Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Y is for Yiddish

Leo Rosten also defined chutzpah as ‘that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.’


My wife, who teaches English as a Second Language, sent me this article about how “certain words from other languages express meanings that no English words can.”

The author, Connie Tuttle, notes: “Part of the richness of English comes from the thousands of words derived from other languages. Nevertheless, there are occasions when no English word expresses the nuance of a situation. A friend who is a linguist once commented that English was the language of commerce, but was lacking in vocabulary expressive of complex social relations. Maybe so. If she is right, that could explain why over the years I’ve found myself resorting to an increasing number of words from languages other than English, not only in conversation but also while writing.”

Unsurprising to me, six out of the ten examples comes from Yiddish: ALTER KOCKER, OY VAY (or just OY), MISHEGOSS, MESHUGGE, PUTZ, NU, and BUBKES. Three of these I find that I use quite a bit: oy (which is a versatile word), putz (meaning a fool), and bubkes: “If you want to make a living as a poet, be prepared to earn bubkes.” These terms do not come to me as an affectation; rather, they are words I heard from my great aunt Charlotte, and especially from her family.

But the word, not on the list, that IMMEDIATELY leapt to mind was chutzpah: “to express admiration for nonconformist but gutsy audacity.”

“Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as ‘gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible guts, presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.’ In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and grudging admiration. In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as ‘that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.'”

“Yiddish is a Germanic language originally spoken by the Jews of Central and later Eastern Europe, written in the Hebrew alphabet, and containing a substantial substratum of words from Hebrew as well as numerous loans from Slavic languages.” But the same word in Hebrew may have a different nuance in Yiddish; chutzpah in Hebrew is much more negative, for example.

There are a lot of words on the list beginning with SC, usually combined with other consonants, that are just fun to say. “Schlemiel, schlimazel” show up in the lyrics for the theme song to the TV show Laverne and Shirley, meaning “an inept clumsy person” and “a chronically unlucky person,” respectively. In fact, I’ll write at length about another one of those words…tomorrow.

Among the words of Yiddish origin I’ve been known to use include kvetch (complain habitually), schlep (drag or haul), and zaftig (pleasingly plump, buxom, full-figured, as a woman). I suppose a synonym for the latter would be Rubenesque, but zaftig suggests a more positive attitude, I’m told.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

The Big 2-3-5

I’m a bit sad, though frankly not surprised, that there are periodically these polls indicating how poorly U.S. students, mostly our native-born, are doing with regard to American history, including citizenship questions that immigrants are expected to know before becoming U.S. citizens. Here are some sample questions for the citizenship test.

For a start on your American education, read the Declaration of Independence. Read it, in its entirety, every year. Today would be a good day to start.
***
The Star Spangeled Prez.

I, Sam the Eagle, present a musical salute to America.

Even more Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever, animated piccolo.

From the Census Bureau: Facts for Features: The Fourth of July 2011.

Sunday Summer Song

Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer – Nat King Cole

One of my favorite summer songs when I was growing up I thought was schlocky, even then. But there was so much to like, such as the way the singer said be-ah instead of bee-er, because he was taught, as I’ve heard from every choir director for decades, that the ending R sound is UGLY.

So since this is in the middle of a 3-day holiday weekend in the US, I’ll leave you with:

Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer – Nat King Cole
(and if that doesn’t work, try this)

American Exceptionalism QUESTION

What do YOU think American exceptionalism is?


As you may know, I get information from entities of many political stripes. I think it’s healthy to get multiple points of view. Every once in a while, I might even agree with an unlikely source. Don’t remember the particulars anymore, but Mike Huckabee said something in the populist/”COMPASSIONATE conservative” bent during the 2008 campaign that I didn’t dispute.

Anyway, I got this thing from Newt Gingrich, and it reads as follows:

The most important question in American politics today is whether America is an exceptional nation. This is the core question behind every debate we are having about how to solve our country’s most pressing challenges.
If America is a unique nation founded upon self-evident truths about the rights of man, then that belief imposes inherent limits on the size and scope of government.
If, however, America is a normal country, no different than our European cousins, then big government socialism that takes power from citizens and gives it to bureaucrats is acceptable.
We believe in American Exceptionalism – in creator endowed rights, limited government, and a responsible, self-sufficient American people. That’s why we have undertaken a major investment of time and effort in focusing every American on our history and our remarkable culture.

In another e-mail, Gingrich says that his “inspirational new book, A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters,” in which “Gingrich lays out a powerful defense for America as the Founders intended it” and “explains exactly what American Exceptionalism is (a set of core values reflected in our Declaration of Independence) and what it is not (nationalist hubris).”

Meanwhile, a recent Pew poll suggests that more Americans think that the U.S. is one of the greatest countries in the world than say it stands above all other countries.

So I ask you:

What do YOU think American exceptionalism is? Is it our founding declaration of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Is it that America, alone among the nations, is beloved of God? Is it the experiment that created a Bill of Rights? Is it the vast natural resources of a country this large? Is it jingoism? Is it “the last best hope for a mankind plagued by tyranny and deprivation,” as Reagan put it?

I ask because I don’t know. The term has become so fraught with political intrigue that it’s muddied the waters for me.

I once joked that American exceptionalism meant that we could take exception to soccer, the metric system, and single-payer health care.

All insights are welcome, from within and without the country.

OH! CANADA!

I’ve always wanted to see Toronto, so that’s on the agenda.

AS I may have mentioned, in a couple months, we’re going to be making a visit to Canada. Essentially, we’re going to circumnavigate Lake Ontario. Still not sure what the route will be. Initially, we thought we’d start by going northwest, visiting my wife’s alma mater of St. Lawrence University, then go north into Canada, head west, then south, then back east into the U.S.. But lately, we’ve considered start going west through New York, and enter Canada at Niagara Falls.

We all have passports, including the Daughter. One doesn’t NEED a passport to go Canada from the US; one could get an enhanced driver’s license or non-driver’s ID, or similar products. BUT one day we might want to fly somewhere in Canada or Mexico, and the alternate products are only good for traveling by land or sea, not by air.

We’ll see the Falls, of course; it’ll be the Daughter’s first time. I’ve always wanted to see Toronto, so that’s on the agenda; ideally, we’d see a Blue Jays game. More than one person has suggested staying outside the city proper, and use the mass transit. One of my coworkers highly recommended the Peterborough lift lock. We’d see Carol’s college on the return trip.

Hey, Canadians, especially you folks in southeastern Ontario! Anywhere else we ought to go that wouldn’t take us too far out of the way?

Ramblin' with Roger
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