November 16, 2005

• Why are you crying?
• Nobody know de trubble I seen.
• Ah, so that's where your screenname originates.
• Self-link! Not hip, pretty baby. Well, alright, quite interesting actually.
• Trevor's Law
• "Wow" is Wolof for "yes".
• Wow!
• This author needs to get hep to the jive: hip stems from hep, as in hep cat, I'm hep to it etc. popular back in the 50s on the West Coast. And pre-50s it saw a lot of use among musicians and Beat poets. Ye were either hep or ye weren't -- nope, no half-way hep. Hip faded during the 60s, when it got muddled with hippies instead of hipsters or beatniks. Hasn't really made a comeback yet. But i's lurking in the shadows, the way slang will until it suddenly struts and flaunts back to take centre stage again. Just as not too long ago people started saying cool again. Which I find cool. But where hep comnes from is a mystery.
• "The word hipi, meaning "to open one's eyes," was the putative source..." Like WOW, man! Far out!
• Sorry, bees, but "hep" goes back further than the 1950s. Wikipedia dates it to the 1920s, and I remember a newspaper article which I read in the 1950s which talked about slang used by jazz musicians in the 30s which made all the "new" slang I was using out of date. "Hip", "dig", "cool" and "cat" were in use even before I was born.
• (The article was from the 30s.)
• (The article was from the 30s.)
• I have just downloaded a Wolof - English dictionary: wow - to be dry. Yéré yi wow neñu. The clothes are dry. Mind you, it could be a crap dictionary because it had this in it: ganda - penis. Ganda gu ema baax te saf. A sizeable penis is good and tasty.
• Another sample: maniiwu - semen, sperm. Goór ag jigeen yep a am maniyu. Both men and women has sperm.
• I'd heard similar claims made on behalf of "okay", so I looked it up and found that a Wolof root has been claimed for that one too (though I think the Choctaw origin might be more plausible.) While I was there, I also found that jive is probably also Wolof. Go figure.
• Well, according to this article, the only words pinpointed as coming from Wolof into american idiom are "Juke" and "banjo". Isn't languagehat an expert on this kind of stuff? I want to know more.
• The article is by Jesse Sheidlower, a real linguist and lexicographer who knows whereof he speaks; you can take what he says as representing what can be known at this point. And this is absolutely correct: This linguistic sloppiness does no one any favors. The African-American contribution to American culture—and in particular the African-American linguistic contribution to American popular culture—is robust enough without reaching back to putative West African borrowings. It's sad that the craving for some kind of historical respectability on the part of many African-Americans has led to wholesale distortion of history (as with all the Afrocentric bullshit) and this kind of clutching at false etymologies. There's no need. "Okay" is from OK, left over from a fad of the 1830s for wacky abbreviations. No connection with Africa. And the Wolof word for 'yes' is indeed pronounced (in English terms) "wow," but it's spelled waaw. From my Dictionnaire wolof-français: Ndakaaru nga dëkk? — Waaw! 'Do you live in Dakar? — Yes!'
• Now that's service. Now, surely there are contributions to American English that have African language origins. Where might one find a legitimate resource detaling these?
• Languagehat with the win!
• As it happens, I speak wolof. It strikes me as vanishingly unlikely that "hipi" (which is actually pronounced "khipi" with the gutteral "kh" sound that doesn't exist in English) has anything to do with "hip." And yes, "wow" means "yes." Often people repeat it for emphasis, so to say yes you'll say "wow wow!" which I never tire of saying. The word for dry is pronounced like "whoa." Wolof is the best language ever. I could go on and on about it. A couple other interesting things: the word for grandmother is pronounced like "mom" and the word for evergreen trees sounds a lot like "neverdie." Also, there's a verb for when you plant your crops on the borderline between your field and your neighbor's, so that you get that one extra row at harvest time.
• That article mentions one possible derivation that makes a lot of sense - the verb "to dig" as in, "you dig?" In wolof, "dëgg" means to know or to understand. "Dëgg nge?" or "you understand me?" is very common in casual conversation, like punctuating your speech with "you know?" It seems entirely plausible that "Dëgg?" transitioned into English through wolof-speaking slaves. Funny, I'd never considered that before I read that article.
• I bet there's a word for the cheeky buggers that do it too, itstheclamsname. Naughty neighbours. I've had Chinese friends try to convince me that 'hubba hubba' is a corruption of 好吧，好吧 (hao ba, hao ba) but doesn't seem likely to me.
• Holy shit. Can some of you people start unlearning all the interesting shit you've know? I am getting tired of being the most ignorant idiot here. Thanks.
• quick fact: the origin of the word "honky" actually comes from Wolof, because the wolof word for red is "xonq" (pronounced honk). as in, "you americans come here with your white skin and then the sun burns you and you turn xonq." it really is an awesome language.
• quick fact: And honky, also supposedly from Wolof, actually derives from an African-American pronunciation of Hunky, a disparaging term for a Hungarian laborer; its first recorded use as an insulting term for a white person is found only in the 1950s, considerably too late for African influence to be plausible.
• Holy crap - just when you think The 'hat doesn't roll here anymore he jumps right out at ya! *waves flag, cheers*
• I am getting tired of being the most ignorant idiot here. Thanks. Line forms behind me, big guy.
• [jii be neex]
• Boo!
• Aaigh!! /Homer
• What the hell is this? marmaraan - worm, that feeds on human hair. Fog naa ne dama am marmaraan. I think I have worms feeding on my hair.
• I always thought "Wolof" was a wierd spelling of "Werewolf" -- like how a child might say it. Goddamn; I had no idea of the implications. You people flat out scare me. Must leave this cursed site at once. Not really.
• cynnbad: surely you mean Wurwilf.
• And now for something completely different: fractalid
• oooh... pretty!