"Yo"

[Dennis R. Preston]

Weren't there pizza places in the 14th or 15th Century known as
"Shakey's" (presumably the kind of place you'd go for a morning pizza
after a night out)? I seem to remember that they had a sign on the
wall that went something like this:

Shakey's made a deal with the bank:
The bank won't make pizzas;
Shakey's won't accept checks.

Probably not their original, but I first noticed it there I thnk.

So, Beverly, tell your student to go back to his German professor and
tell him or her that us linguists are willing to make the same deal
about teaching German if they'll reciprocate.

dInIs

PS: 'Course if they'd like to continue contributing to FOLK
etymologies (my personal favorite), let them go full speed ahead.




>At 7:16 PM -0400 9/19/01, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>
>>A student of mine said that his German professor insists that "yo" is a
>>shortening of German "jawohl"--and he gave a long explanation of why which
>>I can't remember.  I can't buy this at all, but has anyone else heard
>>it???  Could it have been "PA dutchified"?
>
>      Germans do not use "jawohl" as a vocative, and they do not
>shorten "jawohl" to "yo." The suggestion of the German professor
>seems implausible.
>
>---Gerald Cohen

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736