On Wed, 28 May 2003 08:02:13 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> In case your dictionary does not explain this, its etymology is the
> Portuguese verb "saber" < Lat. SAPERE, which was used in the original
> Lingua Franca and from there spread into almost all the pidgins and
> creoles of the Earth. As you can well imagine, a pidgin needs a verb
> for "understand/comprehend" as one of its very basic words! So it
> can be verb ("understand"), adjective ("being able to understand"),
> or noun ("comprehension"). The last is the least informal, at least in
> English; the adjective is evidently meant here, and in more normative
> orthography "Unicode-savvy" would be used.
The OED says "Orig. Black & pidgin Eng. after Sp. sabe usted you know"
To me at least, it conjures up images of Tonto speaking to the Lone Ranger : "Me
no savvy, Kemo Sabe".
Andrew
