[HN Gopher] "Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" and the ambiguous history of...
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"Eeny, meeny, miny, mo" and the ambiguous history of counting-out
rhymes (2015)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-12-11 07:28 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theparisreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theparisreview.org)
| nailer wrote:
| > Some are mondegreens, a term coined by the author Sylvia Wright
| when she heard "And laid him on the green" as "And Lady
| Mondegreen." (" 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" is a mondegreen
| for Jimi Hendrix's lyric " 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky", and
| Taylor Swift's long list of ex-lovers are lonely Starbucks
| lovers.)
|
| Oh there's a word for this. The first time I was in the U.S. I
| was looking for an ATM and someone said there was a biyouvet down
| the road. I wasn't sure what a biyouvet was but it sounded French
| and exotic. I asked them if the biyouvet had ATMs and was assured
| it did, and went on my way to find the aforementioned biyouvet -
| before I could though I found a Bank of America which did in fact
| have ATMs.
| stratosgear wrote:
| Do not get the 'biyouvet' reference. Care to elaborate?
| dmurray wrote:
| "B of A" = Bank of America
| stratosgear wrote:
| I know the BofA acronym for Bank of America, but still i
| cannot connect it with biyouvet... :( Note: non native
| English speaker, if that matters...
| geeio wrote:
| native english speaker here, I still cannot connect it
| either.
| therealcamino wrote:
| I had the same trouble. But if you pronounce "biyouvet"
| like "bee you vay" as you would in French, it sounds like
| "B of A", for Bank of America.
| hairofadog wrote:
| The person directing them to the ATM said "B of A", and
| the person looking for the ATM heard "bi youv ay", which
| they thought was a word they hadn't heard before. "B of
| A" = "bi yuv ay" = "biyouvet".
| [deleted]
| dcminter wrote:
| I seem to recall baffling people on my first visit to the US by
| asking them if they knew where a "cash machine" could be found.
| Either that wasn't a common term for ATM or my strong British
| accent confounded them.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Ha, people in the US should know what a cash machine is. It
| may have been the accent, but I'm having a hard time
| imagining how even the most severe British accent would make
| "cash machine" that hard to understand. Now if you were
| Scottish, on the other hand...
| dcminter wrote:
| Virtually a BBC accent, so who knows? A bit later in Texas
| I had trouble ordering a tuna sandwich because of the stark
| difference between "tooona" (US) and "tyouna" (UK). To be
| fair they're _very_ different sounds.
|
| The first time I was introduced to a Glaswegian colleague I
| just smiled and nodded because I had not the faintest idea
| what he was saying (the ear tunes in pretty quickly
| though).
| hairofadog wrote:
| Based only on personal experience, I think Scottish folks
| are screwing with us just to see what we'll do.
| bentley wrote:
| "What is a yute?"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6qGwmXZtsE&t=108s
| timthorn wrote:
| Yeah, the ew sound isn't commonly understood - try asking
| for a Mountain Dew. I've been visiting America for 20
| years and I still can't get people to understand what I
| want to drink.
| runnerup wrote:
| Not a common term here. It is somewhat ambiguous with "cash
| register", so _some_ people 's brains may not immediately or
| strongly select the correct interpretation. Some will just
| fine though.
| bentley wrote:
| My first thought would be a coin changer. Although if I
| heard it from a foreigner an ATM would probably be the next
| thing to come to mind.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, the context should make it obvious. An ATM is a
| very common thing to ask for and it is a machine and it
| handles cash.
| rahoulb wrote:
| My friend was driving across America and his car broke down.
|
| He asked a passerby where the nearest garage was and got
| blank looks. He quickly realised the issue was pronunciation
| - "garidge" vs "gararge"
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are these cash machines in Denmark, with both American
| and British labels.
|
| https://travelswithsheila.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/09/air...
|
| (Copenhagen Airport, although I don't recognize the exact
| location. Probably the place cruise ship buses meet
| passengers or something like that.)
| timbit42 wrote:
| We always used to say,
|
| Eeny, meeny, miny mo, Catch a tiger by the toe, If he hollers,
| let him go, Out goes Y, O, U.
|
| ...which adds an extra syllable.
| khaledh wrote:
| Arabic version:
|
| - Hady bady
|
| - Kromb Zabady
|
| - Shalo Hatto
|
| - Kollo Alady
|
| Literal translation:
|
| - One-er Start-er
|
| - Cabbage Yugort
|
| - They lift up, They put down
|
| - Everything on this one
| edzillion wrote:
| There is also another interesting unwritten rule of the English
| language at play here. The rule goes like this:
|
| In a series of words which differ only (or mostly) by the vowel
| used, the order should be e, i, a, o
|
| - tic tac toe
|
| - flim flam
|
| - ding dong
|
| - king kong
|
| If you doubt it, try saying the opposite and hear how odd it
| sounds: The clock went 'Tock Tick'
| doomrobo wrote:
| Yup! It's called ablaut. English has ablaut reduplication for
| children's words like kitty-cat or sing-song
| Anon4Now wrote:
| Bingo bango bongo, I never noticed that. I tried saying 'fee fi
| fo fum' backwards and it took me about 10 times to get it
| right. There's almost a musical cadence to the usual order that
| just sounds off key when said backwards.
| rippercushions wrote:
| This is language-dependent. The Japanese syllabary is sorted
| in the order a-i-u-e-o, which is weird to the Western ear,
| but as ubiquitous as A-B-C in Japan.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Bada bing a counter example?
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| Not really, unlike the other examples the words differ by
| more than just the vowel sound.
| russdill wrote:
| I think the a sound in ba and da just isn't included in the
| list.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| It's probably not unwritten. It's similar to how we conjugate
| irregular verbs like "sing/ring" or "beget". The topic in
| linguistics is called vowel gradation [0].
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophony
| bentley wrote:
| These kinds of etymologies are so fun. Other interesting
| "schoolyard sayings" to look up are high five (surprisingly
| recent) and rock-paper-scissors (surprisingly old).
| Normille wrote:
| Lots of presumably learned research and obscure historical fact
| in that article. But it continually states that eeny-meeny is a
| 'counting system' eg. _" used by shepherds to count their sheep"_
| etc.
|
| Eeeny-meeny is not a counting system. Why would people use a
| nonsense rhyme to count things? It makes no sense (literally!).
| Eeny-meeny is used as a 'random selection system' when choosing
| arbitrarily from a series of options.
|
| Odd to get that basic fact wrong in such an in-depth article.
| nailer wrote:
| It always picks person that is participants.length % 21 right?
|
| 21 for 16 plus 'Boy Scout you are out'
| smegsicle wrote:
| "ink a dink is bad?"
| je_bailey wrote:
| After reading the article. I don't see where they said it was a
| counting system. Rather that it has the same rhyming structure
| as counting systems and so it had to be considered a
| possibility that it came from that. Which by the end they said
| was very unlikely.
| Normille wrote:
| Point taken. I suppose the 'out' is open to interpretation. I
| read it as in 'counting out[loud]' or just 'counting out [the
| number of something]'. But I can see how they could have
| meant it as in 'counting out [which ones amongst X sheep were
| for mating/selling/killing/etc.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I love mondegreens.
|
| In high school, one of my best friends grew up thinking the song
| was "secret asian man"
| mjklin wrote:
| Spanish version:
|
| Tin marin dedo pingue
|
| Cucara macara titire fue
|
| Yo no fui, fue Tete
|
| Pegale pegale que ella fue
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The "Eeny meeny" rhyme with the objectionable N word in the
| second line was the first version I learned on the playground as
| a kid. I didn't know what that word meant, and was quickly
| disabused by my parents when I repeated it.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| daneel_w wrote:
| Swedish version:
|
| - Ole Dole Doff
|
| - Kinke Lane Koff
|
| - Koffe Lane Binke Bane
|
| - Ole Dole Doff
|
| The words mean nothing, though Ole happens to be a Nordic given
| name.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >In the canonical Eeny Meeny, "tiger" is standard in the second
| line, but this is a relatively recent revision.
|
| I'm old enough that as a young child I heard adults reciting both
| versions (U.S. urban location). Since this is about "ambiguous
| history", I noticed that it seems none of the other languages
| have versions that are as explicitly derogatory/racist as the
| original English version.
|
| >The shared genetics of all these counting-out ditties strongly
| imply an ur-Eeny Meeny. And several folklorists have proposed
| various etymologies based on the content of some versions of Eeny
| Meeny, trying to derive significance from some variation of the
| gibberish. These prehistories range from charmingly whimsical to
| patently bogus.
|
| I wonder how often it happens that the leaders of any society
| imbue secondary messages into these counting-out rhymes as a way
| of indoctrinating the children?
|
| [edit] I just re-read the following, which elaborates on this
| idea:
|
| >The original "Catch a n*** by the toe," according to Bickerton,
| points to the rhyme's roots in an African American community.
| kgeist wrote:
| I'm fascinated by this. In my native Russian, there's a
| children's counting rhyme "ene bene raba kvinter finter zhaba"
| (and the more popular "eniki beniki were eating vareniki").
|
| You can see some resemblence of "ene bene" to "eeny meeny...",
| and "kvinter finter" to "tethera, methera".
|
| I'm mostly puzzled how it was spread. How did children in Russia
| learn about this? It's not like it was very common in Russia to
| see someone from Britain, especially in the countryside.
| personalidea wrote:
| Ene mene miste, es rappelt in der Kiste.
|
| Ene mene meck. Und du bist weg.
| affgrff2 wrote:
| Ene mene mink mank. Pink pank, Eierweier weck.
| personalidea wrote:
| Ene mene mink mank. Pink pank.
|
| Use buse acka dich. Eier weier weg.
|
| - That was German.
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