Category Archives: Folk speech

Blackout no Whiteout

Nationality: Animation
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pasadena, CA
Performance Date: April 28
Primary Language: English

Context: 

This piece was collected over a casual FaceTime in which we were previously just catching up and talking about our elementary school experiences. We are close friends who met in high school and have known each other for five years. My informant (JS) was born in California and is now attending Carnegie Mellon as Computer Science major. He enjoys coding, playing video games, and weight lifting.

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant (JS) and interviewer.

Interviewer: What’s Blackout No Whiteout? 

JS: So, um, if you don’t want something you give it to someone and you say “blackout no whiteout” you don’t have to take it back and they have to keep it.

Interviewer: So can they give it to someone else?

JS: I think so. They just have to say “black out no whiteout” again.

Interviewer: How old were you when you used this?

JS: Um, like, kindergarten, five, six. I learned it from school friends. 

Thoughts: 

I like to think of Blackout No Whiteout as the opposite of Dibs. When I was little and we used this rule, it was often to get rid of trash and force someone else to throw it out. In my opinion, I thought it was funny and innocent at the time, but looking back, we used it as a way to pick on some classmates who always ended up getting stuck with the “thing” nobody else wanted. Children can be mean to each other, and this is one of the games that demonstrates that.

“spoko” Polish Slang

Nationality: Polish
Age: 39
Residence: Boston, Massachusetts
Performance Date: April 23, 2020
Primary Language: Polish
Language: English

Pronunciation: spôkô

Context:

The informant–MF–is a 39 year old male who was born and raised in Zagłębie, Poland but has lived in the US since 2016. This is a slang term he remembers from childhood. The interview from which this word was collected was conducted in English.

Definition:

It means all right. All there is no problem. Everything is alright means spoko. So for instance, uh, if you know somebody is in trouble or somebody is very sad. So you can say oh don’t worry, everything is spoko. Everything’s gonna be all right. So we can say like that.

Analysis:

This term has multiple variations in Poland, including “sponio” (pronounced spōnyō).

“You a scunner?”/”You’re a wee scunner!”

Nationality: Scottish
Age: 95
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Aberdeen, Scotland
Performance Date: April 11, 2020
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE

“You a scunner?”/”You’re a wee scunner!”

“Scunner is like a bother, specifically like a kid or something.  I don’t know what came first, but I say “You a scunner?” and so do many people I know around here, but my friends in Edinburgh say “You’re a wee scunner!”  We use it to kind of callout a child for being a whiner.

BACKGROUND

This informant, MS, comes from Aberdeen, Scotland and has lived there for all of her life, except for a few years she spent in London.   She’s from the silent generation so she has heard a lot of different sayings come and go over the years, but she says she remembers telling this to her sons, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren. She even remembers her mother saying it to her when she was a little kid.

CONTEXT

I invited MS, my great grandmother, to talk with me after a family reunion zoom call.  A few

days later, we got together and we live streamed a rerun of Strictly Come Dancing over zoom and during the commercial breaks, we talked over some  folklore from her life in Scotland, specifically from her childhood in Aberdeen.

THOUGHTS

What’s fascinating to me is the dichotomy of this statement.  It appears that the idea of calling kids “scunners” when they misbehave is universal among the Scottish folk group as a whole, but the way it is said is regional within the folk group which shows you slightly different meanings.  The Aberdeen way of saying it is so much more questioning, while the Edinburgh way is more accusatory and statement based.  It shows you that variation is a very huge part of folklore, especially in this way of saying the same thing.

A Filipino Proverb

Original Text: Kung hindi ukol hindi bubukol.

Transliteration: If it is not then it won’t lump.

Full translation: If you weren’t meant to have something then you won’t have it

This proverb is used to pacify others. If someone got out of a relationship and were to be mad, they would say this to justify that it was not meant to be. The saying comes from the word bukol which is a lump of the head normally from a hit. So if someone were to hit their head and get a lump, then it was meant to be but if they hit their head and didn’t get a lump, then that bukol wasn’t meant to be.

Context: The informant lived the majority of her life in the Philippines. She then immigrated to the United States when she was 24. She learned about this saying from her family and classmates.

Thoughts: I personally find the relationship between the translation and the meaning behind the proverb to be obscure yet funny. It establishes the values of superstition and luck while being used as a way to make peace.

Peppering

Context: The informant is a current junior at Cal Poly SLO. She plays volleyball at the intramural level and has been playing volleyball since middle school.  The following is an interview between me (DM) and the informant (EM)

EM: Peppering is a warm up drill between two to three players as a warmup drill where the people pass the ball to each other in different variations of bump, set, and spike.

DM: What version are you most experienced with?

EM: The version I’m used to includes two players. It starts when one member passes the ball to the other. That second person sets it to the first and the first spikes it to the second. Once spiked, the roles are interchanged and the cycle starts again.

DM: What other versions are there?

EM: Although the way I explained is the most common version, as long as you maintain the order of bump, set, and spike, you could call it peppering. It could be with a net in between or just in a circle, you can pepper almost anywhere.

DM: Why is it called peppering and where did you first learn about it?

I’m not too sure why this drill is called peppering though, it was just something I was taught. I learned about it in my freshman year of high school on my varsity volleyball team from my coach.

Thoughts: I’m curious about why the drill is called peppering. It shows the resourcefulness of volleyball players since volleyball nets aren’t as common and since volleyball normally requires many people to play normally. Since they aren’t able to always have a court, the concept of peppering adapts to where and how many people are available.