I just saw this strip of The far side, where a duck says how its wife just say “quack quack quack” in the morning and “quack quack quack” in the night, instead of “blah blah blah”.
I just saw this strip of The far side, where a duck says how its wife just say “quack quack quack” in the morning and “quack quack quack” in the night, instead of “blah blah blah”.
That sounds like a cognate of the (American) English usage “potato, potato” (but pronounced poh-TAY-toe, poh-TAH-toe) to indicate the lack of distinction between two items that have been presented as different.
It’s more likely cognate with the word “patter”, or at the very least, a parallel development from the same underlying onomatopoeia. Nothing to do with spuds.
The emphasis is on the last syllable of each, “e-pata-TI, e-pata-TA”.