pidgin English and "Nix Forstay"

[Beverly Flanigan]

The pidgin link is obvious to me; fronted negative is common, with no
subject, in all pidgins.  Cf. "No can do," "long time no see," etc.  The
German pronunciation of "nicht" could easily be transmuted to "nix" by a
nonnative speaker of German, 'ver' [fEr] may become 'for', [St] in German
easily becomes [st], and the final schwa is often deleted by NNSs.

At 09:20 AM 3/1/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>--On Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:35 PM -0500 "Douglas G. Wilson"
><douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
>
>>But "nix-forstay" appears to be German, i.e., "nicht[s] versteh-". Why is
>>it not "forstay-nix" (= "[ich] verstehe nichts" = "[I] understand nothing"
>>or "[ich] verstehe nicht" = "[I] don't understand")?
>>
>>Is the expression from a subordinate clause like "... weil ich nichts
>>verstehe" = "... because I don't understand anything"?
>>
>>Or is it from a word like "Nichtsversteher" = "one who understands
>>nothing"?
>>
>>Or is "Nicht[s] verstehe" alone a conventional utterance in some form of
>>German?
>>
>>Or is it pidgin-German with English word order, "nix" = "nicht" ("not") +
>>"forstay" ("understand")? [This interpretation seems likely to me, and it
>>is perhaps supported by a memoir of 1910:
>>http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Biltmore_Project/Esser30oct1910.pdf ]
>>
>>[Maybe the answer is trivially obvious to anyone well-versed in German ...
>>but not to me.]
>
>The answer is far from obvious to someone well-versed in German, but to me
>an explanation involving English word order is equally nonsensical.
>"Nothing understand"???
>
>Peter Mc.
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************