Same old

[Douglas G. Wilson]

I've done a little reading. Jonathon Green was kind enough to provide his
input. Not much new.

The earliest I found "same ol' same ol'" is in Major's "Dictionary of
Afro-American Slang" (1970) (p. 100).

The earliest I found "samo-samo" is in "American Speech" 30(1):44-8 (1955)
(p. 46) (A. M. Z. Norman, "Bamboo English").

Norman does not give any reason for the appearance of this form, but he
attributes it to the Japanese speakers of 'bamboo English' (= 'pidgin
English of the occupation') rather than to the Americans. He does note that
there were other reduplications, but these are characteristic of 'pidgin'
more than of Japanese, I think, and there is no other unexpected "-o".

As for what it is that was reduplicated, I still suspect that it may have
been "same old", i.e., that the "-o" came from English "old".

However, I did find a single case in which a gratuitous "-o" was affixed to
something in a quotation from a Japanese speaking 'English': whether this
was simply an American's perception of a terminal Japanese "-u", I don't
know, and this was a unique occurrence ("all-night-sleep-o house" was the
expression IIRC, probably = "inn" [whatever it is, the speaker was pointing
out that a certain district was rural and didn't have any of them]). I
found one instance of "PX-o" from Korea, but I can't tell whether this is
spoken by a Korean or not: it was just an item in a word list.

It is possible that "samo" or even "samo-samo" was simply a nonsense
augmentation of "same" by American servicemen ("That's how we used to say
'same' in Tijuana, maybe it'll work here too" or "I think these people will
understand English if you repeat each word slowly, with 'o' or 'a' on the
end; they understood me fine that way in Manila").

-- Doug Wilson