oy vey the tzuris!
oh shit, i just discovered something that is uproariously funny. upROARiously. so when i was in miami my grandmother gave me this book--"DREK, the yiddish your bubbe never taught you". sidenote: it always amuses me that whenever we're in miami both my dad and my aunt bust out all these yiddish words that they'd never say if not for the influence of their parents, and their stereotypically jewish floridian community. and my grandmother! oh man, it's always tzuris this, kvetching that, the whole maschbuka is going mashugena. actually she rarely if ever says mashugena. tzuris is her favorite word--she uses it to describe her bad scrabble hands. ps, tzuris= trouble. interestingly, my grandfather hardly ever used yiddish, and he grew up with it as his first language at home--his parents were from russia and couldn't speak english.
so anyway, this book. it's hilarious, and very informative too. but here's the best thing:
the word for a non jewish person is 'goy.' appropriately goy is also the word for someone who buys retail. so for those of you who had any doubts, we come by the stingy penny pinching jew stereotype very honestly.
so anyway, this book. it's hilarious, and very informative too. but here's the best thing:
the word for a non jewish person is 'goy.' appropriately goy is also the word for someone who buys retail. so for those of you who had any doubts, we come by the stingy penny pinching jew stereotype very honestly.