LL-L "Etymology" 2007.03.12 (05) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 12 March 2007 - Volume 05

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Lowlanders,

Lately I've been picking up quite a bit of Farsi (Iranian Persian) baby
language, namely ever since Iranian friends of mine added a little fluffy
dog to their household.

One word that struck me was lala (or la-la), a noun that is equivalent to
German Heia and English "beddy-bye" -- 'to go to bed' or 'to sleep'.  When I
asked about it I was told that at times it is used in grown-up contexts as
well, always in a joking way, sometimes implying that someone is half asleep
or not paying attention, or just sleeping like a baby.

This may sound far-fetched at first, but it made me wonder about the
(American) English "slang" expression "lala land," which connotes a
"zonked-out" state of mind, a state of sleep, daydreaming, absentmindedness,
an altered state of consciousness (due to alcohol or other substances), or a
state of self-delusion. In other words, when someone is in "lala land" he or
she is "out there."

Sure!  This could be simply coincidental.  But I'm thinking about the 1960s
and 1970s here, which appears to be the period when this English expression
began, a period also in which various terms related to recreational drugs
were borrowed from North African, Near Eastern and South Asian languages (
e.g., kif, hookah, dawamesk, moocah, mutha, ghanja and bhang) and hippies
and their ilk traveled to countries in which those languages are spoken.
Could "lala" have been borrowed at that time?  Is it a loanword in Indian
languages?  Or did Persian get it from the East?

Is this term used in other European languages as well?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
(back in Seattle, having left 80-degree weather behind ...)

•

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