1861, California: Cheap pantaloons + West Coast CPE (Chinese Pidgin English)
The other big West Coast pidgin language that everyone was familiar with…
(Other posts of mine on Chinese Pidgin English.)
Image credit: YouTube
Proving my claim are news reports in the frontier era such as the following, where White folks (A) assumed Chinese immigrants knew Chinese Pidgin English and (B) spoke it to them:
CHEAP PANTALOONS .- The San Juan Press re-
lates the following instance of a Mongolian cap-
ture :The other day a Chinaman stole a valuable
pair of pantaloons from the clothing store of
Thomas Maguire, and thrust them into his
bosom for concealment. A few minutes after,
he was passing the meat market of H. C. Dean.
That gentleman observed a portion of the pan-
taloons protruding from under John’s shirt, and
in a spirit of playfulness stopped him, took hold
of the pantaloons and drew them partly forth,
asking, at the same time, “How muchee, John?”
meaning, what did you pay for them? The
Chinaman replied “Four dolla!” Dean saw at
a glance the pantaloons were worth double that
amount, and of a finer quality than a scalliwag
Chinaman like that usually wears. This aroused
his suspicions that they were stolen, and he led
John over to the clothing store to ascertain the
fact. Maguire recognized the pantaloons as his
property, and could not resist the temptation to
give John a punch in the head, after which he
was delivered over to Constable Edwards, taken
before Justice Holt, tried, convicted, and sen-
tenced to serve twenty days in the Nevada jail.
— from the Sacramento (CA) Daily Union of November 19, 1861, page 3, column 3
