidgin English:--
“He no allesame glass belong Keop (Captain) belong steamer--he nother
kind. Glass belong Keop, he make one feller something he stop too
far, more big; glass belonga me, he make one feller something too
small, more big. Behind (pretty soon) you sabe lookim along dis feller
glass....”
(Attentive eyes followed the microscope, and I told of the dropping of
the egg, the birth of the larva and its destiny....)
“Now boy he make im something along ground, egg he come out. Rain
he come down. Egg, him he stop. Now sun he cookim. Now small feller
pickaninny (larva), close up he broke-im dis feller egg. Him, he
walkabout along ground, quick feller too much. You no sabe lookim--he
small feller too much. Eye belonga you no good. Now boy he come. Him he
putim foot belongim along ground. Now pickaninny senake him come inside
foot belong boy, quick feller too much. Boy he scratchim, but he no
can catchim dis feller senake. Now he go along string belong blut. Now
he go, he go, he go, he go go go go, now he come up along pump belong
blut; now he come to wind; him he come up along troat; boy he kaikai
him....”
(Pointing to internal organs outlined on the chart.)
“Now he come along bell’ belong you, now he big feller little bit; now
he gettim tooth belong im; now he sabe kaikai bell’ belong boy; he sabe
kaikai blut. Suppose you gottim plenty good kaikai--dis feller kaikai
no belong you; him belong senake. You eatim, senake he catchim first
time....
“Senake him kaikai blut belong boy, now boy he no strong; he weak
feller too much; him he no like walkabout; him he no like work; him he
like sleep all time. Bell’ belong him no good, skin belong him no good,
leg belong him allesame stick, him rotten altogether because senake he
kaikai bell’ belongim.... Blut belongim water; quick time boy he die
finish; now he go along ground.
“Now master belonga me he gottim one good feller medicine. You drinkim
one time, behind (afterward) you takim one salts medicine; senake he
die finish, he come outside. Now, kaikai belong boy, he no belong
senake. Now quick time skin belong boy good, now he sabe walkabout, him
he strong feller too much....”
When at last I had finished I heard the frightened sigh that fluttered
through my audience. A heavy load seemed to fall from my shoulders. I
had said it in pidgin, I had made them understand!
* * * * *
This was the hookworm lecture which, with some improvements, I gave
hundreds of times throughout Melanesia, wherever pidgin was spoken;
in New Guinea, in the Solomon Islands, in the New Hebrides. Yes, and
I took it to New York in 1922, and demonstrated it to the Rockefeller
Foundation. When I was asked to address a body of extremely dignified
scientific men, Dr. George Vincent encouraged me to repeat my hookworm
lecture, for its fame seemed to have arrived before I did. “Give it to
them straight,” Dr. Heiser suggested when I took the platform. If my
performance added nothing to science, it was at least a comedy success.
It panicked ’em, as the actors say. When I came to the part that
described Mr. Rockefeller as “Master belonga me him make im altogether
kerosene.... Now he old feller.... Money belong him allesame dirt,”
solemn scientists who hadn’t smiled for years had to be held up to keep
them from falling into the aisles.