Re: Weekly Vocab 8

> LOL ;)) . The orthography of the French word is correct, but do you really
> have "boocoo" in your idiolect? :)))
>
> Christophe Grandsire.
Christophe, your toes would curl if you ever heard what happens to French
words in the mouths of so many Americans........

"Boocoo" rings a bell with me.... I wonder if Adam has a military man
somewhere in his background-- this pronunciation could date back as far as
WW II and may even have been carried to Japan and maybe Taiwan post-war.  It
was certainly common amongst the older guys I knew in Vietnam in 1958/9
(some who actually spoke decent French still used boocoo in Engl. or
military-pidgin Vietnamese.)  My sergeant used to talk of his favorite
night-spot, the ['tudiwA], which I assumed was a VN word, like the Tu Do(1)
bar we all loved... until one day we were driving around and he pointed,
"Hey, let's stop at the ['tudiwA]"-- and voilà, there it was, Tour d'Ivoire.

(1) properly [tu dzo] in Saigon dialect ('independence' I think),
Americanized [tu do] or [tu du].  Duong Tu Do was the main street, formerly
Rue Catinat, but at that time even the VNese still used the French street
names.

A very nice restaurant/bar, Le Relais, was usually known as [li ri'&li],
though most GIs didn't go there--  it was strictly a local French  hang-out,
and no bar-girls. I often wonder what ever became of the owners-- M'sieur
was obnoxious, but Madame was a delight.

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