[Ads-l] talk story - 1971

Benjamin Barrett mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jan 24 19:57:25 UTC 2016


This is an English idiom commonly used in Hawaii. AFAIK, it means to have a casual conversation and comes from HCE (Pidgin). It’s not on the Oxford Dictionary site, Wikipedia or Wiktionary. 

Pure speculation, but it seems possible that the HCE idiom comes from the Japanese katarau (語らう).

The earliest hit on the Internet I see in English is 1971.

http://bit.ly/1ZLu6Do
National Geographic, Volume 139

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One day I sat down to "talk story" (chat) with a group of Hana people [probably people from Hana on Maui] whose memories go back a long way.
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Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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