Month: July 2011

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.”

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.

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