edewa shoes

[Daniel Long]

My research on contact languages in Japan has drifted into so-called Bamboo
English.  The only written sources I have found are a 1967 article by J.S.
Goodman from Anthropological Linguistics, and four articles from American
Speech on the English used during the U.S. occupation of Japan and Korean
War.

There are some words I cannot explain and I was wondering if you could help.

Edewa shoes, glossed as 'sandals'.   I sat with a Korean friend who is a
linguist while he racked his brain to think of where this could have come
from.   He could not think of anything.  It is not Japanese either.
The Bamboo English retelling of Cinderella (of dubious origin and dubiouser
authenticity) from an American Speech article by Grant Webster in 1960 has
the following as the prince hurriedly tries the shoe on the ugly sister:
"Edewa shipsho bali-bali ugly jo-san".   Korean shipshio and ppali-ppali,
English ugly, Japanese joosan, but what is "edewa"?

Danny Long

-
Daniel Long, Associate Professor     tel  +81-426-77-2184
Japanese Language and Literature Dept.    fax  +81-426-77-2140
Tokyo Metropolitan University
1-1 Minami Osawa, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo  192-0397 Japan
mailto:dlong at bcomp.metro-u.ac.jp
http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/long/