Language in contact; growing up with Yiddish

I didn't know when I was growing up that many of the expressions I learned from my family and friends were Yiddish. Some of them I knew because they've entered English in general (like lox and bagel) and some were familiar from movies, songs or books, but many were words we used daily because we picked them up from our friends: oy, oy gevult, feh! bubeleh, mensch, schlep, tsuris, meshugenah, dreck, nudnick, yutz, putz, schmendrick, shlemeil, plotz, megillah, kvetch, schlub, schmaltz, shmeer, kibitz, chutzpah, chazerai, cockamamie, schlock, shmatte, shpeil, mishegoss, shmo, shmuck, shnook, svhvitz, and more. I think the fact that so many of our friends were Jews from the East Coast meant that certain words were absorbed into our home vocabulary, even though both my parents were raised as Catholics. In college and graduate school, a dear friend continued my education in Yiddish by explaining some of the finer distinctions (schlemeil vs shlemazil, for example). So I get a kick out of this ad where a variety of people who "don't look Jewish" use so many of the Yiddish expressions I grew up with.

A Yiddisha Take on 2008
Transcript and translation

What do you think of a man who called our economy strong just weeks before it tanked?
There’s a meshugener (crazy person).

What do you think of McCain opposing funding for renewable energy?
Meshugeneh! (It’s crazy!)

Excuse me. McCain voted against the violence against women act.
What a shmendrick (fool).

McCain supports Bush’s plan to privatize social security so it can be at the mercy of the stock market.
Such a yutz (clueless person).

Ya know, McCain said he preferred that a president has a grounding in the Christian faith.
That gets me in my kishkes (guts). We don’t need that kind of tsores (trouble), honey.

Is Palin ready to handle complex foreign relations?
You think Bush is farblondzshet (bewildered), you haven’t seen anything.

You-hoo. You know, McCain didn’t support equal pay for equal work.
So women do all the schlepping (dragging), get bupkis (nothing) in return. Whatever.

John McCain says staying in Iraq is the only way to define victory.
That guy is such a nudnick (pest).

Hey. McCain supporters say we can’t trust Obama on Israel.
That’s total dreck (dirt). Obama’s a great friend to Israel. He’s got a perfect voting record.

What do you think about Pennsylvania Republicans implying that electing Obama could bring a Holocaust?
A shonde, it’s a shonde. (A shame, it’s disgraceful.)

You know McCain has 8 houses and 13 cars?
Oy gevault! (Oh for heaven’s sake!)

So what kind of leadership do we need for today’s world?
We need a mensch, a real mensch.(a decent person).

We hope you enjoyed our shtick (comic performance).