"blergh" (and "argh")

[Jonathan Lighter]

Both "ARRGGGGGHHHH!!!!" and "BLEEAH!!" - perhaps with minor spelling
variations - featured prominently (at least to my mind) in Schulz's
"Peanuts" strips of the late '50s and early '60s.

"BLEEAH!!" expressed distaste.  Charlie Brown frequently said
"ARRGGGGGHHHH!!" when life or Lucy had dealt him another blow.

CB's "ARRGGGGGHHHH!!" was semantically distinct from that of Robert Newton
as Long John Silver, originator, it seems, of the pirate "Argh!"  (If
Wallace Beery used it in his earlier version of _Treasure Island_ , which I
doubt, it made no impression on me.)

Newton's was apparently a West Country variant of "Ah!"


JL
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "blergh" (and "argh")
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 11:41 AM -0400 6/18/10, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >Garson notes that in _Treasure Island_
> >>Long John Silver does say "Ah" many times. [...]
> >>
> >>  Maybe some pirate speech is rooted in early movies or plays. How much
> >>  of the evolution of pirate diction and manner is based on actors
> >>  observing previous performances?
> >
> >And on scripts or stories written by R-less speakers, who might have used
> >"ar" where Stevenson (a Scot) used "ah"? Compare Kipling's pronunciations
> of
> >names in The Jungle Books, including such Yankee-bafflers as
> >
> >* TABAQUI (1 p. 4) the Jackal, is pronounced Tabarky. I think I made up
> this
> >name myself (accent on bar).
> >* BALOO (p. 20) is Hindustani for `Bear'. Pronounced Bar-loo (accent on
> >Bar).
> >* KAA (1 p. 43) is pronounced Kar. A made-up name, from the queer
> >open-mouthed hiss of a big snake.
> >- http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_junglebook_names.htm
>
> And then there's always A. A. Milne's Eeyore the donkey.
>
> LH
>
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