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8:07AM
Mar-23-08


tmeyer

Guest

Grant Barrett said:

I should have mentioned during the show that my pronunciation of “gedunk” as something like “guh-DUNK” is not the one used most often, especially in the Navy, where it is usually “GEE-dunk.”


Having served in the navy from 1962-66, I recall that geedunk was the first odd word we learned at boot camp. “Here is your barracks. Here is your bunk. Here is the head and across the street you’ll find the geedunk.” It was always pronounced “gee-dunk” and was almost always spelled that way, too. Dropping the second e seemed to me to give the word an inappropriate German feeling.

I thought that “Geedunk Sunday” was a term to describe a Sunday (or any day on which you had no duties) where you could be so lazy as to not take your regular meals at the mess hall or galley, instead seeking sustenance at the soda fountain.

I appreciate your explanation of its origins, as I always thought it was Chinese, like “cumshaw”, a word used in the navy to describe illicit bartering as a non-regulation method of appropriation.

3:14PM
Mar-24-08


Wordsmith

posts 158

Re: “pwned”
I have heard “powned” (pron. pohnd) which, I am told, is a portmanteau word for “p(ositively) + owned.” Sounds kinda like SoCal slang to me. Who knows?

Re: “ge(e)dunk”
That’s with a soft “g” (i.e., not pronounced like ghee).

1:05PM
Mar-25-08


felixblackcat

posts 32

My apologies if this has been noted elsewhere on the forum, but Wisconsin Public Radio’s show Here on Earth recently featured Elizabeth Little, author of the book Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080312k.cfm
You can get a free MP3 of the archived program here:
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archives.cfm
The show is also available as a podcast:
http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/podcast.cfm
Enjoy!

10:19PM
Mar-30-08


nign

Guest

The rumored nonsensical translation for “Coca-Cola” is “????”:

“?” means “tadpole,” and repeating a word for an animal twice is typical kiddy talk, so that makes “??” more like “taddypole”;

“?” is “to bite”; and “?” is “wax.”

So it’s actually the tadpole who bites the wax, not the drinker.

Still nonsensical, but it’s at least a more accurate translation. :-)

The Chinese Wikipedia (far less credible than the English Wikipedia) entry for “Cola-Cola” still maintains that the initial official translation of the brand name is “Taddypole Bites Wax,” which also seems to be a popular Chinese urban myth, but I doubt if that ever really occurred. Years (probably decades) before Cola Cola entered the Mainland Chinese market, it already set up official distributions in other Chinese language markets, such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, and had had uniform brand name translation for years, same as the one currently in use. It’s a very pleasant name, which I understand to mean “delicious and makes you happy”; the “makes you happy” part comes from the phono-based translation of “cola” and has become the Chinese word (I believe it’s universal in all Chinese language communities) for “coke” (the beverage only). The success with the name also dictated how Pepsi translated its own, which could be loosely translated as “Everything Would Be a Happy Thing.”

Aside from disbelieving any company would give up on a perfectly fine and already culturally powerful name to create another, I also doubt if a company as well structured and image-conscious as Coca Cola would allow any regional distributor to get creative with any part of the product image (and the brand name no less), and I just can’t find any picture of any actual Coca Cola artifact bearing that name, so my take is better take it as a joke. :-)

3:17PM
Mar-31-08


Wordsmith

posts 158

FWIW, Coca-Cola in Mandarin is ???? which could be translated as “Tasty and able to be happy”. Mind you, this is in simplified Chinese, so the characters are a little different. But the main thing is that it can mean something even though it is a phonetic rendering of a word from an unrelated language.

3:26PM
Mar-31-08


martha

Moderator

martha

posts 453

Very interesting, ya’ll! Nign, are you a native Chinese speaker?

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