LL-L: "Special expressions" LOWLANDS-L, 24.MAY.2000 (01) [E]

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From: Thomas [t.mcrae at uq.net.au]
Subject: Aussie Slang

A slang word for dying here in Queensland is 'cark' something I've never
come across in the British Isles and I served with soldiers from all over
the country and listened to their dialects. I'm currently re-reading 'Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight' after many years and was surprised to find that
The Knight '...gave a great hacking cough. Carked his throat clear.....'.
It's obviously onamatopoeic and in the Oz sense refers to the final noise
made by some dying people. Problem is how come it's here but I never came
across it in U.K. ? I suspect it's Scandanavian in origin and it was
obviously used in Anglo-Saxon, any comments?
Regards
Tom
Tom Mc Rae
Brisbane Australia
"Oh wid some power the Giftie gie us
Tae see oorselves as ithers see us"
Robert Burns--

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Special expressions

An interesting word you brought up there (above), Tom.  Here are my five
pfennigs worth to start with.

(1) I'm pretty sure that 'to cark' is not specific to Queensland.  I have
heard people in Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales use it.  In
fact, it's commonly used in Western Australia, synonymously with 'to kick the
bucket'.

(2) I'm wondering if 'to cark' is a dialectally isolated, metathesized variant
of 'to croak' (< Middle English _croken_), thus 'to make a hoarse/raspy
sound'.  It so happens that 'to croak', too, is used as a slang word for 'to
die'.  (Why does the _American Heritage Dictionary_ say it means 'to kill'?
I've never heard it used that way, here or anywhere else.)  Perhaps it helps
to know, bearing in mind the Saxon connection, that in Low Saxon (Low German)
'to croak' is _kraken_ ~ _kroken_.  (It does not mean 'to die' though.*)  As
we have discussed in this forum several times before, there are sporadic cases
of consonant+vowel -> vowel+consonant metathesis in the Lowlands languages.
'To cark' could be one of them (*_craken_ > _*carken_).

(* Among slangy Low Saxon expressions for 'to die' are _de Ogen tokniepen_ "to
squeeze one's eyes shut", _up't leste Lock piepen_ "to pipe on the last hole",
_de grote Reis' antreden_ "to depart on the great journey", and _na Rötterdam
gaan_ "to go to Rotterdam" ...)

(3) Incidentally, the Australian pronunciation of 'cark' [k`a:k] (assumedly
like the Bostonian and other New England pronunciations would be) is virtually
identical to the Northern Low Saxon pronunciation of _Kark_ 'church'.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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