Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 19:30:36 -0400 From: "Peter L. Patrick" Subject: Re: South East Missouri /IG-nert/ Interesting line here. I'm familiar with "ignorant" in the meaning described from Jamaican Creole, eg: im jos gwaan ignarant "she just acted ignorant" or im ignarant mi where it's a verb. It means something like "rude" as Peter said, but can even be "abus(iv)e": how a person acts who hasn't been brought up right (no HT, to return to an earlier strain). Cassidy, in "Jamaica Talk" (1961), calls it "a frequent folk malapropism for 'indignant'" and indeed it shares some of that feeling. But I think FGC may be wrong on this: the opposite of ignorance is education, which is invested with all kinds of wonderful properties in Jamaica including class, taste and good behavior. (If only it were true!) This is an interesting case of sharing across the diaspora... --plp