I Say Mispocheh, You say Meshuggeneh
September 28, 2009
The passing of language maven William Safire and the occasion of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, strikes me as a harmonically convergent moment to write a tribute to Yiddish, which is not just a language, but also a tradition and a way of life. I grew up with Yiddish as the background noise of my childhood. My parents spoke it daily, mostly when they wanted to say things to each other that they didn’t want to share with their three children – about 90 percent of their communication. I was annoyed by this habit and, when friends came over, I was embarrassed by such an obvious manifestation of our otherness. But over the years I’ve come to embrace Yiddish and to celebrate it. For those who love language, who take delight in uttering or scribbling the most precise word for the story or moment at hand, Yiddish is a godsend.
Yiddish embodies all that I appreciate about my culture: its pulling-oneself-up-by-the-bootstraps nature, its earthiness, and its gusto for life. I had never acknowledged this appreciation publicly until last year when I gave a book party for one of my faculty members at Georgetown University, novelist Peter Manseau, in honor of his beautiful book, Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, a novel about the last living Yiddish poet in America. When I introduced him that evening, I noted, “It is a pleasant irony of my life that it has taken a good Catholic boy at a Jesuit institution to inspire me to fully embrace and appreciate Yiddish.” It was true that the experience of reading Peter’s book helped me identify my appreciation for the language of my people.
Speaking of my people, both my husband and my brother-in-law (my sister’s husband) are gentiles, though that is a word I would ordinarily avoid. It sounds offensive to me and, in fact, if you look it up, one of its meanings is “heathen.” That’s nice, meet my husband, the heathen. It can also mean “foreigner,” which sounds close to the meaning of my name, Barbara, which means “barbarian” or “stranger.” Thanks, Mom and Dad. But back to Yiddish…
My heathen brother-in-law and husband were discussing Jewish cuisine the other night at, ironically, Rosh Hashanah dinner (matza ball soup, brisket, green bean casserole ala Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom, fig rugalah) when I chimed in and started complaining about how, in general, it is my least favorite type of food. Rick said, “You better watch out or you’ll get de-Mispocheh-ified.”
This reminded me of the time that Dennis was planning Thanksgiving dinner, and was trying to get a head count out of me. Searching for the word mispocheh, which was eluding him, he stammered, “Is the whole mesheggeneh coming?” If you know my family, it is an understandable error to mix up the word meaning “clan” or “family” with the word “crazy.” I guess if you’re a heathen you feel you can take liberties with the language, not to mention my blood relations.
The quality of Yiddish that I most treasure is its onomatopoetic tendency. My earliest Yiddish memory was of my father trying to read the Sunday New York Times and my mother chattering on and on, as she was wont to do. “Renee,” he would inevitably say, “stop hoking meir a chainik” which means, loosely translated, “banging on my tea kettle.” For years I tried to imagine my mother hocking my father in China, perhaps trading him for some egg rolls. Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish, speculates “the expression may have come from the meaningless rattling of a cover of a boiling pot, or from the noisy whistling of steam in a kettle. Or it may have come from the improvised toys of children at play…”
In any event, I love the language, with all its imperfections, guttural sounds, and messiness. It reminds me, in fact, of my own mesheggeneh mispocheh, the whole megillah of ‘em, heathens and all.
–Barbara
Another Day, Another Mistake on the Post’s Homepage
September 28, 2009
Please, spell this fugitive-rapist’s name correctly:
Robinson: Brilliant auteur or no, Polanski has been a fugitive from U.S. justice since 1978.
Cohen: Let Polanksi Go
I Beg to Differ
September 27, 2009
When Barbara and I started this blog, I promised myself that I would not become one of those cranky grammar police. But the other night over dinner, I was speaking with my brother-in-law, Rick, and discovered that we both were annoyed about the contemporary use of the phrase, “begs the question.” Rick is really level-headed, so if he’s annoyed, then I figure that I’m right to be annoyed, too, and that I can air my annoyance publicly here.
What irritates us about “begs the question” is that it is being used more and more—indeed, it’s being used almost exclusively—to mean “that raises the question.” “The budget is estimated to be over a trillion dollars. That begs the question: Where will we find this money?”
I’m pretty sure this started on cable television—at any rate, that’s where I first heard it, and within weeks of the first time I heard it, it seemed that every commentator and news reader on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox was using it.
The phrase “to beg the question” is properly a term of art in logic, where it is also known as petitio principii, “assuming the initial point.” It means arguing for a conclusion that has already been assumed in the premise. “Murder is a crime that should be considered illegal.” If your premise is that murder is a “crime,” to conclude that it is “illegal” is simply to restate what you assumed in the beginning. Crimes, by definition, are illegal. You’ve proved nothing.
To defend myself against the charge of crankiness, I want to make it clear that I object to the misuse of “beg the question” not because I’m a stickler for correct usage but because I hate to lose such a valuable phrase. My fear is that when we lose a piece of language like this, we may also lose a clear perception of what it signifies. After all, I live in Washington, DC, and I hear the kind of circular reasoning that happens with begging the question almost daily from politicians of every stripe. It’s important that everyone hear this kind of illogic and that they have a phrase they can use to call politicians out. That begs the question, of course, whether they would be willing to do so.
–Dennis
One Too Many Buyouts?
September 25, 2009
Currently on The Washington Post‘s homepage:
Fairfax police arrest 20 people who they say turned “McMansions” into illegal bordinghouses.
Bordinghouses?
Hey, Post bean counters, how about bringing back a copy editor or two?
It’s National Punctuation Day. Really.
September 24, 2009
Just when I thought my husband and I were at the far end of the nerd spectrum given our punctuation (pre)occupation, I learn that there are people even more committed to commas and the like. Washington Post columnist John Kelly reports today that there is a man so enamored of punctuation that he has managed to get September 24th named National Punctuation Day and he even has a website committed to it. He chose the 24th because that’s the number his idol, Willie Mays, wore.
So Happy Punctuation Day; hug an English professor!
–Barbara
People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Footballs
September 22, 2009
Rookie Redskins linebacker Robert Henson demonstrated he is more than a poor loser; he is also comma-challenged. In his Twitter feed he tweeted: “All you fake half hearted Skins fan can . . . I won’t go there, but I dislike you very strongly, don’t come to Fed Ex to boo dim wits!!”
Without that comma between “boo” and “dim wits,” Henson is just calling himself a dim wit. And there’s plenty of competition for that right now.
While he’s not doing much for his team, on or off the field, Henson has joined the ranks of Celebrity Apologizers. You be the judge regarding his sincerity.
Commas are easy to forget or misuse. We’re all guilty of comma abuse. In general, punctuation can be terribly vexing. That’s probably why Lynne Truss’s book on punctuation was so successful.
–Barbara
Just Spell My Name Right
September 21, 2009
We Washingtonians have heard thousands of times that all publicity is good publicity as long as they spell our names correctly. This must be the logic behind a common mistake I hear almost every day: people use the words “fame” and “notoriety” interchangeably. They actually mean very different things. “Fame” is defined as ” the state or quality of being widely honored and acclaimed” while “notoriety” is defined as “the state of being known for some unfavorable act or quality” or “the condition of being infamous or notorious.” So most of us seek fame (actually, having worked for many famous people, I think the state of being famous is highly overrated), but few among us, except perhaps serial killers, seek notoriety. Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey have achieved fame; Rod Blagojevich has garnered plenty of notoriety; and Britney Spears, depending on where she is in the celebrity spin cycle, has earned more than she deserves of either.
In a Washington Post article this past weekend about Washington lobbyists and their favorite places to power-lunch, the writer uses ”notoriety” incorrectly: “When regulars are away, their places can be taken by others — depending on notoriety. Supreme Court Justice and noted Italiano Antonin Scalia — a frequent Tosca diner since his fave, A.V. Ristorante, closed a couple of years ago — had a leisurely lunch one afternoon at the Podestas’ table.” I’m guessing the writer didn’t mean to cast aspersions on Justice Scalia.
Several paragraphs later, however, the writer uses another form of the word properly: “Spy, but don’t make it too obvious, especially when peering at Tosca’s most notorious table, which disappears into a small alcove. Here, the occasional government sort or random pooh-bah has been spotted interviewing this session’s paramour or lining up trysts and nooners.”
–Barbara
Waste Not, Want Not
September 17, 2009
A very funny response from our faithful reader Kira (identified in an earlier post as “my brilliant grad student”) recounting a Spellcheck Gone Awry horror story. This in response to Dennis’s post about my “Spellcheck is the Devil” post:
“After a thousand copies of my salsa magazine had been distributed, we received emails from all our self-appointed copy editors, pointing out the “who” that should have been a “whom” in one column. (The DC salsa community is very strict on grammar).
Anyway, just as I thought all the mistakes had been brought to my attention, I received the following note today:
‘In your etiquette column, you say that men shouldn’t be holding a woman’s “waste.”‘ Yes, yes I fully agree that I don’t want a man holding my “waste” on the dance floor. Or anywhere.
Considering that Spellcheck caught neither the “whom” nor the “waste” typos, I’m siding with Barbara.”
So take that Dennis, and I raise you one grad student.
-Barbara
Spellcheck Redux
September 14, 2009
Last week, Barbara wrote a post excoriating Spellcheck. It was pretty uncompromising, as an alert reader might have gathered from the title, “Spellcheck is the Devil.”
All of us have little things that drive us crazy. Usually they’re trivial, and the more trivial they are, the more impassioned we are about them. Any sensible spouse or parent, any child who has reached the age of reason, or any indulgent friend knows it’s best just to sit quietly as their husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, or bosom buddy erupts in one of these irrational rants that quickly escalates into an angry, hyperbolic, and increasingly incomprehensible riff. (I don’t exempt myself from this kind of behavior. My own peeve happens to involve bridges. I get angry when I hear that some local, state, or federal official, bureaucrat, or officious “authority” has renamed a bridge. I get livid, I mean really livid, and poor Barbara has had to sit through a great number of my tirades. Once I get going, I can’t be stopped, and I invariably end my harangue with an encomium to the brave residents of Washington, DC., who have refused to refer to the George Mason-Rochambeau Bridge, as it is officially known, but continue to call it simply the 14th Street Bridge, thus asserting their constitutionally protected and God-given right to name a bridge what they damn well please.)
But I digress.
A couple of days after Barbara attacked Spellcheck, I was proofreading a manuscript I had written that had to be sent off. I had gone through the hard copy of the manuscript at least five times, and I had long reached the point of diminishing returns. There simply weren’t any more mistakes to be found. So, I steeled myself to send it off. Just before I attached the file to the e-mail to the publisher, I decided to glance through it one last time, this time reading it off the computer. Sure enough, Spellcheck picked up the following error: “He was a innocent man.”
So Barbara was wrong. Spellcheck is no silver bullet, but it’s no devil either. I’m afraid she went a bridge too far on this one.
Dennis
Say What You Mean…
September 7, 2009
The other day I was complaining to one of my brilliant grad students, Kira Zalan, that too many people—particularly Washingtonians–overuse jargon, acronyms, and terms of art. She agreed: “If Stephen Hawking can use laymen’s terms to explain the universe, there is never an excuse for people to use jargon to explain their ideas.”
It’s not that I don’t appreciate jargon’s function: it’s a way for experts and practitioners to communicate with one another, a linguistic short hand of sorts. If it aids in communication, then I’m all for it. It’s when it is used without consideration of audience—either through neglect or showmanship–that I object.
Why do people use jargon? Sometimes we use it to telegraph to one another we belong to the same tribe. “You buried the lede!” I said to a former student who dropped a bombshell in the third graf (that’s journalistic jargon for paragraph.). And now writing about it it’s a double whammy: I get points for the expression and also the odd spelling of the word lede.
Doctors use jargon to communicate complex ideas, conditions, and facts to one another. If they care about demonstrating a good bedside manner, then they find other terms rather than jargon to convey important information to their patients. Healthcare insurance companies, on the other hand, use jargon, I am convinced, to confuse, frustrate, and defeat us. It’s hard to argue an item on a hospital bill if you can’t figure out what the heck it is for. And how many of us have the time or patience to navigate through Blue Cross Blue Shield’s menu of “options” (press one to kill yourself; press two to kill the person on the other end of the phone; press three if you think healthcare reform should begin with getting rid of these freaking menus).
I asked my friend, Bill Streever, author of the current bestseller Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places, why he thinks people are so enamored of jargon. Bill is a biologist who lives in Anchorage. While what he does for a living is highly technical (I’d explain it if I understood it), he managed to write a lovely book about science that appeals to the masses. When I asked him about jargon and its place in written communication, here is what he responded: “Scientists are not alone in their apparent addiction to jargon. Every group of specialists—from engineers to physicians to drug dealers—uses jargon. Why? Because jargon increases the efficiency of communication within the group. Outside the group, the opposite occurs. In the jargon of writers: ‘Eschew obfuscation.’ That is, abstain from the use of confusing language. When writing for a broad audience, treat jargon like the plague: As something to avoid.”
This came up in an email exchange Bill and I were having regarding pedagogical – oops—er, rather, teaching strategies when you are working with scientists. I called my husband into the conversation because I remembered that, years ago, before I knew him, he taught a writing class for engineers. The thing Dennis emphasized throughout the semester was the notion of audience. “It’s the first and last thing you should consider. Who is your audience? What is their familiarity with the topic, the history, the context of the material.”
Bill ended his email, “More generally, when writing about tough technical topics remember the words of Thomas Edison: “I generally recommend only those books that are written by men who actually try to describe things plainly, simply and by analogy with things everybody knows. I am sorry to say that ordinary scientific books are in nearly every case written by men who have no capacity to explain anything.”
–Barbara
