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'nam nomenclature. not a flame, just an education
bobski
Member Posts: 17,866 ✭✭✭
a lot of people dont speak the jargon and its hard for them to follow.
so, what we ought to do is list some basics for the readers like, what is a:
GOOK:
DINK:
NVA:
PAJAMA PANTS:
REGULARS:
COMMIE:
ARVN:
SPOOKS:
etc......
it may help some of the readers. and again, its not meant to be a slam or a racial insult. its for understanding terms in conversation.
so, what we ought to do is list some basics for the readers like, what is a:
GOOK:
DINK:
NVA:
PAJAMA PANTS:
REGULARS:
COMMIE:
ARVN:
SPOOKS:
etc......
it may help some of the readers. and again, its not meant to be a slam or a racial insult. its for understanding terms in conversation.
Retired Naval Aviation
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
Former NSSA All American
Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
MO, CT, VA.
Comments
Gook is actually one of the Oriental languages for "foreigner", so we were the "gooks".
Charley, Charles, Victor Charles, VC
NVA, Main Force, Pith Head
Slope
I don't have a clue about the right spelling.
Gook is actually one of the Oriental languages for "foreigner", so we were the "gooks".
Ray, are you sure you're not thinking of the Japanese word "gygene" rather than "gook"?
Seems to me I remember gook as a term that began in Korea.
quote:
GOOK
1. n. [1920s+] (orig. US military.) a derogatory term for foreigners, especially south-east Asians, e.g. (in chronological order of use) Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese.
2. n. [1940s+] a foreign language spoken by one of the above peoples.
The etymology of this racial slur is shrouded in mystery, disagreement, and controversy. The Oxford English Dictionary admits that its origin in "unknown," but that isn't quite fessing up to true complexity of the matter. It is generally agreed that the term was coined by the US military, the question is: In which war? The farthest back that its genesis is likely to have occurred was the Filipino uprising of 1899. The American soldiers are said to have referred to the natives as "gugus," playing off a Tagalog word meaning "tutelary spirit."
Was this "gugu" slur passed along by the US military for two generations until the outbreak of the Korean War? It is unclear, but during that conflict the term "gook" emerged in its current form. The Korean language has a suffix, "kuk," (phonetically "gook") that means person, and seems to be a likely source for an entirely new coinage, perhaps completely unrelated to "gugus."
Cao and Novas, the authors of Everything You Need to Know About Asian-American History, explain the term's origins as follows: "Gook, the American racial epithet for all Asian Americans, is actually the Korean word for "country." Koreans call the United States of America Mee Hap Joon Gook, which they shorten to the more familiar Mee Gook. Similarly, Koreans have shortened Dae Han Min Gook or the People's Republic of Korea to Han Gook. During the Korean War, American soldiers gave the word gook a derogatory slant and used it to refer to Koreans. The term gook went through yet one more transformation when American servicemen in Vietnam used it to refer to the Vietnamese, particularly the Vietcong."
Compare Cao and Novas' explanation to the one given by Robert G. Lee in his book Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture: "The term "gook" has a long history in the American vocabulary of race and in the American imperial career in Asia and the Pacific. A meanieization of the Korean hankuk (Korean), or mikuk (American), it was used by Americans in the Korean War to refer to North and South Koreans and Chinese alike. The term has links to "goo-goo" used by American soldiers to describe Filipino insurgents at the turn of the century. Such broad ethnic inclusiveness makes this racial epithet emblematic in describing Asian Americans as the ubiquitous and invisible enemy. Asian Americans, figured as gooks, the flip side of the model minority, become scapegoats onto which anxiety over economic decline and the psychic trauma of the Vietnam War can be transferred. They appear silently, like the Viet Cong, as an alien threat in these narratives of multicultural dystopia and besieged nationhood, at once ubiquitous and invisible, ersatz and inauthentic."
While Cao and Novas offer a more in-depth explanation of the Korean language origins of the slur, Lee is far more illuminating in his discussion of the post-colonial implication of this term, and the objectification of those whom it describes.
The connection between the Korean War's gooks and the Vietnam War's gooks is more clearly documented. Here it seems clear that the slur was a hold-over from one war to the next, as documented in a variety of Vietnam War scholarship (see Bibliography, below). It has since been immortalized in the endless stream of Vietnam War books, films, television shows, etc.
Seems to me I remember gook as a term that began in Korea.
In Korean, "migook" means American and "hangook" means Korean. Americans mistook the migook as "me gook" and started calling Koreans gooks.
trung-si nco thit-ga chicken (prepared)
thieu-uy 2nd lt. hoat-ga chicken egg
trung-uy 1st lt. cong-bo cow/bull
dai-uy capt. (O3) thit-bo beef
thieu-ta maj. cong-heo pig
trung-ta lt.col. thit-heo pork (prepared)
dai-ta col. cong-chow water buffalo
hut thuoc cigarette cong-chuok rat/mouse
thuoc medicine
daw pain
ung-man/ba-woman/em-male child/co-young woman/lien-doi-battalion/dai-doi-company emma muoy bon-M14/emma muoy shau-M16 maibai-aircraft y-te-hospital dispensary/covan-advisor (in the north the "v" is just like english, in the southern accent, the "v" is pronounced as a "y" sound). Now here's a bottle of coke. The literal translation on the bottle is.. "the girl is singing-coca/the girl is happy-cola" ......and I did this all from memory!!!! Haven't given this stuff a thought in over 37 years!! Wow! alzheimers....NOT!!! (or is the affliction loss of short-term memory). I can't remember. (smile)
Best to all, Joe (givette)