your mother's a gunther?
Cohen, Gerald Leonard
gcohen at UMR.EDU
Thu Jul 13 20:43:10 UTC 2006
Does "Gunther" perhaps appear somewhere in popular culture (e.g. character in a movie) which would have brought it specially to the attention of African-American youth and hence to the rappers? Otherwise, how many rappers are even aware of the German name "Gunther"?
Gerald Cohen
________________________________
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Gordon, Matthew J.
Sent: Thu 7/13/2006 10:27 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: your mother's a gunther?
Couldn't this just be the German(ic) name Gunther? Calling someone's mother a German man's name might be insulting.
-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Mircea Sauciuc
Sent: Wed 7/12/2006 11:38 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: your mother's a gunther?
Hi,
Listening to a rap battle between some east-coast rappers, I noticed one guy
insult the others mother by calling her a "gun-thu" (the last 'u' would be a
schwa sound). I assume it would be spelled "gunther," but that produces no
results in the OED or any other dictionary. I've asked some
African-Americans hoping they'd have a better idea, and they said they've
heard of it before, but are unsure of its meaning.
Any ideas?
-mcs
Mircea C. Sauciuc
Department of Linguistics
University of Kansas
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