When Mannie wants to say “not a problem” he says “no huhu.” Heinlein went to lengths to make us understand the mongrel nature of the society in Luna, used bits of Russian, Chinese (“sign chop”), and other languages mixed into Mannie’s colorful patois…I wonder if huhu has any source? Or is it just made up?
The reason I ask is that in my head it has always been “hoo hoo” but on the audio book the reader makes it more like a dorky laugh: “Huh huh.”
Is there any canon on this?
I always assumed it was from the sound of crying, so: no problem, no crying, no huhu. But somewhere I read it being an example of a word from another language thrown into the mix, but I don’t remember from where.
In my head it is is “hoo hoo” also. Fuck that audiobook.
In the Philippines “hu hu” is the sound of/means crying, so I endorse your interpretation. And yes, I’ve always interpreted it exactly as you did too.
I had some notes on this, but I can’t remember if the most likely source was Tagalog or a Polynesian word. But yes, it means crying (as in spilt milk) and I’ve never considered any pronunciation but “hoohoo.”
MIAHM is one of the only major novels Heinlein completely rewrote. The first version has “Mike” being named “Joe” - IIRC the working title was “A Computer Named Joe” - and the tortured acronym of his model name was HAMTRAMC… which made him natively Polish, of all things. The loonie argot doesn’t start to appear until the last third of the ms. RAH obviously felt he’d missed the target, so he started over with all the latecoming ideas and rewrote it into the book we all know.
There was a story "A Logic Named Joe " by Murray Leinster . This may have caused Heinlein to find a different title .
Hoohoo here too
That was almost certainly the inspiration.
Glad he rewrote it all; Joe HAMTRAMC just doesn’t have the ring that Mycroft HOLMES does.