#32031 - 06/13/01 04:25 AM
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/12/00
Posts: 3409
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#32034 - 06/14/01 01:48 AM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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addict
Registered: 01/18/01
Posts: 618
Loc: Australia
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I too use this a lot, and I grew up in little old Oz. Does anyone else use it in the middle of words, eg embarrassment emschmarrassment, or intoxicated, inschmoxicated?
And for that matter, what is the protocol when two (or more) words are involved? Does "Yellow Pages" (struggling to find examples) become "Schmellow Schmages"? And would "A Word A Day" become "A Schmird A Schmay"?
Not that I'm intending to ridicule or belittle AWAD in any way.
[wonders-if-he'll-escape-unscathed-e]
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#32035 - 06/14/01 07:04 AM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 12/01/00
Posts: 13658
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doc_comfort [wonders-if-he'll-escape-unscathed-e]
There was back in the old days a thing that made the rounds, in whatever way things made the rounds before email and the internet, that was, I am sure, meant to ridicule the final group mentioned (and possibly the first group, too). It stated that there were three kinds of people; those who watch things happen, those who make things happen and those who wonder why things happen. I would classify the likes of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and now, thanks to your post, doc_c, you in the third category.
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#32037 - 06/16/01 11:23 AM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 03/14/01
Posts: 2379
Loc: New York City
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<<{tsuwm being, I have come to discover, a Hebrew word meaning to fast}
I would throw out this fwiw: the Yiddish word shmata (or shmatteh (or schmata?)), meaning a rag, hence anything worthless (now worthless... this I know :);
or it could be coincidence... shmoincidence.>>
In reverse order:
I vote schmoincidence. People around her stick "schm" onto almost anything (as a carnie did, recently, "Try your luck, schmuck"). But seriously...
"Schmata" rag, yes. Hence, it is also a derragotory term for the kerchief a woman wears to hide her hair from all men but the one she married.
I don't have a Hebrew dictionary, but the word I remember for "fast" (noun form) is Tainus/Tainut (depending whether you come from Northern Europe or Northern Africa). A "Tsee-um," ( the "u" > or < like that in the ger. "unter") on the other hand, is the small ceremony noting the completion of a portion of the Talmud, for example, or the whole thing (a much bigger event). How is "Tswum" used--outside the law?
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#32038 - 06/16/01 12:45 PM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/03/00
Posts: 10464
Loc: this too shall pass
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>How is "Tswum" used--outside the law? I do not know Hebrew, but ycliu. try googling tsuwm (note spelling), those hits that are not my estimable self are Hebraic references, such as Strong's Index: http://www.johnhurt.com/htmlbible/kjvstrongs/STRHEB66.htm
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#32039 - 06/18/01 06:36 AM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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enthusiast
Registered: 12/18/00
Posts: 393
Loc: London
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One of the Israeli prime ministers was strongly criticized for saying Shmorocco in a debate: and he would have been speaking Hebrew rather than Yiddish, so either it has been taken up into Modern Hebrew from Yiddish, or it was Hebrew to begin with.
I don't know of any basis for it in Ancient Hebrew. That is, I can't think of a grammatical explanation for it: it looks like a sound-symbolic thing. There are so many variously derogatory terms in sh + consonant (shlemiel, shnook, shlepper, shlemozzle, shnozzola, shmuck, shmoe, etc. etc.) that it looks like a prefix. I don't know enough Hebrew to see whether there's any common pattern in forming these.
One thing. The Biblical relative pronoun is 'asher, but there was apparently a short form sh. I've never seen it in the Bible so perhaps it was a later formation, a contraction of 'asher. In Modern Hebrew it forms a possessive 'of' when combined with l- 'to': i.e. the prefix shl- 'of' comes from 'which-is-to-'. This suggests that the sound-symbolic sh- forms might have arisen in a similar way.
Afterthought. I gather Begin (or whoever it was) just said Shmorocco instead of Morocco, i.e. no reduplication. It was this departure from the familiar Yiddish idiom that attracted my attention.
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#32040 - 06/18/01 07:35 AM
Re: Help! Schmelp
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 09/15/00
Posts: 4757
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no reduplicationWhat - he didn't beginagain? 
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