Kopi is a popular drink in Singapore and Malaysia. However, visitors may find it mind-blowing when it comes to ordering the drink because there are different combinations of milk, sugar, teh ‘tea’, and peng ‘ice.’ For example, the multilingual coffee sachet above indicated “Kopi-O Kosong” – kopi stands for ‘coffee’ in Malay; O refers to 烏 ‘black,’ in Hokkien, and kosong in Malay means ‘zero, empty.’ So, if you order Kopi-O Kosong, you’ll get a black coffee, without milk and sugar. Another interesting Malay word is cap as in Cap Tabik. Cap means a brand or trademark (the word was spelt chap before the 1972 Joint Rumi Spelling (Ejaan Rumi Bersama)). Tabik means ‘salute.’ In A Dictionary of the Malay Language: Malay-English (1894: 324), chap was defined as “A ‘chop,’ a seal; the seals used by Malays of rank in lieu of signatures, and which are more respected than letters which are merely signed; letters bearing seals; the letters from a Malay Râja; to print, to engrave, to lithograph.”1 In A Malay-English Dictionary (1901: 256), besides providing the meanings, it also mentioned the Hindustani word chhap.2 Why did these dictionaries mention chop and chhap when defining cap. We’ll see the relationships among these three words shortly.
According to Hobson-Jobson (1886), a chop was “a seal-impression, stamp, or brand.”3 The word originated from Hindustani chhāp. Chop was an important word in Pidgin English which was spoken in the trading ports of China. Among its uses in the Pidgin were a seal, stamp, mark, permit, licensed document, etc. An example of a chop identifying a person was given in the article “Shroff.” A company may have its own chop too. In addition to serving the function of identification, a chop also denotes agreement and authority. That’s why a line on the receipt on the right read like this: “this receipt is recognized with our chop and sign.”
The following event was recorded at the commencement of the First Opium War. A Chinese admiral demanded an opium vessel to sail away because the Emperor of China prohibited importation of opium into China.4
“That Emperor send chop makee strong talkee, must drive away all ship, my chin, chin you, Mr. Captain; katchee anchor, makee walkee, my can talkee that Ison Tuck (Viceroy) all ships have go away!”
The word chop was used here to refer to a decree. That should be understood as ‘the’ (That Emperor, that Ison Tuck) since Pidgin English used that as both a demonstrative and a definite article. In order to keep the vocabulary of the Pidgin at a manageable size, words with partially overlapping meaning or functions tended to be represented by one form only. An example mentioned previously was the verb catchee, as in katchee anchor. Another example was talkee. English has several verbs related to speaking like talk, speak, tell, and say. However, in Pidgin talkee covered the meanings of all these verbs.
Like the Malay word cap, chop also referred to a brand or a trademark. On the left was a playing card of Tiger Beer, a Singapore brand of beer launched since 1932. The brand name was Chop Rimau. Rimau was the shortened from of harimau ‘tiger’ in Malay.
Another use of chop is shown in the example below. A European customer visited a shop and enquired the Chinese shopkeeper about his last purchase. The interaction was conducted through what the author called “Canton-English.” The European said:7
Before time, I have see one small boy stay this shop; he have go country?
The Chinese shopkeeper responded like this:
He catchee chowchow; come one hour so; you wantchee see he?
The customer then continued:
Maskee; you have alla same; before time my have catchee one lucker-ware
box, that boy have sendee go my house, no have sendee one chop?
The Chinese shopkeeper replied:
Sitop litty time; I sendee call-um he come.
This example demonstrated another usage of chop. This time, the one chop mentioned by the European referred to a number of goods of the same brand. Chowchow was the word for ‘eat, food.’ Maskee was a common way to express ‘never mind.’ Alla same came from ‘all the same.’ Pidgin English not only lacked the definite article the, but it also lacked the indefinite article a(n). While the was represented by that, a(n) was expressed as one, as in one lucker-ware box (‘a lacquerware box’) and one small boy (‘a small boy’). Combining existing words to create new meanings was a common way to reduce vocabulary size. For example, before time was ‘previously, last time’ and sitop litty time meant ‘wait for a little while.’ Nouns and verbs were in bare forms. As you can see from the examples have see, have catchee and have sendee, the verbs were not in the past participle form. You may have noticed that the ending -ee was often added after some words, for example catchee, sendee, talkee, makee, and walkee. The feature reflected a characteristic of Chinese speakers pronouncing English words. In fact -ee was not the only vowel ending, the sound “l” could be followed by -a (alla) or -um (callum). Though the addition of extra vowels was mimicking Chinese speakers, Europeans who learnt the Pidgin also picked up this feature as shown in the conversation.
In Giles’s Glossary (1886), chop was given the Chinese translation 號 (hou6) or 字號 (zi6hou6), which denotes a range of meaning including ‘trademark, name of a name, a shop.’5 In Malaysia and Singapore, some traditional shops still include chop in the names of their shops, for example Chop Lum Seng (Chinese name should be read from right to left) is a grocery located in Penang. This usage of chop in the Straits probably began in the late 19th century when large numbers of Chinese immigrants arrived there. One these immigrants was Yeap Chor Ee (1867-1952), a barber turned banker, who arrived in Penang in 1885 and established his first shop called Chop Ban Hin Lee (萬興利) in 1890.6
Travelling traders in the Far East would not be unfamiliar with the term chop dollar. A public official and lawyer in colonial Singapore, Jonas D. Vaughan described the use of chopped dollar in the Straits as follows: “Every Chinese merchant in those days put his Chop on every good dollar that passed through his hands, and the consequence was that dollars got so fearfully marked that they soon lost all traces of any design, dates or figures. Unless chopped a dollar would not be received in payment. In the Straits chopped dollars were some years ago considered the best but now they are refused, and are below par in value.”8 Chop marks, sometimes recognizable as Chinese characters, were stamped on silver coins in order to attest to the genuineness and composition of the coins.
Read up on the use of chop in Hong Kong and Singapore by Lisa Lim here: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1996080/where-does-word-chop-come
1 Clifford, Hugh, and Frank Athelstane Swettenham. 1894. A Dictionary of the Malay Language: Malay-English. Taiping, Perak: The Government Printing Office.
2 Wilkinson, Richard James. 1901. A Malay-English Dictionary. Singapore: Kelly & Walsh, Limited.
3 Yule, Henry, and Arthur Coke Burnell. 1886. Hobson-Jobson Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms. London: John Murray.
4 Bingham, J. Elliot. 1842. Narrative of the expedition to China: from the commencement of the war to the present period, with sketches of the manners and customs of that singular and hitherto almost unknown country. Vol. 1. London: Henry Colburn.
5 Giles, Herbert A. 1886. A Glossary of Reference on Subjects Connected with the Far East. (second edition). Hongkong: Messrs. Lane Crawford & Co.
6 Yeap, Daryl. 2019. The King’s Chinese. Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre.
7 Anonymous. 1836. “Jargon spoken at Canton; how it originated and has grown into use; mode in which the Chinese learn English; examples of the language in common use between foreigners and Chinese”, in Chinese Repository 4:428-35.
8 Vaughan, Jonas Danial. 1879. The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements. Singapore: The Mission Press.