Antedating of "yeah" - sort of

[Wilson Gray]

Yes, the orthography is probably a problem, but, WRT spelling, you
never know. On the other hand, I don't think that there's an easy way
around if-it-seems-too-good-to-be-true-it-most-likely-is. I respect
your caution.

-Wilson

On 6/8/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Antedating of "yeah" - sort of
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>
> What troubles me is Omenhausser's use of the predominant modern spelling -which didn't become predominant till decades later. It seems too good to be true.  And you know what that means.
>
>   However, since the alternative to being a superskeptic and killjoy is to believe I've "made a real find," I'll believe the latter.
>
>   In one of the drawings reproduced at American Memory (also in Time-Life, IIRC - it's been nearly 24 hours), Omenhausser amusingly has a prisoner, who seems never to have seen one before, refer to a Chesapeake crab as a "bug" :
>
>   http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/cwnyhs:@field(SUBJ+@od1(Fishing+rods))
>
>   The kind of detail that makes history come alive.
>
>   JL
>
>
> Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: Antedating of "yeah" - sort of
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Yeah" doesn't strike me as being particularly onomatopoetic as a
> representation of laughter. But, then, the same can be said of "yuck."
> Nevertheless, it still seems to me that "yeah" means "yeah." To say
> that X "laughed at" Y doesn't necessarily mean that literal laughter
> occurred. A smile or even a sneer could be described as "laughing" in
> the situation shown. It also seems to me that the guard is more likely
> to be commenting on the situation and not addressing the prisoners. It
> really strikes me as a version of "Yeah! Right!" The implication is
> that the two prisoners, had they not done whatever it was that they
> did, would simply have done something else equally stupid that merited
> punishment. Barnum couldn't make money off these two, unless their
> stupidity could be depended upon.
>
> I'm going with Ockham's Razor. Let someone show that the obvious
> reading is somehow not the correct reading. I think that you've made a
> real find, Jon. As The Beatles once put it, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 6/8/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> > Subject: Re: Antedating of "yeah" - sort of
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > OK, I've simmered down. %@$$@^^^ computer ! The rest of the story is that John J. Omenhausser was a Confederate soldier who was a PW at the Union prison at Port Lookout, Md. Shortly before or after his release in 1865, Omenhausser created a book of cartoon watercolors that he titled "True Sketches and Sayings of Rebel Characters in the Port Lookout Prison, Maryland." You can see images of many of Omenhausser's sketches here :
> >
> > http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?cwnyhs:1:./temp/~ammem_cmQq::
> >
> > Too bad they're reproduced so small that you can't read the captions for yourself, even when you "enlarge" the images. The online material appears to come from a version called "Rebel Prison Scenes. Point Lookout Maryland 1864." I don't see the sketch in question there.
> >
> > Obsolete technology to the rescue, at least in this instance. Fourteen of Omenhausser's cartoons appear in the Time-Life volume, _Tenting Tonight_ (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life, 1984), pp. 136-43. One sketch (p. 140) shows, first, a pair of rebel prisoners undergoing punishment by carrying the ball and chain while dressed solely in long underwear. One says, "If we hadn't been a pair of fools, we'd never got in this fix." An armed guard, looking on, says, "Yeah ! Yeah ! Barnum ought to have them fellers in his show. I think they'd pay well."
> >
> > And that should be that, lexicographically speaking, except that a third prisoner, wearing a barrel inscribed "Petty Thief," responds, "I don't see what that nigger sees to laugh at, I don't think this is so very amusing."
> >
> > So "Yeah ! Yeah !" appears to be more of a representation of African-American laughter than a genuine occurrence of the affirmative "yeah !" though it certainly might be.
> >
> > OED makes no comment on any possible relationship between modern "yeah" (or equivalent spellings "yeah," "yare," etc.) and ancient "yea" - used, of course, not in ritualized discourse but in the everyday language of normal people.
> >
> > Comments?
> >
> > JL
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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