First Time Again in a Long Time

Merely how and why did the grammatically awkward phrase "long-time-no-encounter" get a widely accepted part of American speech? iStockphoto hibernate caption

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Just how and why did the grammatically awkward phrase "long-time-no-see" become a widely accepted part of American speech?

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How many times has the boilerplate person been greeted with the phrase "long time, no see" later running into an old acquaintance? My guess is enough. But how and why did such a grammatically awkward phrase become a widely accepted part of American speech?

It turns out there are, at least, two strong possibilities.

The starting time time "long fourth dimension, no run across" appeared in print was in the 1900 Western "Thirty-Ane Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, Or, the Last Voice from the Plains An Authentic Record of a Life Time of Hunting, Trapping, Scouting and Indian Fighting in the Far West , past William F. Drannan. That last function of the novel'due south very long title is relevant here, as it gives a skilful indication of the kind of story Drannan wanted to tell.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Drannan used the phrase to describe an see with a Native American he had previously met, "I knew he had recognized me. When we rode up to him he said: 'Good morning. Long time no see you lot,' and at the same time presented the gun with breech foremost."

The phrase would be used in a similar style in Jeff W. Hayes' Tales of the Sierras, another Western published in 1900. Once again, the phrase was attributed to an American Indian, "Ugh, y'all squaw, she no long time see you: you go home mucha quick."

While Drannan's volume was the start time this exact phrase appears in print, the exact origins of "long time, no come across" are the subject of ongoing contend amid linguists and historians.

The second widely accepted etymological caption is that the phrase is a loan translation* from the Mandarin Chinese phrase "hǎojǐu bújiàn", which means exactly "long time, no see."

Eric Patridge'south "Lexicon of Grab Phrases American and British traces the term to the early 1900s, but says it has Asian origins and was brought dorsum to England by members of the British Navy, who picked it upward through the pidgin English used by the Chinese people they encountered.

There is a separate account that lends weight to this latter theory except that information technology involves members of the U.S. Navy. An excruciating letter of the alphabet published in Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy, Volume 13 includes the following:

"And so Ah Sam, ancient Chinese tailor, familiarly known equally 'Cocky,' later on taking one good wait at the lieutenant said, 'Ah, Lidah, yous belong my velly good flend. Long time no meet you handsome facee.'"

Equally the Applied Applied Linguistics weblog points out in the fence over whether "long time no run into" has Native American or Chinese origins. "The primeval written usages are all native English language speakers 'reporting' the voice communication of non-native speakers, from near 1840-1915. ... The literature of that era is rife with stylized English attributed to non-native speakers — can we trust it?"

As the 20th century progressed, "long fourth dimension no run across" began to evolve from a phrase in broken English to a standard mode to greet an one-time acquaintance. By 1920, the phrase makes it into Good Housekeeping magazine. The novelist Raymond Chandler used it in more than one of his books. In Adieu, My Lovely, Moose Malloy drolly tells his ex-girlfriend Velma, "Hiya, babe. Long time no run into." And in 1949, the poet Ogden Nash published his poem "Long Time No See, Farewell At present" in The New Yorker. The poem introduces u.s.a. to Mr. Latour, "an illiterate churl" who "calls poor people poor instead of underprivileged."

Today, the phrase "long fourth dimension no run across" is so widespread every bit a greeting that there's zippo to bespeak the term'south origins, be they Native American or Mandarin Chinese.

Given its ubiquitous usage in books, conversations, movies, songs and television set programs, the phrase is now widely identified with American culture. And then much so that it was included in Ya Gotta Know Information technology!: A Conversational Approach to American Slang for the ESL Classroom. Long time, no run into has gone from pidgin English to entrenched, American English slang in little over a century.

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*Editor'southward Annotation: For those, like me, who are new to the term "loan translation, the Merriam-Webster'southward online dictionary defines the term as "a chemical compound, derivative, or phrase that is introduced into a language through translation of the constituents of a term in another language (as superman from German Übermensch)."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/09/288300303/who-first-said-long-time-no-see-and-in-which-language