Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I am the walrus


I just learned a new word in Menominee from Bloomfield's Lexicon:  kookookechoo (rendered to be readable to Mr. Verb's non-linguist fans), meaning 'fat person'.  Funny thing is, I checked around the internets for lyrics and several sites give "goo goo ga joob" or something similar.  I sure always heard those initial consonants as voiceless!  But here it's "coo-coo-ca-choo."

3 comments:

John Cowan said...

In "I am the walrus" it's "goo goo g'joob"; in "Mrs. Robinson" it's "koo koo ka choo".

I once asked linguist Mark Rosenfelder what he thought the connection might be, and he replied "They got their dope from the same dealer, I guess."

Anonymous said...

Some Algonquian language with lenition, then?

John Cowan said...

And loss of final consonants.