A German dialect form used as slang by black GI's

[David Bowie]

From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET>

: When I was first stationed in Heilbronn, a town in the
: Schwaebisch-dialect region of Germany (a point driven home by the fact
: that the towns of Schwaebisch-Hall and Schwaebisch-Gemuend were only a
: couple of kliks away), I noticed that my fellow black G.I.'s used a
: slang term that new to me: "COOKamo." From context, it was clear that
: this meant, "Take a look (at this)," "Look (here)," and was even used
: as a kind of sentential adverbial: "Look (here), that's not what I was
: trying to say." Later, I began to notice that the local "indigenous
: personnel" also used this word *very* often in conversations that were
: otherwise totally in German...

<snip>

: To make along story short, a grammar of the Schwaebisch dialect showed
: me that Standard German "Gucke einmal!", literally "Look one time!"
: (this literal translation may be a little strange in standard English,
: but it's perfectly grammatical in BE), "Take a look!", "Look here!",
: etc. was, in the Schwaebisch dialect, none other than "Kucke 'mo!"
: Problem solved.

As someone who lived for a short time (autumn/winter 1990-1991) in Heilbronn
as a civilian, i never heard the anglicized version of this that i noticed,
but i was definitely familiar with the German form, though i knew it as
"Guck(e) mal!", where "Guck(e)" (the final schwa is optional) is the
imperative form for 'look', and "mal" is a word that softens the command,
making it polite rather than imperious (or that makes it even more
imperious, if a certain amount of sarcasm is involved).

I think what you heard as "COOKamo" is more likely to come from "Gucke mal!"
than "Gucke einmal!", since i would expect that the Neckarschwaebisch for
the latter would come out, anglicized, as something more like "COOKoymo"
than "COOKamo".

David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.