Query: alleged word "mingya"

[Joanne M. Despres]

Just for the record, my grammar school was located in Methuen, a town
that borders on Lawrence and draws a great many relocating
Lawrencians.  I suppose many on this list would be aware aware
that Lawrence is a mill town roughly 25 miles north of Boston that
has traditionally attracted a very large immigrant population,
including (among many others) Italians, particularly during the first
half of the twentieth century.  Within the past 30 years or so, many
second- and third-generation European and Middle Eastern
immigrant families have moved to neighboring towns and the
demographics of the city have shifted heavily in favor of Latinos,
mainly from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Joanne

On 6 Jan 2003, at 11:07, George Thompson wrote:

> Indeed, I had been discussing this word just last week with a friend, and had been intending to post it here.
>
> The friend is 50+, from Lawrence, Mass., and Jewish.  He knew the word from his high school friends.  He and his older brother and sister used to use it, rather in the spirit of showing how the natives back in Lawrence talked.  I haven't heard it since I left Boston and stopped seeing them.
>
> He illustrated the word for my son by saying that it might be said in response to an astonishing bit of news: "Mingya!!" (as Peter Farruggio says, = Wow or Holy shit) or to add emphasis to an expression:"Mingya, will you get moving!"  He regarded the word as a shibboleth of Lawrence, and said
that someone he knew said he had once, in passing a group of soldiers in the Nam, overheard one of them say "mingya".  He had immediately stopped and said, "OK, what part of Lawrence do you come from?"
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African
> Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.
>