Snakehead

[Baker, John]

        Sorry, I forgot that some people receive gibberish when I access my email account over the Internet.  My post, a brief reply to a suggestion by Doug Wilson, is reproduced below.





        The similarity to coyote, another animal term with the same meaning, is also striking.

John Baker

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Douglas G. Wilson
Sent: Sun 5/22/2005 10:07 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Cc:
Subject: Snakehead


>We have a draft snakehead entry in the New Partridge for 'snakehead' but
>continue to question its inclusion because it is a literal translation
>from the Chinese.

I know that "snakehead" is routinely SAID to be a literal translation of a
Chinese word for "people-smuggler". But it looks a little too sexy, and too
reminiscent of English "wolf's-head" = "outlaw". Can it be verified that
there is indeed an appropriate Chinese word? Googling with the likely fish
name in Chinese I get references to fish. Googling with "snake head" in
Chinese I find some references to the fish and also some references to
"people-smugglers" but the latter only in news items from the US. Of course
there are thousands of Google hits -- of which I could examine only a few
-- and my incompetence in Chinese is a problem too.

My thanks to anybody who can show me (in Chinese text) the original Chinese
word meaning "people-smuggler" ... of which this "snakehead" is supposedly
a calque.

-- Doug Wilson


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Mark A. Mandel
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 4:20 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Snakehead


    "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM> writes:

VGhlIHNpbWlsYXJpdHkgdG8gY295b3RlLCBhbm90aGVyIGFuaW1hbCB0ZXJtIHdpdGggdGhlIHNh
bWUgbWVhbmluZywgaXMgYWxzbyBzdHJpa2luZy4NCiANCkpvaG4gQmFrZXINCiANCg0KCS0tLS0t
T3JpZ2luYWwgTWVzc2FnZS0tLS0tIA0KCUZyb206IEFtZXJpY2FuIERpYWxlY3QgU29jaWV0eSBv
biBiZWhhbGYgb2YgRG91Z2xhcyBHLiBXaWxzb24gDQoJU2VudDogU3VuIDUvMjIvMjAwNSAxMDow


etc.

How do you say that in plain text, please?

-- Mark A. Mandel