ABSTRACT
There are at least six possible linguistic sources for the term pidgin (Mühlhäusler, 1986, p. 1; Romaine, 1988, pp. 12-13): (1) according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Collinson (1929, p. 20), pidgin is a Chinese corruption of the English business; (2) others consider it a Chinese corruption of the Portuguese word for business, occupação; (3) or derived from the Hebrew for exchange or trade or redemption, pidjom; (4) or it may derive from a South Seas pronunciation of English beach, namely beachee, because the language was typically used on the beach; (5) or it may derive from the South American Indian language, Yago, whose word for people is pidian; (6) according to Knowlton (1967, p. 228), Professor Hsü Ti-san of the University of Hong Kong has written in the margin of a page of a book on Chinese Pidgin English (Leland, 1924) that the term pidgin may be derived from the two Chinese characters, pei and ts’in meaning ‘paying money’. Many expressions in pidgin and creole languages have more than one source, so it is possible that all of these accounts are true.
