talkee-talkee

English

Etymology 1

Noun

talkee-talkee (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of talky-talky

Etymology 2

Reduplicated diminutive talk +‎ -ee. Compare Dutch takitaki (“pejorative term for Sranan Tongo”), Sranan Tongo takitaki (“to jabber, to chatter; chatter, idle talk”).

Alternative forms

• Taki-taki
• talkie-talkie

Noun

talkee-talkee (uncountable)

1. (historical) A creole, especially the Anglo-Dutch language spoken in Demerara and elsewhere in what is now Guyana and Suriname.
   • 1810 December 5, Robert Southey, “To John May, Esq.”, in John Wood Warter, editor, Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey‎^[1], published 1856, page 206:

     The talkee-talkee of the slaves in the sugar islands, as it is called, will prevail at Surinam, and become the language of Guiana. They have a printed bible in it already.

   • 1854, Samuel Phillips, A second Series of Essays from "the Times"‎^[2], page 280:

     The talkee-talkee of a North-American Indian, and the song of Deborah, might each have stood as the model.

   • 1936, Melville J. Herskovits, Frances S. Herskovits, Suriname folk-lore‎^[3], New York: Columbia University Press, page 32:

     It must not be understood that homosexuality is confined to women. Relationships of this type exist also among men, and in taki-taki are to be found words which are specific designations for male homosexuals, who are termed hantimąn, or awɛge.

   • 1951, Armed Forces Talk‎^[4], page 13:

     Surinam (Dutch Guiana) […] Dutch, English, Javanese, "talkie-talkie".

   • 2010, Richard Price, Travels with Tooy: History, Memory and the African American Imagination‎^[5], page 186:

     The interpreter did not speak Toyo’s language but rather what the court calls “Taki-Taki - more properly called Sranan-tongo, the Creole language of coastal Suriname.