Irish Gaelic

[Jonathan Lighter]

Simple assertion does get us nowhere.  If - and I speak as a celtolinguistic moron - the word is phonetically, semantically, and socially plausible as an English etymon, it's another semifinalist with some plausibility.

Ideally, we'd like to have an unmistakable citational antedating with the Irish spelling or an approximation of it in an Irish context saying something like "playin' 'at divil's ceas music de whole night t'rough!"  That kind of citation shows up in the OED frequently, though not, obviously, in this case.

Jerry Cohen has seriously called into question the idea that "jazz" was applied to the music by people, presumably in or around N.O., who were familiar with the sexual sense of the word. The fact *seems* to be that "jazz music" was applied first to "Livery Stable Blues" and similar pieces as played by "The Original New Orelans Jazz Band" in Chicago.  Of course other N.O. musicians were playing even bluesier music at the same time, but my limited research seems to support Jerry's conclusion that this early generation of black "jazzmen" went right on calling their music "ragtime," which was certainly one of its prime ingredients.  In those long dead days before ubiquitous mass-media publicity, there was no pressing need to "repackage" the music as something brand-new. It was just extra-bluesy ragtime with a few other ideas, and guys like Jelly Roll had been playing it for years. By 1918, its newest aficionados were routinely calling it "jazz."

If a pre-1912 cite ever appears, esp. outside of San Francisco, the entire linguistic picture might very well change. The musical picture hasn't and wouldn't.
Jazz < ceas ?  I don't know.  At least there is some plausibility there. For the moment.

 If Cassidy is in error about the Irish prununciation or meaning, well, that's another story.

JL


Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Irish Gaelic
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I by no means claim much more than almost a reading knowledge of Irish
Gaelic - well, I recognize when I see it, but I have studied it
formally with a native speaker of the Munster dialect who is a
professor of Irish at UC Dublin and I have a few problems with some of
Prof. Cassidy's claims, some of which seem to be unsupported.

E.g. what are the circumstances under which "teas" can be given a
citation pronunciation that corresponds, however roughly, to an English
word spelled "jazz" or "jass"? In the Munster dialect, this string has
the pronunciation [t,aes], in which [t,] is a sound like the "soft" "t"
of Russian, [ae] represents "aesc," and [s] is the "-ss" of "mess." And
if the "t" of "teas" is soft to the point of shifting to "ch" in Prof.
Cassidy's dialect, then how does the "l" of "uile" escape this shift to
move in the opposite direction and receive the hard pronunciation of
"ila," presumably [il@], and not the soft pronunciation of "ilyih"
[il,I]?

I'm willing to grant that "teas" could, or even would, be heard as
[Caes]. But how do we get to "jass" or "jazz" from there? Not by merely
stating that that's what happened, surely?

-Wilson Gray


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'