Canada high court asked to rule on 'kemosabe'

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, December 24, 2004

[PowerPro]

I'll be sure to post my current vocabulary to make sure all of the words I use are state-approved.

That way I'll avoid running into this kind of situation myself.

[lowbridge]

bump

[ApesForEvolution]

...I'm surprised they let him keep his sidearms...(sigh)

To hell with PC a**wipes, I say!

[Straight Vermonter]

"The idea that there are some words that are notoriously offensive and some that aren't, and the burden on the employee shifts depending on that, really creates a lot of confusion in the workplace," said commission lawyer Michael Wood, according to the CBC.

Right, each person determines for themselves which words are offensive. The next time my boss calls me "Buddy" I am going to sue. < /sarcasm>

[RWR8189]

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods.

[leadhead]

Guess I got to stop calling the women at work "Snuggleduck".

[JohnHuang2]

lol

[JohnHuang2]

heh

[beaver fever]

This will clear everything up:

Dr. Goddard, of the Smithsonian Institution, was reported as believing that Kemo Sabe was from the Tewa dialect. He supported his contention by calling on the "Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians" which appeared in the 29th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1916). It seems that in Tewa, "Apache" equates to Sabe and "friend" to Kema.



A scholar from the University of California at Berkley thought that Kemo Sabe came from the Yavapai, a dialect spoken in Arizona and meant "one who is white," since the Ranger always wore a white shirt and trousers in the earliest publicity photos. The Yavapai term is "kinmasaba" or "kinmasabeh"



Jim Jewell, who directed "The Lone Ranger" until 1938 said he'd lifted the term from the name of a boys' camp at Mullet Lake just south of Mackinac, Michigan called Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee. The camp had been established in 1911 by Jewell's father-in-law, Charles Yeager, and operated until about 1940. Translation of kee-mo sah-bee, according to Jewell was "trusty scout."



According to Rob Malouf, a grad student in linguistics at Stanford, there's another possibility: "According to John Nichols' Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe, the Ojibwe word `giimoozaabi' means `to peek' (it could also mean `he peeks' or `he who peeks'). Rob continued: "There are several words with the same prefix ["giimooj," secretly] meaning things like `to sneak up on someone'.... It is quite plausible that `giimoozaabi' means something like `scout'.... `Giimoozaabi' is pronounced pretty much the same as `kemosabe' and would have been spelled `Kee Moh Sah Bee' at the turn of the century."


In his book of humour and observation, noted columnist James Smart observes that the New York Public Library defines "Kemo Sabe" as Soggy Shrub. His entertaining collection is appropriately titled "Soggy Shrub Rides Again and other improbabilities."



An interesting side light comes from the son of Fran Striker, "It is usually assumed that Kemo Sabe is how the Ranger refers to Tonto. However, in many of the early radio broadcasts, the Ranger calls Tonto "Kemo Sabe" AND Tonto also calls the Ranger "Kemo Sabe".



Another suggestion has been that Tonto, (whose name means "stupid" according to some interpretations) responded by calling the Lone Ranger "qui no sabe" which roughly translates from Spanish as "he who knows nothing" or "clueless.



One of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons shows the Lone Ranger looking in an Indian dictionary and discovering that kemosabe is "an Apache expression for a horse's rear end."

Also one of the running themes of Lone Ranger, Tonto jokes is that kemosabe means A**hole

[No Dems 2004]

LOL - Do you know something? California, often derided as a liberal paradise, is far more conservative than Canada is.

Consider a few tidbits:

- California has and (to a limited degree) practices the death penalty while Canada treats it like the plague.

- The California Supreme Court voided some 4000 gay marriages earlier this year while Canada's Supreme Court has more or less imposed gay marriage on their whole country.

- Polls in Canada showed that only about 22% would have voted for W. Nearly 45% of Californians voted to re-elect our conservative President.

They should write a book called California vs. Canada to entail how one of America's most liberal states (which has a larger population than Canada) is far more conservative than our northern neighbour.

Any country that's pre-occupied by whether 'Kemosabe' is a racial slur is a country that's lost its good mind. Canada has become such a joke. They would be nothing without us. Even with us, they're not much.

[JohnHuang2]

Any country that's pre-occupied by whether 'Kemosabe' is a racial slur is a country that's lost its good mind.

Couldn't have said it better...

[stevem]

What if the liberals had a lawsuit and no one came?

[carumba]

Oh! Canada yer on the slippery slope.

[JohnHuang2]

heh

[tom paine 2]

"What you mean, kemosabe, white man?"

[Berosus]

Yeah, I remember the time in the 70s when my brother asked a Seminole Indian what "Kemosabe" meant, and he was told it meant "stupid."

I remember The Far Side cartoon, too, where a retired Lone Ranger discovers what it means. Unfortunately when I tried finding it with Google's image search, the only link I got back that looked like it didn't work. Anybody got a picture of it they can post here?

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Tonto means stupid in Spanish.

[mhking]

Just damn.

If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[CDHart]

Some people clearly have too much time on their hands.

Carolyn