Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 11

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January 11

Heavy Manners?

This term is used frequently by punks and Aryan skinheads to refer to police/government oppression - e.g. "We're living under heavy manners". It's used in loads of songs and is frequently seen on T-shirts and jackets. Does anyone know where the term originated? I asked this question on the Humanities desk a couple of weeks ago but I didn't get any answers aside from a brief discussion about the nature of "Aryan skinheads". I guess I asked in the wrong place (didn't realize that there was a Language desk at the time). So, can anyone help me? Thanks. --84.66.68.9 00:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at Under Heavy Manners and this article from 1976. The word is apparently Jamaican slang for "discipline" and refers specifically to a state of emergency declared by Jamaica's government in 1976. Marco polo 02:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

So, the 'Aryan Skinheads' use a term borrowed from Jamaican culture? That's quite funny. --Kurt Shaped Box 23:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Interesting - I didn't know it had been adopted by punks & skinheads. Of course, in the 80s it was such a normal part of Trinidadian English that I didn't even know it was Jamaican until my (very proper, cultured) uncle explained it as a Jamaican term when he quoted someone using it. Guettarda 03:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

There's been a strong punk/rasta axis in the UK ever since the late 70s. Punks listened to reggae, Rastas listened to punk rock and some mutual common ground was found. Certain Jamaican slang found its way into punk lingo - 'Heavy Manners' being one example (as well as 'Babylon', 'Jah Love', etc.). The skinhead revival in the 80s was a spinoff from punk. I didn't know that the racist/Nazi/Aryan skins (only one faction in a host of skinhead factions that originated at the time - not all skinheads are members of the far-right) used it though. --Kurt Shaped Box 16:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Sleep tight

Where did the phrase "sleep tight" come from? It's often followed by "Don't let the bed bugs bite" so is it some strange way of saying that if you keep your sheets tucked in tight around you that the bed bugs won't get in? Dismas|^(talk) 01:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I may be mistaken, but I think those are just often said together because they are both well-wishes for someone's good, healthy sleep (the bedbug one with a more humorous sense to it, though, and one which really doesn't have much meaning these days), and because they rhyme, not because "sleep tight" is directly related to preventing bed bug bites. I can't help with the other part of your question, unfortunately (and since this answer was just pretty much a guess, I'm not sure how much I helped with this part) --Miskwito 08:55, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I imagine it's related to the phrase "sit tight". --Auximines 09:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If you search for "sleep tight" on google (with quotes) the first few hits are explanations. Tight here means securely or soundly and guesses about being tied into bed are mostly bogus. One of the links dates "sleep tight" to the 1860s whilst:

Sleep tight

Where the bugs don't bite!

is from Henry Parker Fellows' Boating Trips on New England Rivers (1884). meltBanana 14:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I once read or heard or saw on TV (sorry, can't give a reference, and I have no idea how credible it was, but it made sense to me at the time) that sleep tight referred to when beds were made of rope (a wood frame with rope stretched across). The mattress was then placed on top of the rope. The rope had to be tightened occasionally. Hence, sleep tight referring to tight ropes. Ingrid 17:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

"Tight" in "sleep tight" is, according to[1] the only surviving use of the word to mean "soundly" or "well." These 2 phrases often are said to children following "Nighty night," and are probably just selected to rhyme, with the bedbug part as a gigglingly horrific conclusion, something like the Oranges and Lemons rhyme which ends "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!" Edison 22:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

"mattress"

I came across an answer closer to the reply by "Ingrid" whenever I toured Colonial Williamsburg. It seems that there in the 18th Century they had rooms to rent upstairs in the Taverns to travelers. The conditions of healthy bedding was not anywhere close to our standards of today. In other words, they had bed bugs. What the Tour Guides will tell you is that the reference to "sleep tight" is exactly that reference to pulling the ropes tight so the bed doesn't sag. The reference to the other of course is the bed bugs in the matting they used that was laid on top of the Ropes. Take a trip through Colonial Williamsburg and tour the Taverns to hear this story told by various Tour Guides. --Doug ^talk 00:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! Dismas|^(talk) 05:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I am an historian with Colonial Williamsburg. The term 'sleep tight' whereas it is applicable to the rope system that suspended the mattress in a bed frame -e.g. the sleeper would want the ropes to be good and tight beneath his/her mattress so it did not sag like a hammock while he/she slept- it is not an 18th century term. Instead, the term first appears in documentary evidence in the 19th century during which time such beds were still in popular use. Bed bugs were and are a problem, however, they could be delt with; taverns often made use of cheap fill for their mattresses such as straw - if the mattress becomes infected, open it up, dump the fill, wash (boil) the cover, and stuff it again with fresh fill. A tavern that did not deal with the problem quickly would not maintain a good business reputation for long.

Plural of femme fatale

According to the article, the plural is femmes fatales. No doubt this would be correct in French, but is it in English? If not, which is better: femmes fatale or femme fatales? Clarityfiend 06:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

English has no fixed rules per se (nor does any other language, really), but there's not really any fixed convention for this type of case. Google suggests usage is split roughly 50-50 between femmes fatales and femme fatales, but Google does strange things with "s" truncation, so I wouldn't rely on it in this case.

If you're using a fancy French word to express something, you're implicitly laying claim to be the kind of person sophisticated enough to be using fancy French words. So, you might as well go whole hog and use French morphology while you're at it. --Diderot 07:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I see a problem with "femmes fatale". You're treating each word individually as an English word, because in English we pluralise nouns (femmes) but not adjectives (fatale). That's OK as far as it goes, but you're still using the French word order. English would be "fatale femmes". I think you need to be consistent - use English pluralisations and word-order conventions, or French, but not a mixture. Since changing the order of the words is outside the scope of the question, this leaves only the following options:

• "femmes fatales" (French pluralisation and word order)
• "femme fatales" (English pluralisation and word order, treating "femme fatale" as a unit).

I know which one I'd prefer, but it's your call. JackofOz 09:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

LOOOOOOOOSERS. Anchoress 11:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If you're really snooty, you could say "femmes fatale," aligning with "brothers-in-law" and "attorneys general." zafiroblue05 | Talk 21:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think a truly snooty person would go the whole cochon and adopt the French form - femmes fatales. However, doing so would not necessarily make one snooty, merely one who enjoys the richness of the English language in all its diversity. I also suspect the justification you use for "femmes fatale" is flawed; it would never be correct to write "attorneys-generals", or "brothers-in-laws", yet the double plural is a legitimate option for "femmes fatales" (some would say the only really correct option). Thus the two forms are not comparable. JackofOz 01:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Loanwords

Roughly how much of modern bahasa Indonesia is loanwords taken from English, such as the word for computer (komputer) and sexy (seksi)? Crisco 1492 09:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The question may be answerable with respect to a specific corpus or lexicon of Indonesian, but not for "modern Bahasa Indonesia" by itself, because the concept is too vague: when does a word from another language injected into the discourse stop being a foreign word and become a loanword, and which Malay words are not "Indonesian"? Is the Pusat Bahasa the arbiter, or is it actual use? If the latter, how do we sample and how far back do we go? Different choices may result in markedly different results. There is also the distinction between type and token: In The Genius and the Goddess, we have 5 tokens: (1: the, 2: genius, 3: and, 4: the, 5: goddess], but only 4 types: {and, genius, goddess, the}. The word the constitutes 25% of the types, and 40% of the tokens.  --Lambiam^Talk 13:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

*Whoosh* OK, a little over my head. However, I do understand the gist of it, and as such, I am sorry for not being more specific. For loanwords from English, I meant words which take the form of words of the exact same meaning in English, with the same pronounciation, although spelled using Indonesian spelling rules, such as ks for x, and k for the hard C. For a couple of examples of English loanwords under the definition I'm using, menage a trois, femme fatal, kamikaze, bushido and a la carte. Words which are pronounced roughly the same as in their native tongue and have that meaning. Sorry if its a little confusing. As for the percentage, I'm thinking it's not too large, but it is noticable, possibly around 5% - 10%. Crisco 1492 20:19, 13 January 2007 (WIB)

Well, one question is the following. Suppose you see, on an Indonesian bulletin board related to computers, that a posting uses Indonesian spelling for English words like mikroprosesor or kontroler. Does spelling them that way automatically turn them into words of the Indonesian language? In any case, you will probably see a lot more English loanwords in texts about information technology than about philosophy. I doubt that the contribution will reach 5% for modern philosophical texts. So the way you collect the texts makes a difference. A further complication that should be considered is the origin of the loanwords. Are, for example, proses and dialog English loanwords, or is it better to consider them Dutch loanwords? Once you have decided how to handle these issues, then if you do a count of a short collection of texts of in total about 2000 words, you should have a reasonable impression of the percentage, at least if it is as high as you think. If it turns out to be substantially less, you should continue counting until you have reached a total of 100 loanwords.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

K, thanks. Crisco 1492 05:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Bia mintatu

A couple of months ago I asked a question about a phrase from an African language I'd come across, "Nzambi ia lufua" - see this thread. I have come across another such phrase, that might come from the same or a related language - "Bia mintatu". Can anyone help with a translation of this phrase? Many thanks. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 13:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Correct English? "Gender Rolls and Sexiest Prejudices"

Is "Gender Rolls and Sexiest Prejudices" correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 132.231.54.1 (talk) 19:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

It should probably be (depending on what you mean to say) "gender roles and sexist prejudices".--Shantavira 19:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Are "sexist prejudice" the same as "gender prejudice"?

You probably mean "sexism". I think the phrase would sound most natural as "Gender Roles and Sexism". Skittle 23:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 132.231.54.1 (talk) 12:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

'some of" for mass nouns?

Good evening. a recent edit of Daniel Dennett by User:Hayford Peirce made me wonder about the proper use of the combination some of. Should it be used with mass terms like childhood. And if it does, does early childhood functions the ssame way in this respect? Would some of his childhood be intutively understood be native english speakers as a continuous section of the childhood when contrusted with part of his chilhood? Is a needed when using part in that way? I will be glad to get a theoretical answer as well as a suggested application. thanks trespassers william 21:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I can't back it up with any rules, but my own feeling, coming from using and reflecting about words for many years, is that "spent some of his childhood" is more vague than "part of his childhood", in the sense it suggests bits and pieces for various parts of time, perhaps during vacations. "Part of his childhood" seems more fixed to me, more concrete, implying that an *important* time period of his life was involved. I don't think I would say "spent a part of etc." Simply because "a" seems superfluous to me. I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than I could argue convincingly for the opposite of everything I've just written.... Hayford Peirce 22:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with everything you said, except that I don't really have a problem with "spent a part of". Adding the "a" seems to move further in the direction of one fixed, contiguous, delineated part: "He spent a part of his time there at the Joint Chiefs of Staff." 128.135.72.112 21:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

is "twa" a form of "two" ?

I was listening to Old Blind Dogs traditional Celtic music, and there's a line "he brought his twa best horses." Does anyone know if 'twa' is an older form of 'two?' Thanks. (user: seacoast bloom) Jan. 11 23:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's more of a dialect word than an older form, but hopefully someone who's read more 'old stuff' than me will comment. Skittle 23:24, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

It's dialect, specifically north English - I think it's still used to some extent in Northumberland. Another traditional/folk song that uses it is Steeleye Span's "Twa corbies" (corbie being a Northumbrian term for a crow, IIRC). Grutness...wha? 00:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Common enough in Scots, as well. Shimgray | talk | 01:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think twa is a french number. 3 maybe? Rya Min 02:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That's trois. It is pronounced fairly similar to twa, but it's probably unlikely to be what's being asked about ehre. Grutness...wha? 07:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

How to get the kanji/hiragana/katakana equivalents of Romanized character names

I've looked through WP:MOS-JA and the WikiProject Japan page among others, in attempt to find out how to render Romanized Japanese names into their kanji/hiragana/katakana equivalents, e.g. if you take a look at the article Slam Dunk (manga), you will notice that the characters' names have kanji equivalents. If the answer is out there on Wikipedia it has eluded me so far, so if anyone is aware of any pages or processes that I would look at or go through, I'd like to hear about it, thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BrokenSphere (talk • contribs) 23:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

If you want to read Japanese text in your browser, go to the homepage of the company behind your browser, and see if you could download a program for "Japanese text support". 惑乱 分からん 00:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I can read the Japanese text fine, e.g. right now I see your name showing up as 惑乱 分からん; what I mean is, say I just have a name like "Sakuragi Hanamichi" but I don't know what the Japanese text equivalent for it is; is there a converter or something that would allow me to input the text "Sakuragi Hanamichi" and return a Japanese text equivalent? Thanks. --BrokenSphere 00:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, it could probably work for katakana and hiragana, at least if you'd download some software, but kanji is a bit more complex, especially for names, which sometimes contain older or alternative characters. Japanese word processing software mostly converts kana to kanji correctly, based on the most comoon logical choices, as far as I have understood, but names don't always work logically. 惑乱 分からん 00:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how the folks who are coming up with the Japanese text equivalents are doing so, say if they don't have access to a source (e.g. an anime sourcebook or something) that says how to render the names, much less produce the Japanese text for entry into Wikipedia. --BrokenSphere 01:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

They might have access to sources, or being able to read Japanese webpages. They could copy and paste the kanji verbatim, otherwise it isn't impossible to produce Kanji on non-Japanese computers with the right software. 惑乱 分からん 01:55, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

In general there is no unique way to retrieve the katakana or hiragana from a Romanized transliteration, since both じ and ぢ are transliterated as ji, and ず and づ as zu. For kanji it can be a lot worse; see at Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Language/2006 August 10#Possession in Japanese for some of the many existing kanji versions that, when Romanized, all (can) become Tetsuo. (By the way, Romanization of names given in kanji is not straightforward either.) You can use Jim Breen's WWWJDIC Server to find possible kanji for a Romanized word, and use those in Google to see if you get a hit on the right person. For example, hana returns five possibilities, among which 花 (flower), and michi gives 24 matches among which 芳 (perfume). But there are 119 other combinations to consider.  --Lambiam^Talk 03:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Note however that じ is much more common than ぢ, and ず much more common than づ. I think in certain transcription schemes, these kana have different romanizations. 惑乱 分からん 12:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

See Input method editor Nohat 23:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, actually we cannot write a Japanese sentence without the IME. Perhaps [2] and [3] would be helpful, although I recommend more accurate ATOK, which is said to work also on English verson of Windows XP ([4]); but note it's not free. --marsian 09:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Whilst on the subject of Jamaican slang and Aryan Skinheads...

Several reggae songs in my collection refer negatively to 'baldheads' (e.g. in the Bob Marley song "Crazy Baldheads", there's the line "We gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town"). Is 'baldhead' Jamaican slang for Aryan Skinhead? --Kurt Shaped Box 23:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I read somewhere that "baldhead" referred to the rich "bald" tycoons that rule the earth behind closed curtains, think it's part of the "Babylon" belief in Rastafari. 惑乱 分からん 00:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Urban Dictionary has an entry here. --MZMcBride 03:44, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Baldhead is someone who cuts and brushes their hair, ie, not a Rasta. Bald because they have no "ras". Guettarda 03:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It can also refer to Rastas that don't follow the tradition of growing a beard and dreadlocks. The reason that they refer to the baldheads in a negative manner is because according to Rastafarian beliefs western culture/society/beliefs such as those of Americans are looked down upon. Western culture is referred to as "Babylon".