"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Jonathan Lighter]

To mix up the mix further, I have also heard "gook" ("wog") pronounced to rhyme with "book," though this appears to be a distinctly infrequent approach.

Perhaps cf. the variation between  /hUd/ "thug" as people like me say it, and /hud/ as others do. (Couldn't believe this one either when I first heard it.)  But I say / 'hudl at m /.

Am coming around to the view that "Go figure !" was coined by a linguist.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: "gook" (rhymes with "book")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If "gook" as applied to Filipinos or other foreigners derives from
"goo-goo", we'd expect the pronunciation /guk/ (rhymes with "duke"), and
this is indeed what all the dictionaries give. But other derogatory
senses of "gook" have apparently been pronounced /gUk/ (rhymes with
"book"). Here's a versified example from 1917:

-----
Indiana Evening Gazette (Pa.), March 31, 1917, p. 3/3
There's a moral here for golfing gooks
Who drive into woods and brooks--
'Tis better to toss the texts away
And forget what the golfing experts say,
Like the good old Scot, who learned to play
Ere they thought of golfing books.
-----

(From the context of the verse, a "golfing gook" is a "duffer".)

There's also the 1950s slang term "book gook" for a studious person,
discussed in a post by Doug Wilson about a 1952 article on teen slang:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0408A&L=ads-l&P=R7313

In a follow-up, I mentioned the use of "book gook" in a short 1952 film
available on the Internet Archive called "Young Man's Fancy":
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410D&L=ads-l&P=R355

The protagonist, a slang-slinging teenage girl named Judy Adams,
pronounces "book gook" as /bUk gUk/ in this section of the film:

-----
http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?id=1244
(2:45)
Judy: For Pete's sake, wouldn't you know that goon brother of mine would
bring home something that lives under a rock?
Mrs. Adams: Judy, I do wish you'd speak English like normal human beings.
Besides, I'm sure Mr. Phipps is a very nice young man.
Judy: I know, but just because Bob is a book gook is no reason he has to
bring another one home with him.
-----

The /gUk/ pronunciation perhaps aligns these usages with "gook" as a
variant of "guck" = 'thick messy substance' -- AHD and MWCD give /gUk/ as
the primary pronunciation of this sense of "gook", with /guk/ as a
secondary pronunciation.

Is there any evidence that the xenonym "gook" has also been pronounced
/gUk/? That might indicate influence from these other senses of "gook".


--Ben Zimmer

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