Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 19:30:36 -0400

From: "Peter L. Patrick" PPATRICK[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]GUVAX.BITNET

Subject: Re: South East Missouri /IG-nert/



Interesting line here. I'm familiar with "ignorant" in the meaning

described from Jamaican Creole, eg:

im jos gwaan ignarant "she just acted ignorant"

or im ignarant mi

where it's a verb. It means something like "rude" as Peter said, but

can even be "abus(iv)e": how a person acts who hasn't been brought up

right (no HT, to return to an earlier strain). Cassidy, in "Jamaica

Talk" (1961), calls it "a frequent folk malapropism for 'indignant'"

and indeed it shares some of that feeling. But I think FGC may be

wrong on this: the opposite of ignorance is education, which is

invested with all kinds of wonderful properties in Jamaica including

class, taste and good behavior. (If only it were true!)

This is an interesting case of sharing across the diaspora...

--plp