sueter/chompa (WAS Bodega et al.)

[Mike Salovesh]

david swihart wrote:

>   Anyone up for sueter vs. chompa?

It seems to me I said something about this on ADS-L a while back. I was
answering a question about what people call a garment that was
illustrated in a message attachment.  My description of the garment in
the illustration would be "a cable-knit sweater".  Generally speaking,
the garment would have been called a "jumper" on the European side of
the Great Transatlantic Rift.  On this side, a jumper most likely refers
to a sleeveless dress, often in the form of a garment worn over another.

In guatemala, the cognate for "chompa" is "chumpa", usually meaning a
jacket but occasionally extended to what North Americans would call a
sweater.  When I first encountered the word, I thought it probably was
derived from some Indian language of the Maya family.

I was wrong.  I simply didn't associate "jumper" with either "jacket" or
"sweater".  My error gives strong support to my contention that "jumper"
usually doesn't mean "sweater" in my idiolect of U.S. English.

One day I wore a colorful Guatemalan jacket to class, as part of a
planned show-and-tell regarding varieties of Guatemalan weaving.  When I
said the garment was called a "chumpa", one of my students immediately
responded "Oh, a jumper". He was raised in England and South Africa.
That's when I discovered that some speakers of British English would say
jumper where I say sweater.

In the highlands of the Mexican state of Chiapas, nighttime temperatures
frequently call for wearing a jacket -- and on some days a jacket is
needed even in the middle of the day.  Chiapas shares a long border with
Guatemala; in Colonial times, in fact, Guatemala was part of the
Captaincy General of Goathemala rather than directly under the Royal
Audience of New Spain (Mexico).
Despite the geographic and historical relationship between Chiapas and
Guatemala, people from Chiapas don't use the word "chumpa".  Sweaters
are "sueteres", and jackets go by a variety of names, with "chaleco"
probably being the most common.

My guess would be that the dialect difference between "chumpa" (or
"chompa") and "sueter" along the Mexico/Guatemala border must date to
sometime well after Mexico's annexation of Chiapas in the first third of
the 19th century.  That makes sense in terms of the U.S. influence on
Mexican culture generally, compared with stronger British influences on
Guatemala and Central America.

Remember Belize, formerly British Honduras, or the Miskito Coast of
Honduras and Nicaragua.  (The area is often mistakenly called the
"Mosquito Coast", but the name comes from English "musket" rather than
the name of an insect.)  To this day, there are more native speakers of
English-based Creole than of Spanish along Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast.
Creole is the most common language in roughly 40% of the land territory
of Nicaragua.  It is closely related to Jamaican Creole, and both
reflect British influence in the Caribbean.

You know, I'm getting sort of chilly sitting here. I think I'll go get a
sweater, or a jacket, or even one of my Guatemalan chumpas.  There is no
way I'm going to put on one of my wife's jumpers, no matter how low the
temperature may go.

-- mike salovesh                    <salovesh at niu.edu>
PEACE !!!

P.S.:  It occurs to me that my statement about Nicaraguan Creole could
be misinterpreted.  Spanish is the first language of the vast majority
of people in Nicaragua.  Although the Creole-speaking area takes up lots
of space on a map, most of that area is thinly-populated jungle or
uninhabitable swamp.