Thursday, July 14, 2011

You've Got a Lot of ....

Tablet Mag: Rep. Michele Bachmann tackles Yiddish; Yiddish wins:



You know what's, er, choot-spa? Trying to drop in Yiddish without having the foggiest idea of how to say it right.
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3 comments:

Ivan Ludmer said...

That's not choot-spa. That's just being a sk-muck.

11:29 AM
PG said...

While I wouldn't attempt such flights of pronunciation fancy as an elected official speaking on TV, I feel an unusual twinge of sympathy for Bachmann because I'm very much one of those people who learned more-than-basic English vocabulary predominately from books rather than from hearing people speak it. I've never liked getting news from TV or radio (I used to read my dad's dead-tree subscriptions to newsmagazines and newspapers before I had access to online news), so while I saw the word "chutzpah" very frequently, I probably didn't know how to pronounce it until I went to college, where my exposure to educated people and Jews increased dramatically (and probably non-coincidentally).

8:04 AM
Matthew C said...

@PG

I totally relate. I was always a readerly kid and so I had an expansive vocabulary that sometimes made me look smart but just as frequently the opposite because context and pronunciation were shaky. Sometimes I'd see a cool world and I'd be so excited to use it that I'd just ram it into a sentence the first chance I had. One October I asked my parents when we'd be putting up our Halloween "decker" (decor).

Also, if your 8 year old son is asking questions about the decor, there's a non-trivial chance he's a homosexual!

2:39 PM

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