Tag: language

Getting the Schmuck Out of “West Side Story”

Sondheim wanted “F@#$ YOU”; interesting how the F-word rhymes with the SCHM-word, and means about the same.

One Yiddish word I liked to use quite a bit when I was in my twenties was schmuck, meaning “an obnoxious, contemptible person; one who is stupid, foolish, or detestable.” I did not know until recently that, in some Jewish homes, the word had been “regarded as so vulgar as to be taboo”. The non-religious Jews I knew certainly used it often enough. The word’s derivation comes from the word representing that which beleaguered Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeted recently.

In his book Finishing the Hat, lyricist Stephen Sondheim talks about the evolution of the words to the song GEE, OFFICER KRUPKE from West Side Story.

Initially, they were:

Dear kindly social worker,
They say go earn a buck.
Like be a soda jerker,
Which means like be a schumck.

But the producer of the Broadway cast album told him that the word schmuck would have to be changed. “I confessed that I had no idea the word was obscene. I thought it was simply a vulgarity…, not an obscenity that could prevent the recording from being distributed.”

An hour later, he came up with:

Dear kindly social worker,
They say go make some dough.
Like be a soda jerker,
Which means I’ll be a schmo!

Now, schmo is derived from the same root as schmuck but evidently not as charged.

For the movie, he changed it again:

Dear kindly social worker
They tell me get a job
Like be a soda jerker
Which means I’d be a slob

Another lyric change involved the last two words of the song. Sondheim wanted “F@#$ YOU”; interesting how the F-word rhymes with the SCHM-word, and apparently mean about the same. But for the same commercial reasons, this as scrapped in favor of the Leonard Bernstein suggestion of “KRUP YOU!” It conveyed the same message without actually saying it, and Sondheim believes that it “may be the best lyric line in the show.”

I Can’t SAY That Word QUESTION

There are a number of words I could say, but never having seen them in print, I was shocked to find that they were spelled THAT way.


There was a 1980 hit song by a group called the Barracudas called Summer Fun, from an album I happen to own; in fact, a mail-order customer at FantaCo sent it to me in gratitude. The introduction to the song comes from an ad c. 1967; the storyline was that a Plymouth car dealer couldn’t say the word Barracuda, problematic because the hot Plymouth car that year was supposedly the Barracuda. (The whole ad can be heard, after the 27-second mark, here.

What reminded me of this was the fact that I was working on a reference question last month and realized I could not say the word ‘aesthetician’, though I can say the root word ‘aesthetic’; it’s the two middle syllables. Arthur noted on a podcast that he cannot say ‘vitiligo’, a condition I have.

On the other hand, some words that I just LOVE to say. They tend to be French or Italian, and often end in a vowel, such as Rigoletto or Giovanni. But last month at work, I was really getting off saying the Japanese word ‘yakitori’, which means skewered chicken.

Also, there are a number of words I could say, but never having seen them in print, I was shocked to find that they were spelled THAT way. Two that come to mind are ‘epitome’ or ‘facetious’.

What words do you have difficulty pronouncing?
What words do you love pronouncing?
What words surprised you by how they were spelled?

 

L is for Loopy Language

“Nobody really k-nows why or when it became silent but this change is believed to have transpired sometime around the 16th to 17th centuries.”


As my daughter is LEARNING the English LANGUAGE, I find it more difficult to explain to her WHY certain things happen. For instance, as this list shows, at least half the letters of the alphabet will appear in a word but will be silent. So my response to my daughter is “Don’t ask.”

To be fair, the real reason for these seeming discrepencies is that English is a LANGUAGE rooted in multiple LINGUISTIC traditions.

OK, so I’ve sussed out the logic of the silent E, which (usually) means the vowel is long.

But other letters I understand less well, particularly those silent letters that appear in the beginning of a word.

I have learned, however that:
Silent B is often after m.
Silent G is often before m or n, and that the Greek root in a word such as gnome did sound the G.
Silent H is …complicated, and appears sometimes sounded, sometimes not, in many languages.

Silent K before n once WAS sounded. The silent ‘k’ in words like ‘knight’, ‘knock’ and ‘knob’ is a remnant of Old English, and wasn’t silent at all but was pronounced along with the ‘n’. “Nobody really k-nows why or when it became silent but this change is believed to have transpired sometime around the 16th to 17th centuries. For some reason, the ‘kn’ consonant cluster became hard for English speakers to pronounce.”
Why is the letter -L- silent in words such as salmon and solder? “In those two cases, the English spelling originally did not have an L, so there was no such letter to pronounce.”
Silent P often appears before n, s, t.
And here’s some background on Silent T and Silent W.

Yet, I tend to oppose the movement to simplify English spelling. I would find it unreadable, as I do in this example. The LOOPINESS of the LANGUAGE is also its beauty, its charm, its LIVELINESS.
ABC Wednesday – Round 8

K is for Keys

Music touches on a few aspects of the word key.


I have become fascinated with the word key. It’s a short word, worth 10 points in Scrabble, but it has so many meanings. Reference.com shows some four dozen definitions. And while some are interlocking, most of them address some sort of structure.

There is that metal thing that moves a bolt that I tend to hate because I tend to misplace it. I have a couple of duplicates of my house keys, one outside the structure – no, it’s not under the mat – just in case. Someone told me a long time ago that the number of keys one has related to how important they were. The most important person I ever knew, by that definition, was my elementary school janitor.

Then there’s “something that affords a means of access”, such as the key to happiness. The word shows up at least a half dozen times in the Bible in this context, including Luke 11:52 (New International Version)- “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” Lawyer bashing has a rich tradition.

“Something that affords a means of clarifying a problem,” I would contend, would include the pronunciation key in the dictionary, the answer key to an exam, and like entities.

Things that look like keys, such as the islands known as the Florida Keys, or a part of the floor in basketball. Or something that is the center of things, something that’s important, such as the key to figuring out a mystery; Pennsylvania is the Keystone State.

Music touches on a few aspects of the word key. The keys on the piano or other instruments, like the keys to a calculator or computer keyboard, are the items that are touched; singer Alicia Augello Cook changed her last name to Keys in honor of piano keys. But the key is also “the principal tonality of a composition: a symphony in the key of C# major.”

Stevie Wonder recorded the 1976 Grammy album of the year, Songs in the Key of Life. It featured the big hits I Wish and Sir Duke, but also this minor hit As.

I came across this list of songs containing the word key. Thought I’d pick a few:
Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key-Billy Bragg & Wilco, featuring Natalie Merchant; a Woody Guthrie lyric completed by Bragg.
Key To The Highway-B.B. King and Eric Clapton.
Brand New Key-Melanie (live). “Don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Editing literature and the N-word Questions

As usual, The Daily Show addresses the Mark Twain controversy well.


You’ve probably heard about someone wanting to take the works of Mark Twain and republish them, replacing the word N@$$%! with the word “slave”. I think this is pretty lame as I have previously indicated.

Yet, while I’m not crazy about the word, I’m less bothered by it when it’s 1) used in historic context or 2) to make a particular point. Film critic Roger Ebert got into some hot water using the word recently. He didn’t bother me, but some of the comments I’ve seen in response to his use – “well, he has a N@##%! wife” – seems to justify my general antipathy for the word.

Should Huck Finn and other works of Mark Twain be edited to remove a word current sensibilities might find offensive? If so, how should such a book be labeled?

When, if ever, are racially charged words acceptable? There’s a John Lennon song that I believe is making a larger point of social commentary.

As usual, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart addresses this well. NSFW, if the use of N@##$! might get you fired.

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