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:
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."
Some Algonquian language with lenition, then?
And loss of final consonants.
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