We have received from the publishers, Messrs. A. P. Hill and C. B. Weiss, who are author and artist respectively, a copy of their work entitled "Broken China" a delightful little brochure of some 80 odd pages dealing with "'pidgin" English, consisting of a° foreword dealing with the history and coustruction of "pidgin," a vocabulary containing a large number of terms used in every-day life as a medium of conversation between foreigners and Chinese with imperfect knowledge of English and a small English vocabulary with "pidgin'' English equivalents. The book creates a feeling of surprise that there is, after all, so much to be known about "pidgin" English, for it is one of those things into w! a foreigner who stays any length of time in China gently drifts until it comes as something for wonder that he speaks "pidgin" as if to the manner born.
It is not 2 pleasant language, when everything in its favour 1s taken into" consideration; it is uncouth in sound, clumsy in construetion and utterly incapable of conveying any fine shades of meaning, but it has served its purpose in the past and may very well do so for many years to come. though it is to be hoped that with educa tional progress in China the days are not too far distant when it will only be retained in books as a memento of the days when the foreigner was either too lazy or too-afraid to tackle the native tongue. We have heard two Chinese from widely separated parts of the country talking together in "pidgin'? and it served, we have used it ourselves with varying success; but nevertheless it can honestly be said" that the polyglot conglomeration of frequently contorted words is no: real language which deserved to last. Its only excuse has been convenience.
The vocabulary is interesting in the extreme. The author has beer careful enough to take nothing for granted and has explained the meanings of many terms which the average foreigner uses with some approach to correctness but with. out a solid appreciation of the ideas they are meant to convey. The style in which all this information is given is admirable and should prove of interest even the "old hands."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.