[Ads-l] Bun in AAV and "Crying Wolof" Myth

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Mar 19 05:40:16 UTC 2016


On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 12:47 PM, Z Rice <zrice3714 at gmail.com> wrote:

> To, Mr. Wilson, I'd like to note that the AA term 'bun' is not vulgar and
> is actually "neutral". I have heard elderly folk (great-grands) in my youth
> use this term when speaking to other grown folk. Also, I do not include
> English terminology as lexical items unless they are actual calques (e.g.
> "happening"). So I do not list words that just happen to sound like and
> mean the same thing as Wolof but is actually from an obscure English or
> "slang" origin.
>

I understand that the term, _bun_ that you cite is neutral. I'm saying that
I'm not familiar with the word in that meaning, that's all. The
distribution of non-literary terms is quite random. Consider, for example,
_jone_, as far as I know - which is not very far, admittedly - is used only
in Saint Louis and Washington, DC, and _cat butter_ is used only in East
Texas and in the DC area. Until the '90's, the only place that I'd heard
_dookie_ used was in East Texas around the time of WWII. And there are
regional variants. In some places, you "jone" someone. In Saint Louis, you
"jone with" someone. There, you also "sound on" someone. In Los Angeles,
you "sound" someone "down."

You never know.


-- 
-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

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