零五英语编者按：普通人碰见老熟人的时候说到过多少次“long time, no see”呢？我猜一定有过很多次吧！可是从语法上看起来很别扭的神句“long time no see”怎么就能摇身一变成为人们普遍接受的美语呢？
Who First Said "Long Time, No See" And In Which Language?
How many times has the average person been greeted with the phrase "long time, no see" after running into an old acquaintance? My guess is plenty. 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 first time "long time, no see" appeared in print was in the 1900 Western "Thirty-One 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, by William F. Drannan. That last part of the novel"s very long title is relevant here, as it gives a good indication of the kind of story Drannan wanted to tell.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Drannan used the phrase to describe an encounter 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," and at the same time presented the gun with breech foremost."
The phrase would be used in a similar way in Jeff W. Hayes" Tales of the Sierras, another Western published in 1900. Once again, the phrase was attributed to an American Indian, "Ugh, you squaw, she no long time see you: you go home mucha quick."
While Drannan"s book was the first time this exact phrase appears in print, the exact origins of "long time, no see" are the subject of ongoing debate among linguists and historians.
The second widely accepted etymological explanation is that the phrase is a loan translation* from the Mandarin Chinese phrase "hǎojǐu bújiàn", which means exactly "long time, no see."
Eric Patridge"s "Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British traces the term to the early 1900s, but says it has Asian origins and was brought back to England by members of the British Navy, who picked it up 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 it involves members of the U.S. Navy. An excruciating letter published in Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy, Volume 13 includes the following:
"Then Ah Sam, ancient Chinese tailor, familiarly known as "Cocky," after taking one good look at the lieutenant said, "Ah, Lidah, you belong my velly good flend. Long time no see you handsome facee.""
As the Applied Applied Linguistics blog points out in the debate over whether "long time no see" has Native American or Chinese origins. "The earliest written usages are all native English speakers "reporting" the speech of non-native speakers, from about 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 time no see" began to evolve from a phrase in broken English to a standard way to greet an old 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 Farewell, My Lovely, Moose Malloy drolly tells his ex-girlfriend Velma, "Hiya, babe. Long time no see." And in 1949, the poet Ogden Nash published his poem "Long Time No See, Bye Now" in The New Yorker. The poem introduces us to Mr. Latour, "an illiterate boor" who "calls poor people poor instead of underprivileged."
Today, the phrase "long time no see" is so widespread as a greeting that there"s nothing to indicate the term"s origins, be they Native American or Mandarin Chinese.
Given its ubiquitous usage in books, conversations, movies, songs and television programs, the phrase is now widely identified with American culture. So much so that it was included in Ya Gotta Know It!: A Conversational Approach to American Slang for the ESL Classroom. Long time, no see has gone from pidgin English to entrenched, American English slang in little over a century.
*Editor"s Note: For those, like me, who are new to the term "loan translation, the Merriam-Webster"s online dictionary defines the term as "a 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)."
普通人碰见老熟人的时候说到过多少次“long time, no see”呢？我猜一定有过很多次吧！可是从语法上看起来很别扭的神句“long time no see”怎么就能摇身一变成为人们普遍接受的美语呢？
这说起来至少有两种比较大的可能。
“long time, no see”首次见于出版物是在1900年由韦斯顿出版社出版、威廉·F·卓南所著的《翻山越岭三十一年》中，此书又名《在遥远的西部狩猎、捕获、侦查和与印第安人作战的一生的真实记录》。这本小说冗长的标题并非多余，因为它提示我们卓南想讲述的是个什么样的故事。
根据《牛津英语词典》，卓南曾使用这个短语来描述他与之前遇见过的一位美洲土著见面时的情景：“我知道他已经认出我了。当我们策马上前时他说：‘早！Long time no see you,’同时先将枪枪口朝后递了过来。”
这个短语可能被杰夫•W•海斯在《谢拉山脉传奇》，韦斯顿出版社1900年出版的另一本书里以类似的方法使用过。这次这个短语还是出自美洲印第安人之口：“喔唷，你家娘子，she no long time see you:你归家去罢赶紧滴。”
尽管这个短语首次付梓见于卓南的作品，可“long time, no see”的确切起源却一直是语言学家和历史学者争论不休的对象。
第二种广泛为人接受的词源学解释是这个短语是从中国的汉语“hǎojǐu bújiàn”中“借译”*而来的，其意思正是“long time, no see”。
埃里克·派崔吉的《英美外来语词典》中将这个短语追朔到了20世纪早期，但指出其始于亚洲，并且是由英国海军带回英格兰的。他们遇到过使用洋泾浜英语的中国人，学会了说这句话。
还有另外一种解释支持后面这个理论，不过牵扯到了美国海军。在美国海军标准出版社出版的《我们的海军》第13卷中的一封精心写就的信札里有这样的话：
“接着阿三，这位古老中国的裁缝被人称作‘山鸡’，他打量了中尉一眼，说‘嗯，李大，你是我的好盆友。Long time no see you handsome facee.’”
“应用语言学博客”在“long time no see”是源于美洲土著还是出自中国的争论中指出：“该句最早运用于书面写作的时间大约是在1840年到1915年，内容全都是英语国家的人‘转述’非英语国家者的讲话……那个时代的文学作品充斥着出自非英语国家人们之口的程式化英语——它能让我们信得过吗？”
伴随20世纪的脚步，“long time no see”开始从一句不标准的英语短语变成向久未谋面的老友问候时的标准句式。1920年，这句神句登上了《好管家》杂志。小说家雷蒙·钱德勒[1]在其作品中不止一次用到该句。在《别了，我的至爱》[2]中，穆斯·马洛伊诙谐地对他的前女友维尔玛说：“你好，宝贝儿。Long time no see.” 奥格登•纳什[3] 1949年在《纽约客》上发表了诗歌《Long Time No See, 再见》。这首诗向我们介绍了拉图尔这样一位“目不识丁的粗人”，他“直呼穷人为穷人，而非‘社会权益受剥夺者’。”
如今，神句“long time no see”作为问候语已经广泛流传开来，到底是来自美洲土著、中国汉语还是阿拉伯语（有人说该句来源于وقتطويلجدالاترى, lam naraka mundhu muddah，阿拉伯语中的“long time, no see”），其起源已无法从字面上看出来了。
鉴于其在书籍、对话、电影、歌曲和电视节目里已无处不在，这个短语现在很大程度上已经融入了美国文化。它甚至已被收入ESL课程[4]里的《你必须知道：美国俚语对话教程》。在一个世纪略多一点的时间里，“long time no see”已经由一句洋泾浜英语变为根深蒂固的美式英语俚语。
*编辑的注释：对那些跟我一样第一次接触到“借译”这个术语的人来说，韦氏在线词典给出了它的定义：“通过翻译一种语言的各个组成部分而将其引入到另一种语言中去的复合词、衍生词或短语（例如从德语Übermensch借译而来的superman）。”
译注：
[1]雷蒙·桑顿·钱德勒（1888—1959），美国推理小说作家，对现代推理小说有深远的影响。
[2]一部英国广播剧。
[3]奥格登·纳什（1902－1971），美国荒诞诗歌大师。
[4]ESL课程：英语作为第二语言课程
