Re: CHAT: various infotaining natlang tidbits

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> But now I very strongly suspect that they
> were made up to be cute --- or hilarious. (I'm not sure which is the
> least attractive of the two). And the same for Kristian's examples.
Some of those I know are true, like "hair bilong bird" for "feather",
altho I do wonder if the "bilong bird" part would be dropped when the
context was clear.

>    Prince Charles was born in November 1948, after the Cargo Cult days
> (which ended with WWII, IIRC). (OK, that's marginal).
But he is referred to as "Nambawan pikni bilong missus queen", a natural
translation would be "The queen's firstborn child", not at all
"humorous", a simple description of who he is.  The use of "missus
queen" reminds me of a usage in the South of "Mr." and "Missus" with
first names for respect, altho mostly limited today to being used by
children, at least in my experience.  I wonder now if that usage came
from the slave days (movies of pre-Civil War South often have slaves
speaking that way, but I don't know if that's a stereotype or an actual
usage), and if so, ultimately from the West African pidgin?

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