"Pop-Pop" revisited

[Beverly Flanigan]

Ah, but that's a whole nother set--mormor, morfar, farmor, and farfar (I
think I have them right--mother's mother, mother's father, etc.).  My
sister is mormor to her grandson, but her husband (were he alive) would be
morfar.  I've never heard pa-pa used for grandfather among Scandinavian
Americans, but I've been away from Minnesota for a long while.  (My
colleague, who knows Finnish and Swedish pretty well, says his Finnish
in-laws use Pa-pa for g-father, but he's never heard Swedes do so.)

But I do think Richard Harris may have been misheard as saying PApa (same
vowels), which seems very English to me.

At 06:38 PM 6/3/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>Those who use "mor-mor" for grandmother, use "pa-pa" (equal emphasis, equal
>vowels, not PA-p@ or p at -PA) for grandfather.  In my acquaintance these are
>Minnesotans of Swedish descent, but perhaps it is more widespread(?)  Anyway,
>this pa-pa could also be mis-heard as "pop-pop".
>--Tom Kysilko
>
>Quoting Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>:
>
> > And one more:  If she did say Papa, that's not far from Papaw, which IS
> > grandfather in much of the Appalachian/South Midland region (Mamaw is
> > grandmother).  In fact, I've heard Papa and Mama used for grandparents too,
> > but rarely.
> >
> > That doesn't negate your suggestion that Pop Pop might also have wider
> > currency, of course.  The books I have on British English don't deal with
> > lexical variation very much, but I wonder if anyone knows whether either
> > Papa/Papaw or Pop Pop is used in Britain?
> >
> > At 08:25 AM 6/3/2004 -0400, you wrote:
><snip-snip>
> > >At least I heard it as "Pop-Pop", and I played the tape three or four
> times
> > >to check.  Harris mumbled the title; it could have been "Papa" but that
> > sounds
> > >unlikely as a title for one's grandfather.
> > >        - James A. Landau