[Ads-l] talk story - 1971

Geoffrey Steven Nathan geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU
Sun Jan 24 20:14:06 UTC 2016


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
WSU Information Privacy Officer
Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 2:57 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: talk story - 1971

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      talk story - 1971
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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=

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

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list