M. Lynne Murphy 104lyn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]muse.arts.wits.ac.za
Department of Linguistics phone: +27(11)716-2340
University of the Witwatersrand fax: +27(11)716-4199
Johannesburg 2050
SOUTH AFRICA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 15:26:50 -0500
From: Ron Butters RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Re: No problemo
. . . is [there] in fact an idiomatic
phrase in Spanish akin to Eng "no problem"?
When I lived in Mexico people said, "No hay problema!"
I've always assumed that was universal in Spanish, but I'm no expert, having
learned what little I know by trying to communicate in Guadalajara by
speaking French with what I perceived to be a Spanish accent. Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't (e.g., don't ever ask for "pescadas sin tetas" in
your Mexican fish market; and "burro" is not 'butter').
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:42:44 CST
From: mpicone MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 12:31:45 CST Ellen Johnson said:
Could someone who speaks Spanish better than me tell us whether this
is in fact an idiomatic phrase akin to Eng "no problem", and if so,
why it isn't "ningun problema", which is the way I probably would have
translated it.
Ellen.johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]wku.edu
The Spanish idiom is _no hay problema_ lit. `there's no problem'.
Mike Picone
University of Alabama
MPICONE[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UA1VM.UA.EDU
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:51:08 CST
From: Ellen Johnson Ellen.Johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WKU.EDU
Subject: official lg
Ok, Dennis, I give up. Does it mean basically that none of the courts
will agree to rule on the constitutionality of this law regarding this
particular case? Are there other plaintiffs waiting to take up the
cause?
Ellen
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:49:22 -0700
From: "Garland D. Bills" gbills[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UNM.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
DInIs's response to this matter accurately characterizes thoughtful
perspectives on the use of "no problemo", "nada" (with stop or flap /d/),
and similar forms that Jane Hill refers to as "junk Spanish". See, for
example, her 1995 article in _Pragmatics_, vol. 5, "Junk Spanish, covert
racism and the (leaky) boundary between public and private spheres". It
seems all too clear that the popular use of Junk Spanish arises from the
same ignorance and racism/ethnicism that led to the popular reaction to
the Oakland resolution on Ebonics.
Garland D. Bills E-mail: gbills[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]unm.edu
Department of Linguistics Tel.: (505) 277-7416
University of New Mexico FAX: (505) 277-6355
Albuquerque, NM 87131-1196 USA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 17:43:34 -0500
From: "Peter L. Patrick" PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.ACC.GEORGETOWN.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
Interesting thread on final -o. Two thoughts. One, is the -(ad)o of
armado and bastinado a final schwa? or whatever the reduction vowel of
Elizabethan English was. It could be a mere matter of spelling schwa
different ways, rather than a r0ounded mid vowel.
Two, since different -o's have already been introduced into
the discussion, John singler has written (somewhere) on the use of
final -o's in West African languages, an areal phenomenon found in
Liberia, nigeria, and a number of African and Caribbean creoles too,
which signals current relevance or personal involvement. (I thjink
it's in his diss., but he also gave a paper called, of course, "The
story of -o" about 10 years ago...) An example from Liberian English:
A na seti gE o! "I am NOT a city girl!"
Nothing to do with "no problemo", but interesting anyway...
--peter
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 16:39:34 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: I've done my best to read the table Donald M. Lance posted,
And thanks to David Carlson for the LAPNW data on 'Missouri'. When we get
records with dotted-i from one field worker and a barred-i, dotted or not,
from another, it is hard be sure that the presence or absence of the dot
means the same thing. One of the many challenges facing dialectologists,
many of which are not beyond suitable solutions.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 15:55:55 -0500
From: Beverly Flanigan FLANIGAN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU
Subject: Re: Homely
As an American woman, I beg to disagree with both Leslie Dunkling and
Dale Coye! My mother and her contemporaries regularly used "homely" to
mean "plain," and that definitely implied "not pretty"--but not
necessarily "ugly." Thus, while "unpretentious" has a neutral or even
nice/commendable connotation, "homely" and "plain" do not (the first is
more negative than the second)--at least in AmEng female-female
discourse! Afterthought: "homely" as a female descriptor may not be
used much anymore; I didn't ever use it, mainly because I rejected the
concept of beauty that was negatively marked by that term.
P.P.S.: "La-di-da" was also used by my mother (b. 1906), to mean
"acting like a grand lady" or "highfalutin." And "homey" would indeed
mean "cozy/warm/comfortable."
Beverly Flanigan
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 17:53:21 -0500
From: "Christopher R. Coolidge" ccoolidg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ZOO.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: -ies Ending
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Grant Barrett wrote:
Reading a sailing magazine from Britain, I came across the word "foulies" which refers to
oilskins or apparel worn during nasty weather. I am also familiar with "Wellies" for Wellington
boots.
I have vague feeling that the -ies ending may be more practiced in Britain than Stateside.
Any thoughts?
Grant Barrett
gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com
That gives me the willies. Or maybe the heebie-jeebies. Anybody wanna
boogie?
I think it's equally prevalent on both sides of the atlantic, but crops
up in different ways. "Foulies" or "wellies" is unheard of here, but as
illustrated we've come up with our own uses of this suffix.
It interests me to know that the machine I'm typing this on is
considered a raincoat in England. :-)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 14:58:27 -0800
From: Peter McGraw pmcgraw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]LINFIELD.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
I doubt very seriously that any language received this expression via
German. "Problem" is a borrowing into German from the Romance languages,
and is still clearly marked as "foreign" by its non-Germanic
final-syllable stress. While "Kein Problem!" is common enough in
present-day German (and while I have admittedly not tried to find it in a
historical dictionary before dashing off this message), it has the "feel"
of one of the countless expressions that have been borrowed or (in this
case) patterned after English.
Peter McGraw
Linfield College
McMinnville, OR
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Ellen Johnson wrote:
Could someone who speaks Spanish better than me tell us whether this
is in fact an idiomatic phrase akin to Eng "no problem", and if so,
why it isn't "ningun problema", which is the way I probably would have
translated it. The mention of German, which would use kein rather
than nein made me wonder about this.
If it is a loan translation from German dressed up as a Spanish
borrowing, this is interesting, as is the re-translation of the phrase
into pseudo-Swahili "hakuna matata", pronounced, to the chagrin of my
friend Lioba, with the last /t/ flapped.
Ellen.johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]wku.edu
p.s. a cultural note: we didn't wrap the houses in toilet paper,
rather we threw the rolls into the branches of trees so it would hang
down and blow in the breeze like streamers, a rather lovely
decoration.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 18:12:10 -0500
From: "Peter L. Patrick" PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.ACC.GEORGETOWN.EDU
Subject: Re: official lg
I'm no expert on the Supremes, but my reading of the decision is the
same as Ellen's (I didn't read the syllabus, but the decision isn't
actually much longer). It seems as if the Court didn't wish to decide
the constitutionality question here, and are waiting for the Ruiz case
(which was expressly held up pending the outcome of this one) to
decide whether to decide. This is probably a good thing-- as in death
cases, the longer they don't decide for sure, the better-- but not
exactly progress toward the light either....
Luckily, I will have the benefit of hearing Dennis's opinion
first-hand on Wednesday (and his army of legal advisers second-hand),
as he is coming to DC to address the Smithsonian forum on usage (also
featuring many of our other mighty ADS-ers, such as E.W. Gilman,
Connie Eble, etc.), and is even coming to my undergrad class to hold
forth! We had a wonderful mock-debate in there today-- I "teach" the
subject every year now, finding that students are fascinated, and have
discovered that the real way to win converts is not to teach it at all
but to let them do it (obvious, I guess, but I had to try my way
first, as always). I figure that no socioloinguistics class should
turn out students who are unprepared to debate English-Only and
Ebonics in public. I decided that a couple years ago in a plane
conversation when I found I couldn't do such a good job on the former
myself...
--peter patrick
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 17:34:29 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply
But Donald is "disturbed" by my explanation, and I'm not sure why.
Donald?
Because /h/ has much more in common distributionally with consonants than
with vowels. I prefer to classify phonemes on the basis of concatenation
features rather than on the basis of articulation in isolation. /h/ is a
consonant that has less oral constriction than others, but it still
functions as a consonant in syllable-structure patterns. Claiming that /h/
is a vowel is misleading.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 16:00:46 -0800
From: "Thomas L. Clark" tlc[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NEVADA.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo, daddy-o
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Dale F.Coye wrote:
Using an -o ending makes a word sound Spanish to Eng. speakers and has for
centuries, no matter whether masculine or feminine in Sp. Armada was armado
in Early Mod. English, bastinado (a torture where you got beaten with a rod)
fr. Sp. bastinada, ambuscado, etc. I think the OED has a section on this
And don't forget "The Cask of Amontillado," which ended in -a, originally.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 19:07:31 -0500
From: Peggy Smith dj611[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
Leslie,
What about cheerio, for heaven's sake?
Peggy Smith
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 19:15:47 -0500
From: Peggy Smith dj611[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU
Subject: Re: -ies Ending
Well, of the top of my head, I can think of wedgies, u-ies, and sillies.
As in: In junior high school, the girls would get a case of the
sillies when they saw a boy get a wedgie when someone pulled up on
his u-ies. How's that?
Peggy Smith
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 19:08:15 -0500
From: Mark Mandel Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM
Subject: Re: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply -Reply
[I asked:]
But Donald is "disturbed" by my explanation, and I'm not sure why.
Donald?
[Donald answered:]
Because /h/ has much more in common distributionally with consonants
than with vowels. I prefer to classify phonemes on the basis of
concatenation features rather than on the basis of articulation in isolation.
/h/ is a consonant that has less oral constriction than others, but it still
functions as a consonant in syllable-structure patterns. Claiming that /h/
is a vowel is misleading.
[I reply:]
Oh, but I agree. I can't quote my post, but I said clearly that while
*phonetically* [h] is a vowel, *phonologically* in AmE /h/ patterns as a
consonant and makes sense only as such.
Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 18:32:05 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: More on -O
Earlier than that, cartoonist T. A.
Dorgan used it prolifically in terms like pippo, kiddo, righto, and in
fictional[?] product names like washo, smoko, polisho, etc. I imagine
Leonard Zwilling's work on TAD would be useful in this area.
I suspect Randy knew I had the Zwilling book, so he gave me an assignment.
Here's what's in A TAD LEXICON, by Leonard Zwilling. ETYMOLOGY AND
LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES, Vol 3. Publsihed by Gerald Cohen, Professor of
Foreign Languages, University of Missouriu-Rolla, Rolla MO 65401. 1993.
The book has 77 pages of citations from Dorgan's cartoons that antedate
entries in a number of references such as the OED Supplement and 46 pages
of "Hitherto Unrecorded Words and Phrases."
p. 119. Quoted here without permission, but the copyright page of the book
doesn't have the dire message about being prosecuted for not getting prior
permission to reproduce passages of the book. Jerry has told me a number
of times that he doesn't mind when people make copies of his work as long
as they give due credit. So I doubt that I'll be sued. He publishes
things as a means of trying to get dialogues going. (I'm not giving the
full text anyway.)
-o Added to nouns, often in advertisements
1905 A cartoon about a boxer being prepared for a fight. Commenting on his
physical condition, he says: See that hump? It used to be bigger. "Rubbo"
did it. See the white spot. "Frecklo" did it.
1908 an ad
Don't be fat
Run 20 miles a day
Eat one meal
Don't sleep
And then drink Skino
( I can't tell for sure from the entry, but I suspect it's an ad within a
cartoon.)
1908 In a cartoon about "Longboat's Marathon Victory Over Dorando"
sign:
Eat Beano
It makes you strong
on runner's shirt:
Smoke Cremo
1909
Bwana Tumbo helpo
(I can't tell from (lack of) context what this means.)
1915 cartoon
Ith a seet little hat -- Like it Alextander?
A pippo
1917 cartoon of "The Headless Horseman"
Just as I'm ridin no hands he bucks an' off I go on me beano.
1920 (ad)
Smello -- Kills the odor of home brew
1921 signEat Bullo
Eat Bullo
1922 (sign in drugstore)
Jazbo tooth paste
Glosso
Braino pills
Hairo pills
Dento
1923 (sign)
Slicko for the hair
Drugstore cowboys all use it.
1928 (signs in stores)
Try Washo
Smoke Smoko
Use Oilo
Ask for Polisho
End of list.
Sorry, no daddy-o. An earlier posting mentioned ads with some of these ads
and speculated that the references in ads may or may not have referred to
actual products. I don't recall the posting very clearly. From Zwilling's
material it seems clear the names were made up.
Among the antedatings he has this entry:
daddy [OEDS 1926]
1913 Apr 15 San Francisco Examiner 11 {Singer:} Here comes my
daddy now ... Oh, pop, oh, pop, oh, pop.
Is 'daddy' that new?
(I'm not really trying to compete with Barry.)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 19:49:30 -0500
From: Leslie Dunkling 106407.3560[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]COMPUSERVE.COM
Subject: Olla podrida
Lynnsie-winnsie is on a par with Jimsy-wimsy, Georgie-Porgie, etc., which I
have always put down to the natural linguistic playfulness of young
children. J.M.Barrie knew a little girl who used to call him her
friendy-wendy. This caused him to invent the name Wendy, which he used in
_Peter Pan_.
Dale F.Coye wrote: "I think I'm right in saying that describing someone's
face as plain in British English generally means not good-looking, or even
ugly."
Collins Cobuild Dictionary equates it directly with American "homely."
Chambers English Dictionary says that it means "deficient in beauty" or
"ugly" in meiosis. (Perhaps that last word explains the difference in
meaning given to "plain" by Beverly Flanigan's mother and a typical British
speaker using his well-known understatement. No doubt, Beverly, those who
indulge in "AmEng female-female discourse" are "plain-spoken," to coin a
phrase. We British males seldom are.)
"An -o ending makes a word sound Spanish to Eng. speakers and has for
centuries, no matter whether masculine or feminine in Sp. Armada was
armado in Early Mod. English, bastinado (a torture where you got beaten
with a rod) fr. Sp. bastinada, ambuscado, etc. I think the OED has a
section on this under -ado."
It does, and the relevant section of the entry doesn't pull any punches:
\-ado, suffix of ns. 1. a. Sp. or Pg. -ado masc. of pa. pple., as El
Dorado the gilded
2. An ignorant sonorous refashioning of ns. in -ade, a. Fr. -ade fem. (=
Sp. -ada, It. -ata) probably after the assumed analogy of renegade =
renegado; e.g. ambuscado, bastinado, bravado, barricado, carbonado,
camisado, crusado, grenado, gambado, palisado, panado, scalado, stoccado,
strappado, all of which in Sp. have (or would have) -ada. So armado obs.
var. of armada.
Mark Mandel asked: Does "toilet paper" mean the same thing on both sides of
the water? In the US it is the stuff used for personal cleanliness after
defecation, and comes in rolls.
No problemo, it means the same thing. (And Mark, I take your point about
the lack of true rhyme.)
L.D.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 17:14:33 -0800
From: Arnold Zwicky zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: Re: /h/ as a vowel?!? -Reply -Reply
don lance says: "Claiming that /h/ is a vowel is misleading."
i believe that the claim was that [h] is a vowel. /h/ is certainly
a consonant in english.
arnold (zwicky[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]csli.stanford.edu)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 20:50:38 EST
From: Michael Montgomery N270053[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VM.SC.EDU
Subject: No subject given
Dear ADSers:
Has anyone ever collected undergraduate malapropisms on grammar tests?
Here's an example to add to the list, from a mid-term exam taken last
week:
"_It's_ is a contraption of _it_ and _is_."
Indeed! What other contraptions are our students learning about in our
courses??
Michael Montgomery
Dept of English
Univ of South Carolina
Columbia SC 29208
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 19:53:49 -0600
From: "Donald M. Lance" engdl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU
Subject: Re: No problemo
Ellen Johnson asks:
why it isn't "ningun problema", which is the way I probably would have
translated it. The mention of German, which would use kein rather
than nein made me wonder about this.
You're right about the Spanish quantifier. It wouldn't have to be a
loan-translation from German. "No problem" could have developed here and
spread to Germany. I can't keep from seeing Schwartzenegger when I hear
"No problemo." You know, in that movie, whatever it was. Definitely not a
Spanish construction. Maybe we should say "Kein problemo," which I
actually have done. Someone mentioned the "rhyme" in "no" and "problemo"
and got corrected. What about assonance?
I wasn't gonna say anything about teepeeing, but since Ellen also mentioned
it, I'll point out that in Columbia MO it may occur at other times of the
year, like at high school graduation, but it is more common at Halloween.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 11:14:24 +0900
From: Daniel Long dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]JOHO.OSAKA-SHOIN.AC.JP
Subject: Re: official lg
Peter L. Patrick wrote:
Luckily, I will have the benefit of hearing Dennis's opinion
first-hand on Wednesday (and his army of legal advisers second-hand),
as he is coming to DC to address the Smithsonian forum on usage (also
featuring many of our other mighty ADS-ers, such as E.W. Gilman,
Connie Eble, etc.)
If it isn't too much trouble, could we have some information about this
(would copies of your talks be too much to ask?) posted on the list? Or
better yet, included on the ADS webpage (which looks real spiffy lately,
I might add)?
Danny Long (who might could go to Washington that day, but probably
won't be able to. . . no, this double modal doesn't seem to work in the
negative)
(Dr.) Daniel Long, Associate Professor
Japanese Language Research Center
Osaka Shoin Women's College
4-2-26 Hishiyanishi
Higashi-Osaka-shi, Osaka Japan 577
tel and fax +81-6-729-1831
email dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]joho.osaka-shoin.ac.jp
http://www.age.or.jp/x/oswcjlrc/index-e.htm
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 23:01:34 -0500
From: "Barry A. Popik" Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Clones; Naples; Daddy-O; My Dad
CLONES:
"Clones" is the name of a town in the County of Monaghan, Northern
Republic of Ireland.
Marc Picard answered by ANS-L query and wrote that Clones is pronounced
in two syllables, and comes from Cluain Eois (Eos Meadow). He had no clue if
the people there were Clones, Cloners, Clonsers, or Clonsians, or whether
there was a gal there named Dolly.
IRISH PLACE NAMES by Deidre Flanagan and Laurence Flanagan (Dublin:
Gill & Macmillan, 1994) is a handy purchase I made on last summer's Ireland
tour. "Cluain" is on pages 56-57 and means "meadow" or "pasture-land" and
"is very common in place names; it is usually Anglicised as 'clon or
'cloon(e)'."
From pg. 192:
CLONEA (Waterford)(Cluain Fhia): Pasture of the deer.
CLONEE (Meath)(Cluain Aodha): Aodh's pasture.
CLONEEN (Tipperary)(Cluainin): Little pasture.
CLONEGALL (Carlow)(Cluain na nGall): Pasture of the stones.
CLONENAGH (Laois)(Cluain Eidhneach): Ivied pasture.
CLONES (Monaghan)(Cluain Eois): Pasture of Eos.
CLONEY (Kildare)(Cluainaidh): Pasture.
CLONEYGOWAN (Offaly)(Cluain na nGamhan): Pasture of the calves.
All that pastureland--Dolly will love it!
------------------------------------------------