General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, Joke
• Language: Marshallese
• Country of Origin: Marshall Islands
• Informant: Anders Peterson
• Date Collected: 11-02-18

Informant Data:

• Anders is a full time student at Dartmouth on the football team. He spent two years before coming to Dartmouth to serve a full time mission for his church. He served his mission in Texas and spent the majority of his mission with the Marshallese people there. He learned there language in his time with them.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: The Marshall islands is surrounded by water on all sides. It is a series of Atolls and therefore sea life is an important part of their culture. Marshallese people are really big fans of jokes. They love humor.
• Social Context: The informant learned this joke early in his mission. He used it as a way to connect with the people even though he barely knew their language. He said that this reference to their culture was hilarious to them coming from a “ripelle” or white person.

Item:

• This joke is a reference to sea cucumbers. Sea cucumbers are very common in the Marshall Islands. They are known for swaying back and forth, gently with the tides. The connection here is a joke, but also a simile in a sense. It is comparing this sea life to sleep. The reason it is considered a joke is because of the context it is used in. The informant would say this joke on his way out the door of people’s homes. This is commonly a phrase used in the islands to children so it was humorous coming from a white person completely out of context. While the informant felt original in his usage originally, it is actually a phrase used commonly as a joke in the islands.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

• “Bar lo yok, im Kiki in Jibenben!” – Marshallese
• “Goodbye, and sleep like a cucumber!” – English

Informant’s Comments:

• “I loved this joke. It’s something I said the whole two years on my mission. “Jibenben” even became my nickname at one point. It always left the families with a smile.”

Collector’s Comments:

• It’s really interesting to picture Anders saying this. It’s hard for me to really understand the humor because before this project I’d never met a Marshallese person. I felt like a lot of the Marshallese jokes I heard were also this way.

Collector’s Name: Jimmy McHugh

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Lore
• Joke
• Marshallese
• Sea Life/Cucumber