[Ads-l] talk story - 1971

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

My HCE is a little rusty (I was somewhat fluent in the seventies) but as I recall it's a little more than just 'casual conversation'. Something like 'schmooze', perhaps with the additional connotation of 'trading tall tales'. My only handy reference material is 

Pidgin to da max' (1981). Douglas Simonson (Peppo), Ken Sakata and Pat Sasaki. The Bess Press. Honolulu, HI.
'Talk, gossip, shoot the breeze. Siddown, relax, talk story wit' me' 

FWIW, Ken Sakata is a linguist who was a classmate of mine. Not sure where he is now.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
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Subject: talk story - 1971

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This is an English idiom commonly used in Hawaii. AFAIK, it means to =
have a casual conversation and comes from HCE (Pidgin). It=E2=80=99s not =
on the Oxford Dictionary site, Wikipedia or Wiktionary.=20

Pure speculation, but it seems possible that the HCE idiom comes from =
the Japanese katarau (=E8=AA=9E=E3=82=89=E3=81=86).

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

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

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
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.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA=

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