Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

220 South Broad Street
Philad^a April 26. 82

Dear Sir

I have read with great pleasure your letter. I had almost forgotten my little work on Pidgin English¹. It was very unsuccessful and very severely handled by every reviewer. I only saw one German review of it in which I was treated with a degree of contempt and bitterness which was quite inexplicable. It is true that a book on such a subject is of no great literary value, but a man hardly deserves for all that, to be treated as a hostis humani generis² for writing it. The result was that I made no further study of Pidgin and do not like to think of the poor little book. I sincerely hope that whatever you may write on that - or any other -  subject, may be far more successful. Singularly enough my work Fusang³, on the discovery of America by the Chinese in the 5^th century, was even more severely handled, especially in Germany.

I have been assured by a gentleman who was many years in China that a slight |2| Pidgin French had begun to develop some 10 or 15 years ago. You should write to the French Consuls in China for information.

I am very much astonished that you are not aware that there is a Japanese Pidgin English⁴. It sprang up in Yokohama and in two years became so formed that an American, Mr. Hoffman Atkinson⁵ (whom I subsequently became intimate with when he was Sec.^y of the American Legation at St Petersburg Russia) published a little work⁶ describing it and giving a vocabulary. This brochure passed through two or three editions. 

Mr. Atkinson made this manual of the dialect so very funny – so like Rabelais⁷-  that many people would not even believe in the existence of the dialect. I published an article⁸ on it in one of the London magazines - which was valuable because I was so fortunate as to get another Ms⁹ on the same subject by another writer¹⁰. I forgot the name of the magazine - I only remember that it was |3| the year 1879 and that Mr. Kegan Paul¹¹ was the publisher of it.

The Yokohama Pidgin is more interesting, amusing and naïf than the Chinese. In it the verb arimas is used for almost any action of the mind – it is all verbs in one. It is so scanty that a man with a good memory might acquire the whole of it in two or three days, and yet it really serves for all ordinary purposes of conversation. I do not however wonder at it -  for 600 words are all that an average young lady “in society” requires to express her wants and feelings as developed by dress and flirtation.

The Creole French of Louisiana deserves special study.

I am now publishing a book on The Gypsies¹² which will be interesting because it is the first containing proof that there is in India a peculiar tribe of Gypsies, calling themselves by the same name (Rom) and using the same language as the Gypsies of the more Western word. I |4| learned this from one of them a Hindū in England.

After my Pidgin English appeared I received a few valuable contributions to the subject. But I was so much disheartened with the severe treatment which the book had received that I did not keep them. It is my opinion that reviewers do more harm than good, by thus discouraging writers.

Hoping sincerely that your work will be successful I remain

Yours very truly

Charles. G. Leland.
Professor at the University of Graz
Hahn) Was? –Hẵ. Was? Nur Heanstier (Hennenstiere).
Dr. Hugo Schuchardt.