[Ads-l] Bammer

[Jonathan Lighter]

One of my cherished memories of graduate school at the University of
Tennessee was being awakened in the middle of the night by hearty, loyal
voices caroling,

Bama, Bama!
How'd you like to bite my ass?!

The *many* following verses were identical.

The tune was "Ja-Da, Ja-Da, Ja-Da Ja-Da Jing Jing Jing" (1918).

JL




On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 8:30 AM, Margaret Lee <
0000006730deb3bf-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> I think the purpose of the term was to show that Blacks who had migrated
> from the South to the North were more cool and hip than those left in the
> South.  Not so much emphasis on the 'rural South,' but the South in
> general.  Those left behind or those new to the North were considered
> 'country bumpkins.'
> --Margaret Lee
>
>
>       From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
>  To: Margaret Lee <mlee303 at yahoo.com>
>  Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2016 7:27 PM
>  Subject: Re: Bammer
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 8:45 AM, Margaret Lee <0000006730deb3bf-dmarc-
> request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
> In the African American community for decades, 'bama' / 'bamma'  has been
> an "unfavorable term to describe a person from the South, who is perceived
> as 'country,' without social refinement, unsophisticated ...Probably
> derived from the shortened version of 'Alabama' "
>
> She should have made clear that this lack is understood to be the
> consequence of stomp-down, Southern racism, particularly in the Deep-South
> states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina,  and is not
> regarded as simply the natural state of a black person from the rural South.
> There's also the expression,
> _born in the Bam_
> with the same meaning as
> _born in a barn_
> wherein _the Bam_ is "the state of Alabama." The former expression may be
> a pun on the latter, but...
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org