[Mihalic] Suggested source for "asua"

Ken Smith ken.kellogg.smith at comcast.net
Sat Nov 28 01:32:53 EST 2009


It seems to me that the very common  U.S. Navy and Marine Corps command
phrase "As you were!" would be the likely source for Tok Pisin word "asua",
but only  if the word isn't documented in Tok Pisin dictionaries and
literature prior to 1942.  I suggest this because during  U.S. involvement
in World War II (1941-1945)  the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps military
carried out extensive logistic and combat operations throughout Melanesia
and Micronesia, and the Mihalic/Burton dictionary's definitions for the use
of the Tok Pisin word "asua" are identical to the way the command "As you
were!" is used in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.  

 

During WWII the U.S. Navy's construction battalions (C.B.'s, or "SeaBees")
were responsible in the Pacific theatre of operations for constructing
airfields, roads, and cargo handling facilities.  Lae, for just one example,
was a major combat staging and logistics port for Allied operations carried
out in New Guinea.  Local labor was recruited from among the indigenous
peoples in those islands, primarily to do simple lifting and carrying tasks.
Obviously, language differences made understanding instructions difficult
for the indigenous laborers when given by supervising, English-speaking,
SeaBee enlisted men and officers.  Those laborers obviously made mistakes
from time to time, and in situations where a SeaBee supervisor saw a laborer
or group of laborers making one or more mistakes, the supervisor would have
shouted out "As you were!" as a command to the laborer or laborers to
immediately stop what they were doing.  The mistake would then be corrected
(likely some kind of reprimand issued, perhaps along with various swear
words) and then the command "Carry on!" would be made (or perhaps angrily
shouted?) for the affected laborers to continue with the tasks they were
doing.  

 

Obviously, even though "As you were" could be used in a non-aggressive way
(as in "carry on", gentlemen), when it is shouted when mistakes are being
observed by supervisors some degree of blame or error would be associated
with the command.  This could explain why the Mihalic/Burton dictionary
definition includes the sense of blame or error when "asua" is uttered in
Tok Pisin.  My guess is that when "asua" was used in the decade following
WWII it was uttered as a command in the sense that something was being done
wrong, and/or that blame was being pointed out, as noted in the
Mihalic/Burton dictionary.   But with the end of WWII and the abandonment of
Allied forces military bases, the use of "asua" in subsequent generations
would not only be mitigated and less likely to be used, but the knowledge of
the source of where the word originally came from (but not the way or
circumstances in which it is used) would very likely also be lost.

 

I believe the nature of the command "As you were" would have made a great
impression on the affected laborers, and the command's Tok Pisin phonetic
equivalent "asua" might well have entered the language sometime between 1941
and 1945.

 

Ken Kellogg-Smith

Abingdon, Maryland U.S.A.

 

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