Talk:guarriboom

Possible names: Acacia divinorum or Euclea divinorum. I was unable to make much progress with these doing online search, but I didn't try any international systematic plant names source. DCDuring TALK 21:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

• 2005, P. C. M. Jansen, Jansen, P.C.M. & Cardon, D, Prota 3 Dyes and Tannins - Google Books Result

  Vernacular names magic gwarri, diamond-leaved euclea (English). mdaa, mdala, msirisha (Swahili). DCDuring TALK 21:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

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guarriboom

I was trying to find the plural form of this so I could add {{en-noun}} when I found there are only 24 Google hits, most of them from wiktionary or similar sites and none indicating usage. Perhaps it is a misspelling. Pistachio 17:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a book hit, published 2003 before the wiktionary page, so at least it isn't completely made up. Nadando 21:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I've got some information, but not usage of that name. Another name like gwarri or guarri might be better. DCDuring TALK 22:05, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Do we know this is English? The book Nadando found is using African language examples, and the word boom is Dutch for "tree" (and presumably means the same in Afrikaans). This might be an Afrikaans word. --EncycloPetey 00:24, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, the book Nadando links to says it's English: "So it is that Khoisan languages, particularly Nama and Khoe, provide many loanwords in the English of South Africa, especially in the area of useful and medicinal plants. Here are some examples: […] guarriboom 'shrub whose fruit can be fermented for vinegar', [comes] from Khoe gwarri, also borrowed into Zulu umgwali; […] .^[40]" The footnote 40 says "Examples […] from Silva 1997" which is "Penny Silva, 'The Lexis of South African English: Reflections of a Multilingual Society', in Edgar W. Schneider (ed.), Englishes around the World: Studies in Honour of Manfred Görlach (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1997), ii. 159–76". But Silva (who now is the "director" (?) of the OED, by the way) doesn't actually mention guarriboom at all (unless I'm missing it) in that article. She says, though, that "Khoikhoi [=Khoe] words in S[outh] A[frican] E[nglish] include […] the plant names […] guarri, […] ." I don't know whether she means that teh word was borrowed as is, or merely that that Khoikhoi word made it into SAE, possibly altered. She does mention that "[m]ost of the Khoikhoi borrowings now found in SAE were acquired via" Dutch and Xhosa — which might explain the boom.—msh210℠ 19:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I e-mailed Ms. Silva for clarification, and she informs me that she "would say that in South African English guarri is more common than guarriboom (formed with Dutch/Afrikaans boom tree, as you suggest): I've attached the entry for GUARRI n., from the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, OUP, Oxford (1996), as this gives you an idea of the range of compounds formed by the word: guarriboom is only one of them, as you'll see." So, to answer EP's original question, yes, it's English. That DSAEHP quotation she attached to the e-mail includes, as she says, other related words, but also includes variant spellings: "guarri, gwarrie /'gwari/ n. Also ghwarrie, guárri, guarrie, guarry, guerri(e), gwarri, gwary, kwarrie, quarri."—msh210℠ 17:24, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Good enough for government work. - [The]DaveRoss 00:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)