7.170, Sum: Children's games
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LINGUIST List: Vol-7-170. Fri Feb 2 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 270
Subject: 7.170, Sum: Children's games
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Date: Fri, 02 Feb 1996 16:52:23 GMT
From: WIED6480 at VARNEY.IDBSU.EDU ("Jack Wiedrick")
Subject: Sum: Children's games
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 1996 16:52:23 GMT
From: WIED6480 at VARNEY.IDBSU.EDU ("Jack Wiedrick")
Subject: Sum: Children's games
I would like to offer my thanks to all those who answered my
question about child-game terminology in various languages. The
responses were too numerous to allow citation here or personal thank-
you replies, but for you who answered, you know who you are, and I
thank you very sincerely. (Another reason why I am reluctant to
relinquish my sources is that in a fit of idiocy I accidentally
deleted about four or five of them from my e-mail box! So, if you
sent in a response which is not covered here or even mentioned,
that's why. Please feel free to write the list and cite it as an
addendum to this summary.)
I did get quite a few responses, but most of the languages of the
world were, unfortunately, not covered. So this summary is not as
broad-based as I would have liked to make it, but what the data lacks
in breadth it makes up for in depth of information. The best-
attested languages I have data for are Germanic ones from northern
Europe, including English, of course. There is a light sprinkling of
others, too, including such diverse languages as Turkish and Hebrew.
The format is as follows. For those who want the quick and
dirty, the first section of this summary is just an alphabetical list
of languages and terminology from those languages. Following that
will be a section which includes more peripheral information relating
to the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic structure
of the terms (where this information is available). Enjoy!
_Language_ _Game_ _Role__
Afrikaans touch ?
Chinese ? guei
Danish tik, tagfat, du-er-den den der er den
Dutch tikkertje, diefje-met-verlos,
verstoppertje hem, het
English tag, tick, tickerit, hide'n'-
seek, kick-the-can, blind-man's
bluff, fox-and-geese it, he, on, on
it, hit, (have)
the mang, the
mannie
French (jouer) chat, (jouer a) la pie le chat, la pie
German fangen, einkriegen es, bist/ist/etc.
Hebrew maxbo'im ha-omed, ha-tofes
Japanese onigokko oni
Norwegian sisten, tikken, sura, doktor-
sisten (har)'n
Portuguese ? pegador
Spanish ? la mancha,
gallito ciego
Swedish burken (aer/har) burken,
aer, han
Thamizh (Tamil) kaNNAmUchchi, iceboy(s) ?
Turkish ? ebe
Well, that's the lot. The more detailed information is as
follows:
Afrikaans The word 'touch' seems to be a loan from English. To
signal that the turn has passed, the old person says to
the new person: _jy het die touch_ 'you have the touch'.
Chinese I don't know the tonal behaviour of _guei_, but the word
itself means 'demon/devil/etc', and may possibly have
come into use through Japanese influence in Taiwan.
(This word is reported from Taiwan only.) The character
used is the same one used in Japanese to write _oni_.
Danish Although one says _du er den_ 'you are it' to change
turns, _den_ '(common gender) it/that (one)/etc' by
itself cannot be used as a subject if referring to the
game-role. Instead, _den der er den_ 'the one that is
it' or something similar is used.
Dutch I got some mixed responses here. At least one person
claimed that _het_ 'it' was acceptable, but others
seemed to feel that only _hem_ 'him' was appropriate in
this context. One respondent suggested that there was a
slight semantic differentiation between the two in this
context, with _hem_ being used to assign role-status, eg.
_hij was hem_ 'he was "him" (ie. "it")', vs. _het_ which
is used to check who was doing the tagging, eg. _was zij
het?_ 'was she the one?'. At any rate, all respondents
agreed that _hem_ was the normal term to refer to the
game-role, regardless of the gender of the referent. It
apparently cannot be used free-standingly, as English
'it' can, and is generally unstressed and pronounced as
[@m] (where @=schwa). The phrase _je bent'm!_ 'you are
"him"!' is used when tagging. _Diefje-met-verlos_ means
'prisoners'-base' and is a variant of the game where a
free-area of sorts is introduced where players may go to
escape tagging temporarily. _Verstoppertje_ corresponds
to English 'hide-n-seek'.
English I hadn't expected to get so much information on English,
but there really is a wealth of variation reported. For
instance, there are many places (some places in England
and Australia, at least) where the person is called 'he'
rather than 'it'. In these places, 'he' is used for both
male and female players. In North-east Scotland, a
variant 'hit' was reported (relic of older pronunciation
of 'it'), although the usual term in this area was
apparently 'the mannie' (='the man') when referring to the
game-role. Another interesting variant was reported from
North Staffs, England: 'tickerit' (or shortened 'tick') as
the game-name, and the chaser said 'tick!' when tagging;
this was analyzed by at least one person from this area
as 'tick or hit' (later as 'tick or it'). 'Tick' was
also reported from Dudley, England. In Dudley, however,
the person chasing was said to be 'on' rather than 'it',
and other places in England as well report 'on'
(Newcastle-upon-Tyne) or even 'on it'. There was
apparently another related game in Dudley where the
person chasing was said to have 'the mang' (pronounced
[mejng], where "ng"=velar nasal stop). There is of course
also a great variety of other related games, including
hide-n-seek (the seeker must find hidden players), blind-
man's-bluff (the chaser is blindfolded), fox-and-geese
(involves following trails in the chase process) and kick-
the-can (involves--or used to involve--the goal of
kicking a centrally-located can to gain amnesty). All of
these games may also have safe locations ("[home]base")
or counting or whatnot. The most common way to signal a
turn-change in the US seems to be by calling out 'You're
it!', or 'Tag! You're it!'. A few people offered
speculations as to what 'it' might refer to. One person
suggested that it was a frozen form from Middle English,
and another that it was originally exophoric in referring
to something on the order of a goblin or monster.
French The most responses I got were from France, where _le
chat_ 'the cat' seems to be the rule. In New Brunswick,
however, the form _la pie_ 'the magpie' is apparently a
metaphorical extension of a clipping of _la pie voleuse_
'the stealing magpie'. In New Brunswick, a variation was
reported where there existed a safe spot where one could
rest for just as long as it took to say _un, deux, trois,
pie rouge!_ 'one, two, three, red magpie!'.
German In both Germany and Austria, _fangen_ 'to catch/chase' is
the game-name, and the role is _es_ 'it', just as in
English, with one important difference: _es_ cannot carry
lexical stress, and is frequently reduced where possible,
eg. _ich bin's_ 'I'm "it"' vs. _du bist es_ 'you're
"it"'. From Berlin, though, the variant _einkriengen_
'to catch (colloq.)' was reported, and the assignment of
role-status was achieved solely by use of the copula, eg.
_er ist_ 'he is' or _du bist_ 'you are', etc. This could
be strongly stressed if answering a question about whose
turn it was. The Berlin informant also suggested that
these reduced clauses could be clipped versions of _du
bist dran_ or _du bist abgeschlagen_. There was also a
variation on the game called _Franzoesisch Einkriegen_
'French tag', where the tagger got to kiss the tagee. (I
seem to recall something on that order here in the US,
too, also called, appropriately enough, "French tag".)
As a little side-note, a German second-language learner
reported that their high school German class would
initiate the game in class after greeting each other with
_Guten Tag_ or _Tag_, apparently drawing on the spelling
similarity, and despite the large difference in
pronunciation (in German, _tag_ is pronounced [tak], vs.
English [taeg], where "ae" is a low front vowel.)
Hebrew Don't know much here. The game is apparently called
_maxbo'im_ 'hiding places', and the chaser must stand,
close eyes, count, etc. He or she is referred to as
_ha-omed_ 'the stander'. Another variant, perhaps more
like my "tag", is where the game-role is called _ha-
tofes_ 'the catcher'.
Japanese I already kind of talked about this one, but in case some
didn't notice the original post, the game-role is referred
to as _oni_ 'demon/devil/imp/goblin/etc', and the game is
called _onigokko_, which means 'demon game'. When tagging
someone, one cries out with _oni!_ or _oni da!_ '(you)
are oni!', or some version therof.
Norwegian There is some dialectal variation in the game-names,
including _sisten_ (which all respondents analyzed as
'the last one'), _tikken_, and _sura_ (the latter
two don't seem to have a very active meaning outside the
game context). _Sisten_ seems by far to be the most
common. On the turn-change, one says something like _du
har'n!_ 'you have it!'. The _har'n_ is a contraction of
_har den_ 'have it'. Some places say _sisten!_ or even
_siss!_ here, but the game-role is still the person who
_har sisten_ 'has "sisten"', and not *_er sisten_ 'is
"sisten"'. Another possible name for the game role is
_han_ '(masc. inanimate, not neuter) it'. Varieties of
the game include a spreading-virus version, where the
whatever is passed along until everyone _har'n_; another
is called _doktor-sisten_ 'doctor-"sisten"', where the
one who is touched has to hold their hand over the spot
and chase in that manner until touching someone else.
Portuguese All I know is that the game-role is called _pegador_,
which means 'hitter' in Spanish, but which my informant
glossed as 'catcher'.
Spanish I have only information for Argentina, but there the role
(and game??) is called _la mancha_ 'the spot/stain'.
Another variety, similar to English blind-man's-bluff, is
called _gallito ciego_ 'blind rooster' (pronounced
[gaz^ito sjego], where "z^" is a voiced alveolar
fricative.)
Swedish The only game-name I recieved was _burken_ 'the can', and
in this game the role is also referred to as either _har
burken_ 'have the can' or _aer burken_ 'is the can' (the
description I received of this game seemed very similar
to English kick-the-can). Other varieties of game-role
terms are _X aer_ 'X is' or _han (<har den)_ 'has it'.
Thamizh In this language (spoken in southern India), the game is
(Tamil) called either _kaNNAmUchchi_ or (English, I presume?)
'iceboy(s)'. The etymology is apparently uncertain, but
the word may be related to _kaNNu~_ 'eye', _pUchchi_
'insect', _kaNNa mUDu~_ 'close (your) eyes', or none of
the above. (The pronunciation is as follows: a capital
letter indicates either a retroflex consonant or a long
vowel; double letters indicate geminates, I assume; and
the symbol "u~" is taken to indicate a high central
lax vowel. I have no idea whether orthographic "h"
indicates aspiration or affrication.
Turkish All I know is that _ebe_ means 'midwife', of all things!
Well, I hope everyone enjoyed reading this long and tiresome account;
I certainly enjoyed getting the data, and am now much better educated
on the topic than before. Linguistic universals were not to be found
anywhere, even with this limited sample, but I think the above
account testifies strongly to a common humanity, which is even better.
:-)
Thanks again to all who contributed.
Jack Wiedrick
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