I always see it as a cognate of the *English* Yum yum yum - with an 'um' at the beginning, as it were. I think that 'nyam' is on a line between those as well. Pretty onomatopoeic, I'd agree!
I suspect some of the difference there is due to the vowel shifts between 'English English' and 'American English', too. Mind you, which way the 'phrase' went is anybody's guess - if it's from the Creole originally, then it went from the Americas to England; or the Creole speakers could have picked it up from the English slave-owners (or whoever) as 'yum yum', rephrased it to suit themselves, and passed it on to American English-speakers as 'omnomnom'.
Or, of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong. ;-D
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Date: 2009-11-05 10:49 pm (UTC)I suspect some of the difference there is due to the vowel shifts between 'English English' and 'American English', too. Mind you, which way the 'phrase' went is anybody's guess - if it's from the Creole originally, then it went from the Americas to England; or the Creole speakers could have picked it up from the English slave-owners (or whoever) as 'yum yum', rephrased it to suit themselves, and passed it on to American English-speakers as 'omnomnom'.
Or, of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong. ;-D