From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Jan 22 2002 - 10:32:33 MST
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>, Sun, 20 Jan 2002
>I'm sorry J.R. but that is utter ca-ca.
I was going to tell you, Robert, that you misspelled ca-ca.
However, maybe you have a better handle on the spelling than I do.
I investigated this 'kaka' word, and talked with my Dad about it,
because I could have sworn, that, as a kid, I learned 'kaka' = that
mild expletive 'shit', in Hawaiian. But when I looked it up,
'kaka' = 'duck'. So where did I get 'kaka' = 'shit'?
My Dad was amused by my questions about 'kaka' and he said in many
languages, here in Europe, it means 'shit' in a kind of mild form,
not to be used in polite conversations. In Latvian 'kaka' means the
same, in a kind of in baby talk, and he thought that the Jewish
folks use 'kaka' in the same way. In Greek, that mild expletive =
'skatà', in German = 'scheisse', in Russian = 'sratj'. See, now you
have more choices for expletives... (He didn't know about the
Romance languages, however I vaguely remember in French = 'merde').
Amara
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