Province de Liège Travel Forum

My in-laws came to America from Belgium 75 years ago. They were french speakers. I have been looking for a translation of a fun word they would routinely use. Gous Gous. It would be used for the desert of a meal, sweets and candies, or by me as the good things of life.
Any background on this term? I have never heard it used outside of my wife's family. Joe

Bookmark, now you got me curious!

It doesn't sound any bell to me...
...do you know from which specific area in Belgium they were from?
That's maybe related to some local dialect!

Couscous is a typical North-of-the-Sahara African dish.
http://www.geocities.com/tdcastros/Historyserver/papers/cuscus.htm

You can also find it in Wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couscous

And couscous is yummy too!

It can't possibly have anything to do with the (N. African) couscous which is pronounced kooskoos, not googoo, as "gous gous" would have to be, assuming that this is the correct spelling. I would have said it was a literal translation in a Germanic-influenced language (cf. gut/good) of "bonbon" (sweet/s) or as you Americans would say, candy/ies), and as you may know, Wallonia has 2 official languages, French and German so it would not be surprising if some Walloon dialects were German-influenced; but I can't find any trace of a dialect word with this meaning, and it seems that in Liégois, "gous" means "dog"! And the only context in which I know of "gougous" or "gougouttes" in modern French is in relation to ladies' protuberances...

The French did have a presence in N. Africa, and in the wikipedia link, it says couscous is eaten in France. Gary

I'm well aware that the French had a connection (colonies) in N. Africa and that couscous is eaten in France, indeed it is also eaten in Belgium given that there are large numbers of immigrants here from Morocco and Tunisia. However
a) this was not the case in 1932, when this word was already in use in the questioner's family. Moroccan immigration to Belgium didn't start till the 1960s!
b) "gous-gous" would have to be pronounced googoo in French or any dialect of French; while couscous - which is Arabic - is pronounced KOOSKOOS; why would it get transformed into googoo, and specifically in the area of Belgium from which these people emigrated, when this pronunciation is certainly not used in French (for couscous) now? and
c) it especially does not seem to relate to the MEANING with which these Belgian emigrants apparently used it, i.e. to refer to sweet food items and "the good things in life" in general: couscous is itself a bland substance, which is served with savoury food.
And why, 75 years ago, would someone who presumably - given that the question is asked in the Liège forum - came from Liège, which is in the French-speaking part of Belgium (and not in France, although the same arguments apply to that country) be using an Arabic word rather than one derived from a French/Wallon/Liégeois dialect?! And with a totally different meaning from the one it has in Arabic? As a linguist myself, I am not remotely convinced by this explanation.
There again, this is not a travel question, what is it doing in a travel forum?

I suppose you understood the word with some alteration, because the wallon dialect (from Liège and surrounds) use the word "gougouille" to describe sweets that people eat outside meal hours (it's pronounced: "goo-goo-j".