Thread: long time no see
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Old 06-29-2008, 12:11 AM   #1
Frank van den Eeden
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Default long time no see
long time no see

I used that expression yesterday in a post to Mercedes (Miscellaneous).
It is a common expression in the UK.
But then I thought, where does it come from, and looked it up :
"Long time no see" Is an English expression used when people haven't seen each other in a while. It probably originates from a Chinese expression, hence the non-English syntax. The Simplified Chinese is 好久不见 ('hao jiu mei jian' or 'ho noi mou gin' in Cantonese) which literally means, "very long-time no see". An alternative, though less convincing, theory is that it comes from Native American Pidgin English, or an imitation of such speech.


好久不见


Frank.
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