Jasm/Jism/Gism

[Jonathan Lighter]

Further questions that must be addressed are, first of all, even if "teas ioma" means, as Cassidy asserts, "an abundance of  heat and passion," was this phrase likely to be heard in common use? Or was it in literary use only? Is its existence as a grammatical Irish collocation even attested before the mid-19th C.?

  And if it is attested, is it ever "figuratively" used for "semen," as Cassidy claims, or is that his own interpretation to "prove" the point?  He doesn't say.

  JL



"Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Baker, John"
Subject: Re: Jasm/Jism/Gism
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Cassidy's claim is that "teas" is pronounced "j'as" in the Ulster and North Mayo dialect, which he describes as one of the three living dialects of Irish. I don't have much doubt that if Irishmen said "j'as'm," with a voiceless s, Americans could convert that to jazm. But I'm left with several questions:

1. Does "teas ioma" really mean heat, passion, semen in Irish? Under the circumstances, I would think we would want more than Cassidy's say-so.

2. It's all very well to say that "j'as'm" could become jasm, but the supposed Irish phrase is "teas ioma." Even with the t taking a j sound, how plausible is that change in pronunciation?

3. How plausible is an Irish derivation anyway? Doug Wilson found an example of "gism" (apparently meaning nectar) that was probably written before 1800, by a member of the family of Benjamin Franklin. The word is, however, denounced as a vulgarism. I suppose that there were some Irish immigrants before that date, and even before the Revolution, but would their influence have been great enough to have words adopted by the Franklins?

On the other hand, gism/jasm must have come from somewhere. Thoughts?


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 1:55 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Jasm/Jism/Gism

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 wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Baker, John"
> 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.

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