Date:    Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:47:34 -0500
<br>From:    Mark Mandel  Mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM 
<br>Subject: dialectal loanwords - mebos
<br>
<br>On Fri, 27 Feb 1998 18:51:47 +0900 Daniel Long  dlong[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]JOHO.OSAKA-SHOIN.AC.JP 
<br> wrote:
<br>   
<br>But I have a question about a Japanese borrowing that may show regional
<br> variation within the English world.  OED2 has
<br>the following entry for *mebos*.  Considering the devoicing processes of high
<br> vowels in Japanese, their story here
<br>makes perfect sense.  My question is just this: Is this word known and used in
<br> South African English or it just some
<br>obscure thing those wonderful and wacky UK lexicographers dug up? There must be
<br> some South Africans on the list!
<br>
<br>        [...]
<br>mebos (_______, Afrikaans _______). S. Afr. Also meebos.
<br>[Afrikaans, prob. ad. Jap. umeboshi, a dried, preserved plum.]
<br>A confection made from apricots dried, flattened or pulped, and preserved in
<br> salt and sugar.
<br>
<br>   
<br>(Sorry for the delay in answering. I've been sick since Friday and just got back
<br> to work today.)
<br>
<br>Well, I'm not S.African, but I remember very well from my childhood in the 50s a
<br> song by the S.African duo Marais and
<br>Miranda on some records we had:
<br>
<br>        Auntie Mina's cooking, cooking the mebos,
<br>        Oh, Auntie Mina's cooking the mebos syrup now.
<br>
<br>        From the sugar that costs, ah, but tuppence the pound
<br>        And the ripe apricots that have dropped to the ground
<br>        Auntie Mina can cook mebos syrup so sweet
<br>        That the folks come for miles just to eat!
<br>
<br>This confused me for a long time, since I (understandably, I think) heard the
<br> phrase as "maple syrup", which I knew
<br>wasn't made from apricots! Eventually I either read about mebos or heard about
<br> it from one of the various S.Africans I
<br>have met in adult life. (I also heard "come for miles" as "come from Mars", till
<br> I figured that one out, which may give you a
<br>clue about my age and interests at the time.)
<br>
<br>I don't know if the song was originally in English or Afrikaans, in which latter
<br> case it may be their own translation.
<br>
<br>       Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : mark[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com
<br>    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
<br> 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
<br>           Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/
<br>