Pidgin English in CJ, another installment

[Leanne Riding]

I wonder if this word, "Olsem" was used in Hawaii c.1810-1840?

Contributions into CJ by the important community have been predicted but
remain elusive. Perhaps we do not see Hawaiian words in the CJ because
the Hawaiians made use of a Pidgin-English of their own.

What makes this difficult to establish is that, by the 1890s, the West
Coast of NA was home to very large numbers of immigrants from Asia and
the Pacific Islands. According to the Asian Museum in the International
District in Seattle, this includes India, China, Japan, Tonga, Hawaii
and the Phillipines.

Pidgin words were often shared between nationalities in very different
parts of the world, due to the mobile and multilingual nature of
migrants. While the original authors of many Pidgin-English words didn't
always end up in North America, their words sometimes did by way of
other migrants that had contact with them, and their employers.

For example, the word "Coolie." Now this word has three possible
connotations for north-westerners, all with different origins. It could
mean "Coulee," a ravine-like formation from fr. Coulee. Or, it could
mean "Cooley," Chinook Jargon verb from fr. Courez, "to run." Or it
could mean "Coolie", a labourer, apparently from Tamil word "Kuli."

The latter word, "Coolie," meaning labourer, arrived in NA following the
abolition of slavery in the British colonies. When labour shortages
first began to occur, colonists imported european migrants and tried to
hire them as labourers, but they frequently refused to do the work
formerly assigned to slaves. So, willing labourers from India and
elsewhere were brought into the colonies, and soon from wherever else
they could be obtained. Eventually many migrants and their employers
arrived in NA to work and seek their fortune in the gold fields. The
word "coolie," by the time it arrived in NA, had come to refer to a
class of labourer who accepted work that haughtier migrants refused to
do -- often, demeaning service work or hard labour.

Although well known in the north west, I don't think that "Coolie" in
this sense was considered a Chinook Jargon word. That could mean that
some possible Pidgin-English words in CJ date from prior to the
California Gold Rush--the formative period of CJ. This is also the time
when the Hawaiians could have added their own personal touches to CJ.

Any thoughts on that?

- Leanne

On Friday, April 30, 2004, at 04:58 , David Robertson wrote:

> Klahawiam, kanawi tilikom,
>
> Look here, /olsim/ is identical to 'allsame' in Chinese Pidgin English
> and
> to 'olsem' in South Pacific / Melanesian Pidgin English.  Interesting
> find.
>

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