by Wex | Jun 10, 2010 | Yiddish Curses
Serious cursing, with no underlying spirit of fun, includes expressions such as yemakh shmoy, “may his name be blotted out”, a phrase as deadly serious as Yiddish gets. It isn’t cute or funny or terribly memorable in translation; it isn’t an insult or an...
by Wex | Jun 8, 2010 | Yiddish Curses
Human anatomy receives considerable attention in Yiddish cursing and, just like leprosy, Yiddish curses cover the whole body from the ground up: fardreyen zolstu mit di fis–may your feet be twisted krikhn zolstu afn boykh–may you crawl on your belly zol...
by Wex | Jun 3, 2010 | Yiddish Curses
“You should own a thousand houses, with a thousand rooms in each house, and a thousand beds in every room. And you should sleep each night in a different bed, in a different room, in a different house, and get up every morning, and go down a different staircase,...
by Wex | May 27, 2010 | Yiddish Curses
When two Yiddish speakers confront each other as adversaries, the Yiddish equivalents of “drop”, “get”, and “screw” will be nowhere in evidence. In a culture defined by dissatisfaction and debate, even vengeance turns into an argument, an escalating series of “Oh,...
by Wex | May 25, 2010 | Yiddish Curses
Using Yiddish curses effectively isn’t a matter of yelling out bad words; the trick is to put good ones together in the most damaging possible way. It’s a pastime, an invitation to a dialogue, a form of recreation that lets standard Yiddish thought and speech run...
