Pidgin

Chinese Pidgin is something that happens when Chinese and English meet. First developed by the british in the 1600's consequence to the trading ships. Chinese people didn't like the British too much, therefore refused to learn English. The British, needing to communicate created pidgin, a simplified for of english+chinese. The grammer was made very simple and words changed. Pidgin was popularily used 'til the end of the 1700's when people thought is sounded rediculous.

Hab gat lening kum daun - There is rain coming down
Tumulo mai no kan kum - I can't come tomorrow
Mai no hab kachi basket - I didn't bring a basket

over time, pidgin has worked its way into English. Such phrases like, "long time no see", "look see", "no can do", "where to?".

The phrase "no pain no gain" may have come from american made up pidgen used from the chinese laundry services in the old west. Based of the phrase "No tickee, no laundee."

"It is not all unreasonable for the laundryman to require the customer claiming laundry to present a ticket because without it, locating the customer’s clothing is made difficult. Furthermore, someone might claim clothing that did not belong to them. But no Chinese laundryman would have used the phrase, “No tickee, no washee,” or its other forms, “No tickee, no laundee”, or “No tickee, no shirtee” to make this point. The phrase is just one example of the way whites often fabricated pidgin English terms to make fun of the difficulty Chinese had in pronouncing English."

The English probably tease the pronouciation from the sing song girls yelling from their cribs, "Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee!"

Can you think of other phrases that might have come from Chinese Pidgin?

sources : Tickets to Gold Mountain , wikipedia