Has anyone ever seen an explanation of how the phrase “no can do”, as in “Sorry, no can do!” entered English? Or has it been there all along?
Thanks!
I don’t know, but I’ll guess.
The U.S. Navy Construction Battalion “Sea Bees” motto was, IIRC, “Can Do”. I would suspect that “can do” was already in the lexicon when the Sea Bees adopted it. I can imagine “can do” and “no can do” becoming popular in China before the war as the A.V.G. used pidgin to communicate with the locals.
But I’ll bet the phrase existed before then. There were a lot of big, noisy construction projects going on in the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe “Can do?” and “No Can Do” arose from construction workers contracting their language for clarity.
I’ve often hear the phrase “No can do” followed by “Kemosabe” like it’s an American Indian broken English thing, possibly Tonto. But maybe the Kemosabe was added later.
Could be…but I think it’s just pidgin English. I used to hear it in Vietnam and I’m sure other military types have heard it in foreign ports since England began kicking worldwide ass.
By the way, it’s “Seabees”, not “Sea Bees”. They actually have two mottos: “Can Do” and “Construimus, Batuimus” (We Build, We fight). This has been bastardized to many different forms, including “Can do, but won’t do, so fuck you.”
Legend has it that Cubi Point in the Phillipines was so named from the first letters (more or less) of Can You Build It? This is quite likely apocryphal.