old terms or expressions that are still among us

[Fading Fast]

Santa Barbara, California in the early '80s. An island of kashrut in a sea of salsa, but very very good. Although I realized it was not a job for me the day I opened a 55 gallon drum packed full of cow tongues.

Yiddish is a wonderful language. There's a hilarious scene in one of my favorite James Cagney pictures, "Taxi!," where Cagney, as a union-activist cab driver of highly Irish extraction, engages in a conversation with an agitated passenger in fluent Yiddish.

It's either an very colorful language - as those are the few expressions I've learned and heard over the years - or those are the expressions that have survived owing to their color.

 

[2jakes]

I had no idea - bet that is where Lizzie picked it up. I picked up some Yiddish words on a NY trading desk twenty plus years ago sitting next to an older Jewish gentleman who "taught" them to me as he sprinkled them into his everyday speech.

With regards to “Yiddish expressions” & things of that nature:


Desperate for work to get me going through college.
I hired on as a butler for Jack Warner of Warner Bros. Studios in Beverly Hills.

Perhaps I may ask AmateisGal to help me write of the many things I have seen
& experienced in this crazy world.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ Awesome idea, you two would make a great writing team.

 

[Haversack]

LizzieMaine wrote: "There is a lovely Yiddish phrase I picked up when I worked in a deli which serves the purpose of "Kiss my..." in a more imaginative way than the usual. If I had a coat of arms, I would use it as the motto. "Kish mir en t-----.""


That is pretty close to the motto ascribed the 16th C. Franconian knight, poet and leader in the Peasants War, Götz von Berlichingen. It was in Götz's autobiography and Goethe used it conspicuously in his play based on the knight's adventures. Mozart also turned the motto into a canon or round as a party piece. The motto is euphemistically referred to as the Swabian Salute. The motto: "Leck mich im Ar---".

 

[GHT]

Whenever I get the "Kiss my [insert body part here]" comment from one of our female friends, my response is "Bare it." It calls their bluff, and usually puts a smile on their face at the same time.

Throughout the years that my wife worked as a Paramedic she had many an insult from all sorts of pond life. But it usually came down to a raw, crude: F*** you, lady.
To which she always replied, if they were coherent enough to understand: "You have neither the looks nor the money."
Does anyone still use:
"Has the cat caught your tongue?"
Just as amused GI's took Britspeak vernacular back home, after WW2 so too did Tommy Atkins in WW1. Tommy Atkins was the name given to the British soldiers. One colloquial French expression that didn't really translate was: "ça ne fait rien." Meaning, that does nothing. You can use it to dismiss a topic.
Tommy, hearing it in French, to his English ear, it sounded like San Fairy Ann. Somehow this became Sweet Fanny Adams, then morphed into the acronym: SFA. So today it's known as Sweet F... All, or, nothing.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I was surprised to learn how far the expression "hang out" dates back. Mark Twain recounts a tale from his childhood when an old hillbilly woman criticizes her daughter in law, a town girl, for her fancy ways. She describes how she "gaumed the inside of her cabin with some nasty stuff called plarstrin. I wouldn't hang out in such a derned hole". Date of occurrence probably in the 1850s and the phrase most likely in use since before 1800.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Yiddish is a wonderful language. There's a hilarious scene in one of my favorite James Cagney pictures, "Taxi!," where Cagney, as a union-activist cab driver of highly Irish extraction, engages in a conversation with an agitated passenger in fluent Yiddish.

I went to a white Wonder Bread university, but I had a Jewish roommate, so picking up bits and pieces of the language was inevitable. When this scene from "Blazing Saddles" was shown in the student union, the audience , except for me, was dead silent. I was howling with laughter.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Yiddish-speaking Indian is a favorite old-time comedy cliche -- F Troop had its share of such gags as well, and they go all the way back to vaudeville.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite gags from a movie musical --

Noble, Lonely Indian -- "I have tried to fit into your world. I have attended your schools..."

Eddie Cantor -- An Indian in a Hebrew school!?

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Cagney grew up in one of those neighborhoods where everybody who lived on one side of the street was Irish and everyone on the other side was Jewish. He said all the Irish kids became at least semi-fluent in Yiddish. Now a dying language, alas. In the 20s there were scores of Yiddish newspapers and publishing houses, Yiddish theater and a whole string of Yiddish resorts in the Catskills, the "Borscht Belt,"where it seems like half of America's comedians honed their craft in the first half of the 20th century. All of that is gone now.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some years ago I picked up about forty hours worth of local radio broadcasts from 1936-37 from a tiny station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, much of which was foreign language programming. There's a lot of Yiddish -- including a live remote from the Parkway Theatre during a performance of a comic musical starring Molly Picon -- along with German, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, and Hungarian.

Of course, the main tongue spoken in that neighborhood today is "hipster."

 

[Fading Fast]

Cagney grew up in one of those neighborhoods where everybody who lived on one side of the street was Irish and everyone on the other side was Jewish. He said all the Irish kids became at least semi-fluent in Yiddish. Now a dying language, alas. In the 20s there were scores of Yiddish newspapers and publishing houses, Yiddish theater and a whole string of Yiddish resorts in the Catskills, the "Borscht Belt,"where it seems like half of America's comedians honed their craft in the first half of the 20th century. All of that is gone now.

My Dad grew up in the '30s in a tenement-type neighborhood where the Germans, Irish, Jewish, Italians and Greeks were kinda segregated, but the kids all played together and they all played in, ate in and fought in each others apartments. He had a core group of friends his entire life from that era that were incredibly close and loyal and, contrary to today's accepted standard, would "pick" on each others' ethnicity with a warmth and brazenness that today would not be politically acceptable.

A Greek friend would be "Nick the Greek," or they'd "pick" on their Italian friend for all the garlic he ate (and would love to go to his home for Sunday dinner - served from 2-6pm which had enough food to feed two armies) or the Jewish friend was made fun of for his "crazy" holidays - but they made sure to plan something around those holidays so he could be included. These guys were thick as thieves; stood by each other for sixty years; picked on each other for sixty years, and loved each other (without ever saying it) for sixty years.

When I hear all this stuff about "multiculturalism" today; I kind of yawn, kind of feel put-off by its top-down pushiness and know that my Dad's generation - at least his small little corner of it - had it organically right without all the "studies" and elitists theories telling us how it should work.

Before the knives come out - I know there was brutal prejudices that excluded many groups from opportunities unfairly, glass ceilings and overt and subtle codes kept out many ethnicities in that Era - and I know how horribly wrong that was. I will stand with anyone fighting to change that. My post is not denying any of that (at all, in any way), but it is highlighting that there were pockets - as I saw it growing up - that - away from those prejudices - practiced multiculturalism (where many of those practicing it couldn't spell the word -and who cares) and how a general bonhomie toward other ethnicities existed in these small pockets.

 

[Jayessgee]

Fading fast. I know what you mean. There was most distinctly a double standard. My Grandpa was a "hunky" A Croat" He was an "immigrant" I mean a real one. Not a semanticized expression given to somebody who swam a river in the dark of the moon but as one who passed down the many corridors of Ellis island, was examined by representatives of the US government and found fit to enter here with their blessings.
He found the "American dream." he worked his tail off in a Pennsylvania steel Mill, married and built a house and raised a family. All 5 of his kids graduated from high school, more education than he had and his sons fought for his new country in WWII and all came home. His grand children (mostly) all went to college or Universities or at least had the opportunity. (In my case, I went to the school of the soldier instead).
But, while adding to the melting pot, he remained a life long member of the Croatian Fraternal Union. Just about every ethnic group had something like that. Old allegiances and alliances, often followed those from the old world to the new but were often tempered by immersion in the newness of the strange new world. Old tongues, customs even if not your own could be a bastion of defense against things that you sometimes just could not understand.

Now I have to say a brief word about "immigrants" then and now; Those who came here in those days long ago, brought us for the most part their strengths. The created an American character that was a strong alloy. The came to build. You never heard the Croatian Fraternal Union or the Order of the Sons of Italy in America (and etc, &tc) demanding that signs be written in Croat, or Italian. They came here to become Americans and they learned our ways and our language. None of that meant abandoning or denying their heritage either! They did not come looking for or demanding their "rights" Too many of this newer generation of "immigrants" to not have the same attitude. But, that goes pretty much true for the rest of us (us- as in the population at large).

If I have said too much, say so and I will remove it. Or those with the authority may do so w/out complaint by me. I know it's a touchy subject and I don't want to start any wars.

Back to the subject, I believe the Yiddish expression referring to a specific portion of anatomy so often avoided is pardon the spelling if wrong, is a "tucas". Sometimes foreign words can be so much more... favorable than our plain English ones.

Too, when I was young, I was often amazed at how many different ways my dad could say "never mind." Hammer comes forcibly down on thumb WHAM! Dad opens mouth, starts to says something, looks at me and out comes "Idi k vragu." I say. "What's that mean?" "Never mind." When I got older, I'd say, That don't mean no 'never mind.' to which he replied "I said, NEVER MIND!" End of discussion. He always got the last word.

As for the meaning of "Idi k vragu"? Well, never mind.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What's interesting about "old-time" immigration policy is that the whole Ellis Island thing didn't exist for anyone until 1892, and rigorous enforcement of immigration laws didn't really begin until the early years of the 20th Century. When my great-grandparents came here from Canada in 1898, they passed thru no immigration station whatsoever -- they just walked across the border, were never questioned by anyone, and never had any problems. They also, to their dying day, never took US citizenship -- for them, it just wasn't important, and there was no "green card" for them to worry about. Nobody ever questioned their immigration status or investigated them in any way -- even though they always admitted to census takers that they were "aliens."

It was very easy to enter the US "illegally" even after immigration was cracked down upon. Many would-be immigrants who knew they'd be turned away at the border for reasons of race or ethnicity or criminal records stowed away on ships and leaped into the water before the ship docked, swimming ashore. Or they simply bluffed their way thru -- if they "looked right" it was very easy to do this. One such immigrant was escaped German convict Bruno Richard Hauptmann -- he stowed away on a ship from Germany, was caught and sent back, stowed away on another ship, and this time made it ashore where he quickly vanished into the crowd of German immigrants in the Bronx. His immigration status was never questioned or investigated by anyone for the decade he lived in the US before being arrested for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. His experience was actually a lot more common than many people realize.

 

[vitanola]

Now I have to say a brief word about "immigrants" then and now; Those who came here in those days long ago, brought us for the most part their strengths. The created an American character that was a strong alloy. The came to build. You never heard the Croatian Fraternal Union or the Order of the Sons of Italy in America (and etc, &tc) demanding that signs be written in Croat, or Italian. They came here to become Americans and they learned our ways and our language. None of that meant abandoning or denying their heritage either! They did not come looking for or demanding their "rights" Too many of this newer generation of "immigrants" to not have the same attitude. But, that goes pretty much true for the rest of us (us- as in the population at large).

Oh, how quickly we forget! look at photographs of the Lower East Side for signage. Not much in English! Same thing of Mulberry Street, Pell, Third Avenue in Yorkville, or (in the 1960's, yet) Ditmars in Queens, or Clark Avenue, Warsawa, Karlin, Barbarawa, Big Italia, or Lemko in Cleveland, Hamtramick in Detroit, and on and on...

New York City offered many municipal forms in at least TWELVE languages before the Great War. Translators were also available in many municipal offices. New York, Cleveland, Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, PhiledelphiaPhaildelphia and Pittsburgh all offerred SECONDARY education in German up until the War. One could actually graduate High School with minimal instruction in English.

 

[dh66]

Immigrant's dollars are the same color as native's dollars. Bilingual signs are there to facilitate somebody somewhere putting those dollars in their pocket. They're not up because any immigrants were "demanding" any kind of "rights" they're up because there's a market for them. The name of the game is free market capitalism.

As for the immigrants....the name of the game for them is 'build a better life than the one staring me in the face back home'. Always has been, always will be. No matter when they got here or where they came from.

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

A great weird Golden Age immigration story is that of the actor Duncan Reynaldo. He was actually a Greek sailor who jumped ship and made his way from the east coast to California. He arrived in Hollywood and, blessed with extraordinary good looks, got work in the movies. It was just when every studio had to have a "Latin lover"and he fit the bill (after a name change, of course). He got the starring role in "Trader Horn"(1931). It was a huge hit but Reynaldo was recognized, arrested, and did some prison time. Apparently, his record didn't count against him with the studios and he went back to Hollywood upon release and became a star again in the new medium of television, as the Cisco Kid, co-starring with a genuine Latino, Leo Carillo. Possibly the only actor in the history of Hollywood to have two separate starring careers, in two different media, separated by a prison sentence.

 

[Benzadmiral]

LizzieMaine wrote: "There is a lovely Yiddish phrase I picked up when I worked in a deli which serves the purpose of "Kiss my..." in a more imaginative way than the usual. If I had a coat of arms, I would use it as the motto. "Kish mir en t-----.""


That is pretty close to the motto ascribed the 16th C. Franconian knight, poet and leader in the Peasants War, Götz von Berlichingen. It was in Götz's autobiography and Goethe used it conspicuously in his play based on the knight's adventures. Mozart also turned the motto into a canon or round as a party piece. The motto is euphemistically referred to as the Swabian Salute. The motto: "Leck mich im Ar---".

Ian Fleming also had Krebs, the minor villain, say that to Bond in the novel Moonraker.

 

[emigran]

As a musician throughout the 60's and 70's we were always concerned with what was "HIP"... a phrase that derived from the opium smokers who were literally " On the Hip" joint . stoned out of heir gourds... and thus to be hip like a dope smoker... more accurately from the 40's ( before and after cool )
It was bandied about endlessly to mean that one understood or agreed etc. or that such and such was in fact HIp or not...
Usually sounded more like..."Ahm-ipp" than "I'm hip..."
You dig...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Pre-WW2, of course, one was hep if one was hip.

There were also a number of popular songs in the 1930s that used the phrase "rock and roll," long before anyone ever heard of rock music. The Boswell Sisters recorded a novelty pop tune actually called "Rock and Roll" in 1934, which had to do with the "rollin' rockin' rhythm of the sea." Three years later, Chick Webb and his Orchestra recorded a swing number called "Rock It For Me," in which vocalist Ella Fitzgerald called on her fellow musicians to "satisfy my soul with that rock and roll."

"Groovy" was also in use among hepcats in the 1930s, a derivative of the swing term "in the groove."

 

[Tiki Tom]

"Groovy" was also in use among hepcats in the 1930s, a derivative of the swing term "in the groove."

Fascinating! I've occasionally wondered where the term "Groovy" came from.

Regarding Yiddish, many years ago I was invited to a Jewish wedding and ended up being seated at the reception at a table filled with old aunts and old uncles who were conversing in old-country Yiddish. Don't ask why, but at the time I had a pretty fair command of both Russian and German (my Russian has since gotten extremely rusty)... Anyway, between the Russian and German I was able to attempt to jump into the conversation with small comments. I instantly became a hit with the old timers... A young Southern Californian non-Jewish boy stumbling and fumbling and trying to converse with Yiddish speakers! And half-way succeeding. The Bride and Groom were astonished that I was having a ball with the old relatives. It was a true Patrick Leigh Fermor-esque moment. (I love to tell that story.)

Maybe a little off topic: I don't know the etymology of the phrase but I've been using the phrase "old school" a lot lately, as in "that's old school", referring to something done well and in the original style. I've used it so much that last Christmas I got not one but two t-shirts that say "old school" on them. As a Lounger, I'm proud of that.