Yes, Tarzan comics! A great enjoyment of mine when I was a kid. In those days Tarzan appeared in Dell Comics, later known as Gold Key. This was long before Marvel got hold of the character.

The Tarzan comics in those days were in a kind of golden age, with a sort of innocent quality that could not find acceptance nowadays, because everyone has become so touchy about all kinds of racial, cultural, and gender issues. The Tarzan world was an enjoyable fantasy view of African life that owed a lot to 19th century perceptions of the "Dark Continent", a place teeming with wild animals, fierce tribesman, and lush, impenetrable jungles.

One of the really odd things in the Tarzan comics was a dialect supposedly spoken by the "great apes" (Tarzan's extended simian family, who were NOT gorillas, but some fictional strain of large ape)...it was also spoken by Tarzan on a regular basis, and soon became part of the vocabulary of all comic-reading kids.

Examples:

Tar-zan (white-skin), Numa (lion), Sabor (lioness), Bolgani (gorilla), Gimla (crocodile), Tantor (elephant), Horta (warthog), mangani (great apes), tarmangani (white man/men), gomangani (black African man/men), and so on...

One may easily deduce from the above that "tar" meant white (ironical, isn't it?), and "go" meant black.

Then there was N'kima, Tarzan's chimpanzee companion who often came along on various adventures, and was good at sounding the alarm. Oddly enough, the movie industry decided to rename the chimp "Cheetah", which is really stupid, since we all know that a cheetah is not a chimpanzee. They probably thought that the average American movie-goer couldn't handle a name as complicated and exotic as N'kima! Well, duh!!! As usual, they underestimated their public. N'kima is a way better name than Cheetah. It probably simply means "chimpanzee", I suspect.

And then....prehistoric beasts...which sometimes showed up in some mysterious lost valley in central Africa...

Garth (tyrranosaurus rex)

Gryf (triceratops)

The "Gryf" interestingly enough, could be ridden if you walked straight up to it, uttered a particular cry and whacked it on the snout with a stick or a bow. It would then swing its head to one side, snap the empty air, and allow you to mount behind its neck armour and use it as an all-terrain vehicle! Very handy when fighting "Garths", who invariably got gored in the stomach or shot in the back of the mouth with arrows. Ah! The utter ease of being a loincloth-wearing hero in a savage land!

Now then, Tarzan also acquired a young son, named (with exquisite imagination) "Boy". Boy remained conveniently 10 or 12 years old on an indefinite basis, and was a pretty resourceful character who occasionally needed rescuing by the old man. Boy also had a young friend, a black African boy named "Dombi". Dombi was mainly there to provide conversation, get in trouble, and get rescued. I suspect that his name meant something similar to "Tonto", which means "dimwit" or "lunkhead" in Spanish. He was always getting into difficulties, and would probably be considered a racist stereotype nowadays by more than a few people.

Last, but not least...my 3 favorite Ape-English words:

Gom!!! (Run!)

Bundolo!!! (Kill!)

Kreegah!!! (Beware! Look out!)

Those ones were great, and appeared in most of the action scenes. I still feel like yelling "Kreegah!" when a bunch of bikers pull onto main street or a new Bushwhacked thread gets launched...

Now....does anyone else remember any more of the Ape-English words? And does anyone know what language they REALLY come from? I heard once that it was Swahili, but this has not been confirmed.

Go to it. Give us those Tarzan memories.

- LH