eny, meny, miny, mo

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> writes:

>>>>>

At 9:18 PM -0400 7/6/00, Dfcoye at AOL.COM wrote:
>Some adult in my family told us kids (in the 50s) about the older version
>with 'nigger' but instructed us never to say it.   The replacement we were
>taught  (and I don't know how widespread it was), was of all things,
Indian!
> And we lived two miles from the Onondaga Reservation and went to school
with
>them.

Probably employing the already extant process reflected earlier in the
'euphemizing' of the "ten little niggers" doggerel to "ten little Indians".
What a rich cultural heritage we enjoy!
<<<<<

Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot (IIRC) novel that originally was published
as "Ten Little Niggers" later metamorphosed to "Ten Little Indians", and
finally (or perhaps only in the US) to "And Then There Were None".


   Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist and Manager of Acoustic Data
          Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Dragon Systems, Inc.
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/