Jasm/Jism/Gism

[Wilson Gray]

An obvious problemis that of phonology. In the Munster dialect, "teas"
is pronounced approximately as "chass." Can it be shown that, e.g.
that palatized /t'/ in Irish is regularly reflected in English as "j"
and that Irish /s/ regularly reflected as English [z]. Then there's
the problem of the multitude of dialects in Irish. The most
widely-spoken dialect outside of the Aran Islands is that of Munster,
of which my teacher, John "Séan O Coileáin" Collins, is a native. But
this dialect is not the basis of the national standard dialect.

But Cassidy, as far as I know,has never mentioned what dialect he's
using as the basis of his etymologies nor has he attempted to deal
with phonology at all. If the phonetics and semantics of some Irish
word approximate the phonetics and semantics of some American-English
slang term, then the Irish word is the etymon of the American slang
term. But these are merely "faux amis."

Many years ago, someone - Mario Pei? - gave the example of the words
for "brush" in English and in Kurdish, the latter, like English an
Indo-European language. The words are amazingly similar and, given the
fact that both languages are Indo-European, one might conclude that
the two words are historically related. But historical phonology shows
that this cannot possibly be the case.

-Wilson

On 10/15/07, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Jasm/Jism/Gism
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In addition to his theory that jazz derives from Irish teas, Daniel =
> Cassidy argues in How the Irish Invented Slang that jasm and gism derive =
> from Irish teas ioma, which he defines as "an abundance of heat and =
> passion; fig. semen."  Google does not present any examples of "teas =
> ioma" that do not come from Cassidy. However, I don't know how good a =
> source Google is for Irish.  Any thoughts on this theory?  =
> Jasm/jism/gism currently are in the "origin unknown" category.
> =20
> =20
> John Baker
> =20
>
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