"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Jonathan Lighter]

Hmmmmm. Not sure.  All we have, I think, is "googoo / gugu" > "goog" > "gook."

"In my experience, / guk / is by far the most freq. pronun. (Am sure I heard / gUk / only once or twice, / guk / a hundred times. And I don't believe i"ve ever heard  / gUk /  on TV or in movies.  If / gUk / was ever prevalent, surely there would be more and better evidence of it ?


JL


"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: "gook" (rhymes with "book")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 11:51 AM 3/17/2005, you wrote:
>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").

MW3 shows both /gUk/ and /guk/ for "gook" in senses "native", "glop" (sense
like "book gook" not shown).

If I were to hypothesize that "gook" = "native" was usually /gUk/ before WW
II, would there be any convincing contrary evidence available to put me in
my place?

-- Doug Wilson

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com