LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.11.03 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 03 November 2010 - Volume 01
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Music"



Beste Pat,



You wrote:

One of my funnest moments was in working with a girl from Liberia who spoke
Pidgin English and finding that the word for "who?" is "whodat?"

While "whodat" has become famous b/c of the New Orleans Saints football
team, my mind back then went immediately to that great comedy routine in the
movies from the 40s (I think) where a Black character says, "Who dat say who
dat?"

In googling this I found, perusing 19 pages of google, nothing of substance
on this. Clearly, whodat must be the word for who in Gullah, the English
Creole spoken on the Sea Islands off Georgia and South Carolina. From there,
it must have slipped into African-American Vernacular English and then into
minstrelsey, vaudeville, and movies. From there, it moved into the general
circulation in WW II. Only the last is documented in anything I saw in a
search of google. I came up with the rest of this myself, so here is a case
of pidgin, again, contributing a common phrase to English, like top side and
look see, with little knowledge of its origin.



Numerous Southern Dutch dialects have "wie da(t)" instead of "wie" (= who
(E)). I wouldn't rule out the possibility it may once have existed in
English as well.



Example:



A: "Harry Mulisch is vorig weekend overleden"

B: "Wie-dat?"



The combination is not used as a subject though, so it is:



"Wie heeft er zoiets gezegd?"



and not: "Wie-dat heeft er zoiets gezegd?"



Vernacular French uses "Qui ça?" too, and Louisiana French has "Qui ça dit?"
for "What's up?".



Same happens with "how", which becomes "how that?", "hoe-da(t)?"



Kind greetings,



Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium



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