Honkin' is surely an expression that had its origins in Detroit ... ?

- Pfranz

Honkin' big is not an expression I use much myself (in fact I think my post above when I was more or less just quoting mg was probably a first), but I've certainly heard it before and know what it means.

In reply to:

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In looking up honking I ran across hork spit, the act of spitting, according to the dictionary, with the additional qualifier added by me that it usually refers to the type of spitting preceded by the sound "hork" which is marked as Canadian slang. Well, that's another one I thought everyone knew. Live and learn.

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Surely this is just a Canadian mis-spelling of hawk? For any who may not be familiar with the expression, hawking up is a major expectoration preceded by much throat-clearing and coughing.

Bingley

Surely this is just a Canadian mis-spelling of hawk?

Presume not such a thing! Misspellers not we are! Onomatopoeists are we. Hence honkin', methinks....

Actually my Canajun Oxford, eh? sez "hork" is an alteration of "hawk." Not a misspleling. Plese. We nevir mispel anythink. We ar a nation of very literut peopl.

Dunno that I envisioned quite how honkin' big them banana seeds are....I wonder how they do compare with watermelon seeds? I wonder how the wild banana compares, for size, with the tame banana?

While I'm at it, I wouldn't have said an avocado had a honkin' big seed. I would have said it had a honkin' big pit. But that's a whole nother discussion, prolly....

And finally I feel compelled to add, because of Bean's example of the honkin' big truck, that I actually used that phrase once and had to elaborate....I rang up the police station to report someone who had passed me dangerously (I get quite righteous about dangerous driving), and I said, "This honkin' big truck passed me on a solid line....Okay, it wasn't actually honking...." The policewoman laughed and said she knew what I meant, a friend of hers uses that expression all the time...!

Somehow great seems to go better with honkin than big does. As in "He gives a honkin great hork every morning. Sounds like he's bringing half his windpipe up."

Bingley

Bingley, you're right - for your bit o' the world! Canajuns seem to use "big" rather than "great" for a size adjective.

I just remember my British-born-and-raised father saying things like, "This ruddy great truck passed me on the highway," etc....

I heard someone with a British accent talking about how the 12th century English kings used to go "hawking" and I now quite unnerstan' why Canajuns corrupted it to "horking"...!

But.... but ... to the non-rhotically inclined among us, hawking and horking sound the same.

Bingley

hawking and horking sound the same

Shorely the vowel is a tad longer in the former? rhoticism or not?! (I had to look up "rhotic" btw....)

but yer right, I guess. Damn. I think I'm falling in love....

"Shorely the vowel is a tad longer in the former?"

Mais non! I was married to an Australian in my former life and you honest-to-god couldn't tell whether he was saying "porn" or "pawn". He and one of his fellow nationals were once talking about a small town near Adelaide(his home) and I thought for all the world the name of the place was Gorla. Until I saw a map one day and saw the town Gawler. Oh how they laughed, those people of dubious parentage, when I told them what I thought. "So OK," sez I,"how would you pronounce something spelled g-o-r-l-a?" and they both said "Gawler." Foreigners talk funny. I know this because I was one the whole year I lived in Australia and people always stared when I spoke out loud.

Edit: For WordWind: I was going to add that yes, things can only be honkin' big, not honkin' small or honkin' smelly or anything else...
__________________________________

well, in a Britslang moment, I'd have to say it would in any case be impossible for something to be honking smelly as 'honking' means smelly.

As in, I think that cheese may have gone off.... oooh, yes, it's absolutely honking.

Frequently also applied to feet.

I often use raunchy as slang for "bad smelling". raunch would be the noun form.

eg. "What IS that raunch? It's making my stomach turn!"
eg. "Now THAT is a raunchy smell."

'honking' means smelly.

And so does "humming," as I recall from dating a Brit feller while backpacking in Oz....(he came out of the loo in our room in Brisbane - the only hostel room we ever had that was ensuite, I think - and said, "O, don't go in there - it's humming!") (I love that man, how he made me laugh!)

"Raunchy", where I come from, usually means something sexually suggestive, a bit grubby ... I suppose you could get to "smells off" or "smells bad" from there!

- Pfranz

I'd understand humming to mean filled with really good vibes. Or either going along just swimmingly.

"Raunchy", where I come from, usually means something sexually suggestive, a bit grubby

It certainly has this as its more common meaning but I learned it as "smelly" in high school. It might have been a bit of local slang which then dispersed when we all left.

hawking and horking sound the same

I felt some embarrassment when, on asking an American colleague one time, “What bird’s that?” he replied, “That’s a hock.” Normally I’m pretty quick with these differences, but I had already identified it as a hawk and was waiting for him to tell me what kind – him bein’ a huntin’ type an’ all. So, what is he telling me? I thought, and was trying to recall a type of hawk that was called a hock. Decided I must’ve misheard. I *knew it wasn’t a bottle of overly sweet white wine! Of course, I had asked too broad a question for the answer I wanted and he had to repeat himself three times before I caught on.

As a non-rhotic speaker I pronounce hawk and cork alike and, for that matter, caulk. My colleague would pronounce ‘cork’ almost as I would, non-rhotic certainly, but perhaps with an almost unnoticeable diphthong (but not an intrusive ‘r’). His hawk, however, was ‘hock’. Does this suggest an origin on the east coast perhaps? He was living in California at that time but I don’t know his home state.

but not an intrusive ‘r’

Intrusive!? Intrusive!? It belongs there! It's not intrusive!

The 'r' at the end of California is intrusive!

You're right. Intrusive was not correct, and is not what I meant. Mental muddle. Mea culpa.

The 'r' is there, has every right to be there, and whether you acknowledge its presence or not comes down to early training.

Point I was trying to get at was whether these were linguistic clues to where this guy came from?[rising inflection]

His hawk, however, was ‘hock’. Does this suggest an origin on the east coast perhaps?
Hi, Sweet Thing--no. Some East Coast-ers get weird with their r's, as in hahbah for harbor and Porscher for Porsche. But we normal US'n's and even those ones pretty much say hawk for hawk. Though I'm not saying that nobody says hock for hawk, hock is a different word and I would hope people would make sure they distinguish the sounds of the two (yes, I am an optimist). The vowel sound of hawk is the same as in jaw, law, paw, etc. And although I believe ought really ought to have a slightly different vowel sound, around these parts it's the same: hawk, ought.

Yes, hock for hawk is a regionalism, but I'm not entirely sure wherefrom. I'm kind of hearing it being said by a Chicagoan (of which I was/am one of {you can take the boy out of Chicago…}) so maybe it's a mid-western thang. I think I can hear it from a Wisconsonian or a Minnesotan. musick? tsuwm?

If any of us owned the Dictionary of American Regional English, we could LIU:

http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html

Vol. IV just out!

Didn't someone post a link to a site that has such like? I remember soda/pop/tonic/cocola. That's word choice but didn't it have pronunciations, too?

I think I've mentioned this before but anyway..in "typical" Canadian English the vowels in hock and hawk have merged, that is, they are pronounced the same. So Canadians (on average, and including myself) see the following word pairs as homophones:

hock/hawk
don/dawn (this can be awkward since Don is a man's name and Dawn is a woman's name)
tot/taught
cot/caught
awful/offal
cod/cawed

I think this may be the case for some parts of the US - I remember looking at some vowel map at the American Dialect Society - but I can't remember the details anymore. Anyway, hock/hawk sounds perfectly normal to my ears but I can see the source of confusion.

honk, honker

When I was a kid, and through high school (Central New Jersey, NYC area), we always used to say for spitting "honk up a good one" or "what a honker" or "that's a big honker".

And "honkey" was a disparagement for white folks.

raunchy

Another favorite high school expression was "man, that's raunchy!" for something that's smelly or nasty in any repulsive way. "Get that raunchy thing away from me!"

bananas

It was recently in the news that bananas have a good chance of disappearing within 10 years as they are genetically unable to fend off disease...unless one of our bio-geneticist maestros saves the day and saves our bananas (I love bananas!)

he mispelled my name

Pfranz, okay?

Candian geese

Uh, ladies...that's Canada geese.

Boston accent(hi, wow!)

For some reason folks with a stong Boston>New England accent (see the kennedys) change any word with a final syllable of "-a" to "-er"...as in Americer, Canader, staminer, etc. I had a German teacher for three years in high school who was from Boston and who spoke English with a heavy Boston accent...talk about trying to decipher that twist of accenting!

Bean, why do Canadians pronounce about "aboot"? (or mebbe you wanna ask why USns pronounce aboot "about"? )

this whole tot/taught, cot/caught thang is a giant yart. just to chop some liver.

just to chop some liver

Hawk liver!? ...I'd rather eat ham hocks!

Oh, but giant yarts are allowed on Mondays!

giant yarts are allowed on Mondays!

Where a giant yart is defined as one that will sleep 20 or more,

OK, you YARTophobes, the bit about "where in the US have these vowels merged" is still unanswered, and I'm not in the mood to look for it. Instead of making fun of me you could get your Googlers out and get working!

I was just pointing out a possibility, and slightly miffed that Jackie insinuated that those of us who don't differentiate between those vowels are pronouncing things improperly. [pout] I say, when a whole group of people pronounces things a particular way, then it is the right way for them! I will never be able to casually make my mouth all pointy the way you need to to pronounce awful, hawk, dawn, etc., with different vowels than the others!

Where a giant yart is defined as one that will sleep 20 or more,

Oh, you mean like Michael Jackson's bedroom?

Michael Jackson's bedroom

Does it float?

Bean, the about/aboot was a serious question...really.

Michael Jackson's bedroom

Does it float?

It can do anything Michael says it does.

That forwarding/shortening of the vowel sound is also common in tidewater Virginia -- in fact you'll hear it all along the mid-Atlantic Coast. I wonder if there's any connection.

It's called raising because your tongue is actually in a higher place in your mouth when making that vowel. However, the "rule" for raising is different in Canada than those parts of the US where it's found. We raise the vowels before an unvoiced consonant, and leave the sound "low" before a voiced consonant. I think in Virginia it's applied to all instances of one of the diphthongs (can't remember if it's ai or au) whether voiced or unvoiced. The info is in my linguistics book at home, and I am, of course, at school...

I don't think they [the linguists] have generally concluded just why it arose. Certainly Canadians of Scottish descent seem to raise more strongly than others. And many of the first English-speaking Canadians came from Scotland. But we all* seem to do it.

Here's a link about it, but the bloody sound thingies don't work for some reason. And sound files would be most useful in this case!

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/CanadianEnglish.html

"Bean, the about/aboot was a serious question...really."

Aieeee! It's NOT "aboot"! It's ABOAT. Maybe I should let a Canajan answer that question, but it drives me nutz when people can't tell the difference. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Ontario in 1978, and when I mentioned it to my friends, who were all language students, they all said, "Oh, no, we don't soand like that!"

If it were aboot, then we would be able to rhyme words like "about" and "flute". Well, we don't. They don't rhyme. I like to spell the -out sound something like uh-oo (as opposed to USn and Brit ah-oo), where "uh" is the schwa sound. The whole vowel ends up shorter with the Canadian Raised diphthong. One of my favourite demo pairs of words is lout/loud. Loud ends up so much longer than lout. They are so similar but different because we only make this vowel change before an unvoiced consonant (see above).

But innyway, I'm a midwesterner, and I say "hock" and "hawk" the same. Ditto "all" and "awl".

Yes, thinking back now, the sound is actually much closer to aBOAT than to aBOOT.

Thanks, Bean! (and birdfeed) Guess I was sort of on the right track, but that and a dollar will get me a bad cup of coffee.

insinuated that those of us who don't differentiate between those vowels are pronouncing things improperly As to this, I'm just a stick(ler) in the mud. But as to lout/loud. Loud ends up so much longer than lout. , well, y'all people are just weird! Eep--I just tried it, and be danged if loud isn't just a little bit longer! Oops!
Aside: isn't it neat, that your thread that seemed to start out as being relevant to just a few, has transmogrified and grown the way it has?

From the most recent two issues of Michael Quinion's newsletter:

15 Feb:
Subscribers who are native speakers of North American English are
likely to find the Dialect Survey of interest. This was created by
Professor Bert Vaux at Harvard University. You can take a test and
view the collected results, which include maps. See where people
say the vowel in "cot" and "caught" the same way, where they use
double models as in "I might could do that", where they consider
"anymore" to be a standard form meaning "nowadays", or any of 120
other variations. See: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/

22 February:
A number of Canadian subscribers attempted to register
at the dialect site I listed last week, which describes itself on
its home page as "designed for speakers of North American English",
but found to their surprise and disgruntlement on trying to take
the test that they were not considered to be North American. Not
being in that category, I didn't try the test, so didn't discover
the error. I did assume, though, that a linguistic site would know
what it meant when it wrote "North American English"!

Bingley

didn't discover the error.

From the site:

speakers of all varieties of English are welcome to take the test.

That's really bush league (no pun intended). The one and only serious, scholarly and comprehensive dialect survey was started by the late Frederic Cassidy and is being continued by the qualified folks at the University of Wisconsin. Aside from the absurdities cited above, from what I've seen of this, the questions are leading and presuppose the respondents can actually *hear themselves; also there don't seem to be any qualifications (long-term residency, at least) established for the informants. And what's a 'double model?'

Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Bingley!

There's a group at McGill University doing a survey on English word usage in Canada. All you have to do is email them at canadian_english@mcgill.ca

At the bottom of the form I received it notes the survey may be returned to : Prof Charles Berg, Dept of Linguistics, McGill University, 1085 Dr. Penfield, Montreal, QC, H3A 1A7 Canada -- Tel (514) 398-4896 -- FAX : (514) 398-7088 -- E-Mail : charles.boberg@mcgill.ca
I took it, so did a couple of my neighbors, my son and the young gal who comes in to help around the house. Some interesting differences and similarities! Age range from early 20s to me in 70s!

And what's a 'double model?

Aha! Found it. It's not "model", it's "modal"! Like could, would, ought to, etc.

It's not "model", it's "modal"!

Lost in the Chasm of Sar without a paddle.

Sorry, I'm 17 days late, I didn't think there was so much fun going on up 'ere in I+A.

I pronounce hock and hawk differently. I can't say I recall ever hearing them blur together, 'cept maybe in Boston... which would explain why the 'stereotypical' south side Chicago accent may also blur thier distinction.

Hock - Exchange goods for money at a "pawn shop".
Hocker - Is organic and it comes from your throat after you say the word "hocker" a few times...
Hawk - Is the guy who does the White 'Sox' (pronounced like 'hocks') color commentary.