There was Candy.
to mjd, jim and all old antimooners...
Thanks Jim, long time no contact. Good to see you're back, even if it is just for this one posting.
Yes, I remember Candy. I think, from memory (but I may be wrong but I don't have time to trawl through the archives!) that she was resident in Germany but hailed from the English Lake District - that's the area of North West England, just south of the Scottish border - the area in Cumbria (as it's now called - comprising the former counties of Cumberland and Westmorland and a tiny bit chopped off the northernmost part of Lancashire and added to the newly formed administrative area called Cumbria...the Lake District.....or Lakeland as it's often called.....a land of lakes and tarns* and becks** and the grandeur of the Cumbrian mountains and fells***).
I can envisage the long lost and lamented Candy girl as having a soft Lakeland accent....not quite like the accents of the far more metropolitan areas of Northern England - eg Lancashire proper, Merseyside, Yorkshire and Geordie......yet still very characteristically Northern England.
It is little wonder that Lakeland produced some really notable characters in the field of the arts......the poet William Wordsworth is about the most well known.....a true wordsmith in the English Language...."Nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass!" and "A host of golden daffodils!" being about the most well known of this man's poetic qutations, whose humble cottage at Grasmere (which he shared with his sister) is still there and open to the public.
Also the delightful Beatrix Potter, whose Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten and Flopsy Bunnies are now legendary in childhood imagination. BP was passionate about the beauty of the Lakeland fells, and could not wait to leave the London she regarded as alien and return to her beloved Lakeland.
Other famous Lakeland literary luminaries (don't you just love alliteration!) are of course John Ruskin, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, all ardent skillmasters in our beloved native Language. There surely has to be something about the overwhelmingly inspiring atmosphere of the Lake District that produces such people eager to put into words what they see and hear and feel all around them down there (for us in Scotland - up there if you are in the rest of England other than Lakeland).
It is much more convenient for me to use the eastern route (A1) travelling between Scotland and England (and back again) rather than the route west of the Pennines which would take me right through the heart of Lakeland....the M6. It would be considerably out of my way to go that way, but I'm sure it would be worth it if I did take that route now and again when travelling South of the Border.
Lakeland terminology:
*Tarn - a small lake
**Fell - a mountain or a hill or a tract of high open moorland
***Beck - a small stream, a rivulet. There is a village in Lakeland called Troutbeck, so the name is pretty much self explanatory.
I imagine that Candy has a Lakeland accent with strong hints of RP, a voice that would be redolent of tarns, fells and becks.
I can envisage the long lost and lamented Candy girl as having a soft Lakeland accent....not quite like the accents of the far more metropolitan areas of Northern England - eg Lancashire proper, Merseyside, Yorkshire and Geordie......yet still very characteristically Northern England.
It is little wonder that Lakeland produced some really notable characters in the field of the arts......the poet William Wordsworth is about the most well known.....a true wordsmith in the English Language...."Nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass!" and "A host of golden daffodils!" being about the most well known of this man's poetic qutations, whose humble cottage at Grasmere (which he shared with his sister) is still there and open to the public.
Also the delightful Beatrix Potter, whose Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten and Flopsy Bunnies are now legendary in childhood imagination. BP was passionate about the beauty of the Lakeland fells, and could not wait to leave the London she regarded as alien and return to her beloved Lakeland.
Other famous Lakeland literary luminaries (don't you just love alliteration!) are of course John Ruskin, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, all ardent skillmasters in our beloved native Language. There surely has to be something about the overwhelmingly inspiring atmosphere of the Lake District that produces such people eager to put into words what they see and hear and feel all around them down there (for us in Scotland - up there if you are in the rest of England other than Lakeland).
It is much more convenient for me to use the eastern route (A1) travelling between Scotland and England (and back again) rather than the route west of the Pennines which would take me right through the heart of Lakeland....the M6. It would be considerably out of my way to go that way, but I'm sure it would be worth it if I did take that route now and again when travelling South of the Border.
Lakeland terminology:
*Tarn - a small lake
**Fell - a mountain or a hill or a tract of high open moorland
***Beck - a small stream, a rivulet. There is a village in Lakeland called Troutbeck, so the name is pretty much self explanatory.
I imagine that Candy has a Lakeland accent with strong hints of RP, a voice that would be redolent of tarns, fells and becks.
You know, I just watched The History Boys -- excellent flick, by the way, wish I could have seen it on the stage -- and I could hear that many of the boys had slight variations in their accents, although none of them meant anything to me, and the action all took place in one town. How common is that local variation? I also noticed that the director, on the commentary track, took great pride in the fact that one of the characters "always seems poorer than the others", as I guess was his intent, but he didn't elaborate, and whatever characteristics were marking that boy for him sure didn't stand out to me! Another case of subtle English social clues that don't translate to a non-English audience, I guess. I often suspect that when I am watching British films, they aren't the same movie for me that they would be to a native audience -- there must be a lot that I'm not only missing, but don't even know that I'm missing! The same thing happened, I'm sure, when I watched Helen Mirren in The Queen -- it all seemed very flat and inscrutable to me, but I'm sure spoke volumes to a British viewer.
I do remember being surprised that her 14-point buck (or, I guess, stag in the UK) wandered off her property at Balmoral and was promptly shot by an investment banker staying at a neighboring estate -- a "commercial hunter" in the movie's parlance. I recall an Englishwoman telling me that all deer belong to the Royal family, but I guess you can pay for the privilege of hunting them if you want.
I do remember being surprised that her 14-point buck (or, I guess, stag in the UK) wandered off her property at Balmoral and was promptly shot by an investment banker staying at a neighboring estate -- a "commercial hunter" in the movie's parlance. I recall an Englishwoman telling me that all deer belong to the Royal family, but I guess you can pay for the privilege of hunting them if you want.
Aaah......The History Boys.....the product of the amazing Alan Bennett, and which I have referred to it before in this Forum. I went with three friends to see it at the National Theatre on London's South Bank not long after it was first performed on stage in the UK in 2004...we had all just finished at uni in Leeds, which is Alan Bennett's home city.
The HB opened up at the Lyttelton Theatre, one of the three immense theatres making up the National (the other two being the Olivier Theatre (guess who it was named after!) and the other is the Cottesloe. I love the whole South Bank area - as the name implies it runs all along the south bank of the Thames (the opposite bank - the north bank - is known as The Embankment).
The SB runs from Westminster Bridge (close to the the Big Ben Tower (Big Ben is actually the bell at the very top booming out the quarter hours and then the appropriate number of booms on the hour) and the Houses of Parliament, and then all the way eastwards to Tower Bridge (the bridge which many people from abroad mistakenly think is London Bridge - that is another bridge altogether, the next one upstream from TB.
Close to the NT is the National Film Theatre, and nearby again is the Royal Festival Hall where all the orchestral and symphony concerts are held. Waterloo Road runs down from Waterloo Bridge, next to the NT, and just off this is the Old Vic, another famous theatre where many actors and actresses began their careers in classical theatre, Dame Judi Dench being one such. Not far away is the New Vic Theatre.
Also on the South Bank, closer to TB and not far from Southwark Cathedral (pronounced as SUTH-ukk -the "th" as in the definite article "the") is the equally famous Globe Theatre, on the very site of Shakespeare's original "Wooden O" of his time, the present day theatre putting on his plays (and other productions) very much in the style of his day, hence the wooden O. The Bard's original Globe was destroyed by fire - it was wooden afer all.
Nearby again to this is the Clink Prison Museum, on the site of one of London's oldest prisons, giving it's name to the word "clink", meaning any place of incarceration. Wow! is that museum ever creepy - almost like Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors or the Scotland Yard (the former HQ of the London Metropolitan Police) Black Museum, close to Westminster Bridge, on the aforementioned Embankment.
I adore the South Bank - apart from every conceivable kind of restaurant and bistro bars there also the London Eye - the huge revolving wheel where you can take a circular trip in one of the pods and enjoy fantastic views over London when you finally reach the top (depending on the clarity of the weather - always a dodgily unpredictable matter in our climate. It's possible to see the London Eye on an exceptionally clear day all the way from Ascot Racecourse, some 35/40km away to the west.
The cast in that first production of the HB was virtually the same as in the film, which you saw. I have the DVD so I can watch it at any time. After running at the NT for some it it went on a national tour of the UK - again with the same cast, and I saw it again when it came here to Edinburgh and then went to see it again when it showed in Glasgow, I enjoyed it that much.
In 2006, when the HB went on another tour across the UK, but this time with a totally different cast, I went to see it at the New Theatre in Cardiff (capital city of Wales) - I was staying with my grabdparents in Herefordshire, England, at the time - just over an hour and a quarter's drive from Cardiff.
The "town" you mention is actually Sheffield, one of the UK's major cities - although he comes from Leeds Bennett set the HB in the Sheffield of 1983, and it was there that the film was shot (except for the scenes at Oxford, Cambridge and the ruins of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire - one of the very, very many monastic edifices destroyed by England's King Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church in England and the break away from the Papacy and Rome.
You can see from the film how hilly Sheffield is - the hilliest city I've ever been to. It's not very far from Leeds, and while at uni I went to a party there - in this large detached house in the suburb of Greystones, on a road with a gradient of about 1:5 or something and I've never seen a place with so many grit skips at regular intervals along the roads, and I imagine they've made good use of them during the present winter. The party was gatecrashed big time, which was fun! Sheffield has an amazing tram transportation system and I could ride it back and forth all day long, and the views when you reach the top of some of those hills is amazing.
The film "The Full Monty" was also shot in the city, and you had an even better idea of the Sheffield/South Yorkshire accent in that film than you did in the History Boys.
The accents of those lads in the HB did not really replicate the true local accent (South Yorkshire/Sheffield) in my opinion - I had no idea about the West Yorkshire accent (Leeds is in WY) until I went to uni there and it was quite a shock to the system, as my accent was to theirs, but I got well used to it. Appparently West and South Yorkshires are noticeably different from each other but all those actors in the show/film hail from other parts of the UK - many from the South.
Being actors they would have had training in most UK regional accents, eg Samuel Barnett at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) - he played the part of Posner. You can hear Samuel speaking in his own Southern English English RP accent in one of the clips below, and in the part of Posnber he did seem to do a pretty good "Sheffield", especially when he was having a heart to heart with the teacher Irwin (played by Stephen Campbell Moore in standard SEERP) over his sexuality:
"I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual - and I come from Sheffield! I'm fooked!" (Sheffield for "fucked").
Some of the actors do come from either the Midlands or the North (of England, of course - Scotland is no way involved in the HB. One such would be Russell Tovey, who played Rudge, the guy who partook in the mock (pre Oxford/Cambridge uni selection) interviews with Hector (played by the inimitable and very rotund Richard Griffiths*), Mrs Lintott (known as Totty** to the boys!) - played by Frances de la Tour - and Irwin. When asked by Mrs Lintott how he would define "History" he replied in a perfect sounding Yorkshire accent: "It's one fucking thing after another!" (as in a clip below).
Samuel Barnett also had a short part to play in the film "Mrs Henderson Presents" - as a love struck (for one of the naked girls in the stage reviews at London's former famous musical review Windmill Theatre) soldier soon to go to war in WW2.
I was amazed to see how differently the film was trailered in the USA compared with here in the UK. In that quote by Posner, for example, here in the UK it was worded in fulkl, but in the American trailer all Posner said was: "I'm small and I come from Sheffield!" The editing was obvious over there, and they completey omitted to show the scene where Dakin (played by Dominic Cooper) came on to Irwin with his proposition. Aw bless! ;-)
I have no idea whether the censors used their scissors in the film as a whole for showing in America.......
Many of the actors are now making names for themselves in acting here in the UK - mostly in their own regional accents (mostly EERP) - James Corden (Timms), Jamie Parker (Scripps) - a true Londoner but his "Yorkshire" was pretty good!), Andrew Knott (Lockwood) - and of course Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper (I saw him on stage here in Edinburgh recently in something completely different) and, withoiut doubt, Richard Griffiths, who played the central part of Hector.
Richard Griffiths played the part of a police detective who also was a chef running his own restaurant in his spare time - called "Pie In the Sky", the name of the restaurant, and set in a small town on the River Thames, supposedly modelled on Marlow, Buckinhghamshire, where it is filmed. The term "pie in the sky" usually means an airy fairy bit of nonsense, an unattainable bit of wishful thinking.
During one London West End stage performance given by Richard Griffiths - he was in full flow with his lines when the tones of a mobile phone rang out loudy from the full house auditorium. He went ballistic at this interruption, broke off from his lines and he went to the front of the stage and demanded that the culprit make his/herself known. It was a "her" in fact, and "her" was so embarrassed she got up and made her way to the exit and was never seen again. A switched on mobile is a big "no no!" in any UK theatre or cinema. Admittedly, Richard was a wee bit unprofessional in what he did, but he was incensed.
"The Queen" - a fine performance from Dame Helen Mirren - a lass from Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex - close to Southend-on-Sea - actually on the north bank of the Thames Estuary. It's unlikely that you would get the full impact of that film if you are not British - the emphasis was on the perceived lack of "feeling" shown by the Queen at the time of Diana's tragic death....here in Britain at least. Many people felt that she was "too remote from the grief and distress of the people" and she was ultimately "forced" to "make amends" by addressing the nation on TV to show that she "shared the sadness" at that time. In other words, showing the "caring, human side of a Monarchy for so long seen as isolated from the people and out of touch with them at large". It was just unfortunate that she had a Prime Minister at the time (Tony Blair) who was not altogether an ardent royalist anyway, and found it hard to conceal the fact at times, and to make matters worse he had a wife who absolutely made no secret at all of her feeling towards the Monarchy and the Royal Family at any time - the apparently notorious Cherie, the daighjter of an actor with strong left wing beliefs.
Yes, deer are actually the property of the Crown in the UK - they all "belong" to the Queen in theory, and a licence to shoot them is essential. The same applies to swans - they, too, are seen as "royal". It is a serious crime to shoot a swan at any time. All this stems from the days when widespread shooting of these lovely creatures seemed likely to become extinct all because of this wholesale slaughter. So now all swans are allowed to glide along on our waterways at will, and free from bulklets or pellets or whatever, and any instances of "swan-i-cide" (I made that one up) are treated as capoital murder, almost. The same goes for illegal deer shooting.
The wild lands around Balmoral (as elsewhere in the Highjlands of Scotland) are home to some pretty large herds of deer, and that poor magnificent stag is a real sight to behold. I could no more shoot one than thrust a red hot needle into my eyeball.
The History Boys photoshoot:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQbMsyC7Fk&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=0&playnext=1
American interview with:
Dominic Cooper (who played the part of Dakin) and Samuel Barnett (who played Posner).
The American pronunciation of the name Barnett: He said Bar-NETT, empahis on second syllable. Samuel himself, like all British people, say: BAR-nett - first syllable stress.
Rehearsing their interviews for Oxford and Cambridge - and Rudge defining History in his own way:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5Y-Db_TL0&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=22
Locker room dialogue:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DjQRhcNzLV4&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=15
(Disregard any typos in the foregoing - I'm too fornyawed to do any proof reading - it's been a hard day's night and I've been working like a dog.....)
The HB opened up at the Lyttelton Theatre, one of the three immense theatres making up the National (the other two being the Olivier Theatre (guess who it was named after!) and the other is the Cottesloe. I love the whole South Bank area - as the name implies it runs all along the south bank of the Thames (the opposite bank - the north bank - is known as The Embankment).
The SB runs from Westminster Bridge (close to the the Big Ben Tower (Big Ben is actually the bell at the very top booming out the quarter hours and then the appropriate number of booms on the hour) and the Houses of Parliament, and then all the way eastwards to Tower Bridge (the bridge which many people from abroad mistakenly think is London Bridge - that is another bridge altogether, the next one upstream from TB.
Close to the NT is the National Film Theatre, and nearby again is the Royal Festival Hall where all the orchestral and symphony concerts are held. Waterloo Road runs down from Waterloo Bridge, next to the NT, and just off this is the Old Vic, another famous theatre where many actors and actresses began their careers in classical theatre, Dame Judi Dench being one such. Not far away is the New Vic Theatre.
Also on the South Bank, closer to TB and not far from Southwark Cathedral (pronounced as SUTH-ukk -the "th" as in the definite article "the") is the equally famous Globe Theatre, on the very site of Shakespeare's original "Wooden O" of his time, the present day theatre putting on his plays (and other productions) very much in the style of his day, hence the wooden O. The Bard's original Globe was destroyed by fire - it was wooden afer all.
Nearby again to this is the Clink Prison Museum, on the site of one of London's oldest prisons, giving it's name to the word "clink", meaning any place of incarceration. Wow! is that museum ever creepy - almost like Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors or the Scotland Yard (the former HQ of the London Metropolitan Police) Black Museum, close to Westminster Bridge, on the aforementioned Embankment.
I adore the South Bank - apart from every conceivable kind of restaurant and bistro bars there also the London Eye - the huge revolving wheel where you can take a circular trip in one of the pods and enjoy fantastic views over London when you finally reach the top (depending on the clarity of the weather - always a dodgily unpredictable matter in our climate. It's possible to see the London Eye on an exceptionally clear day all the way from Ascot Racecourse, some 35/40km away to the west.
The cast in that first production of the HB was virtually the same as in the film, which you saw. I have the DVD so I can watch it at any time. After running at the NT for some it it went on a national tour of the UK - again with the same cast, and I saw it again when it came here to Edinburgh and then went to see it again when it showed in Glasgow, I enjoyed it that much.
In 2006, when the HB went on another tour across the UK, but this time with a totally different cast, I went to see it at the New Theatre in Cardiff (capital city of Wales) - I was staying with my grabdparents in Herefordshire, England, at the time - just over an hour and a quarter's drive from Cardiff.
The "town" you mention is actually Sheffield, one of the UK's major cities - although he comes from Leeds Bennett set the HB in the Sheffield of 1983, and it was there that the film was shot (except for the scenes at Oxford, Cambridge and the ruins of Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire - one of the very, very many monastic edifices destroyed by England's King Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church in England and the break away from the Papacy and Rome.
You can see from the film how hilly Sheffield is - the hilliest city I've ever been to. It's not very far from Leeds, and while at uni I went to a party there - in this large detached house in the suburb of Greystones, on a road with a gradient of about 1:5 or something and I've never seen a place with so many grit skips at regular intervals along the roads, and I imagine they've made good use of them during the present winter. The party was gatecrashed big time, which was fun! Sheffield has an amazing tram transportation system and I could ride it back and forth all day long, and the views when you reach the top of some of those hills is amazing.
The film "The Full Monty" was also shot in the city, and you had an even better idea of the Sheffield/South Yorkshire accent in that film than you did in the History Boys.
The accents of those lads in the HB did not really replicate the true local accent (South Yorkshire/Sheffield) in my opinion - I had no idea about the West Yorkshire accent (Leeds is in WY) until I went to uni there and it was quite a shock to the system, as my accent was to theirs, but I got well used to it. Appparently West and South Yorkshires are noticeably different from each other but all those actors in the show/film hail from other parts of the UK - many from the South.
Being actors they would have had training in most UK regional accents, eg Samuel Barnett at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) - he played the part of Posner. You can hear Samuel speaking in his own Southern English English RP accent in one of the clips below, and in the part of Posnber he did seem to do a pretty good "Sheffield", especially when he was having a heart to heart with the teacher Irwin (played by Stephen Campbell Moore in standard SEERP) over his sexuality:
"I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual - and I come from Sheffield! I'm fooked!" (Sheffield for "fucked").
Some of the actors do come from either the Midlands or the North (of England, of course - Scotland is no way involved in the HB. One such would be Russell Tovey, who played Rudge, the guy who partook in the mock (pre Oxford/Cambridge uni selection) interviews with Hector (played by the inimitable and very rotund Richard Griffiths*), Mrs Lintott (known as Totty** to the boys!) - played by Frances de la Tour - and Irwin. When asked by Mrs Lintott how he would define "History" he replied in a perfect sounding Yorkshire accent: "It's one fucking thing after another!" (as in a clip below).
Samuel Barnett also had a short part to play in the film "Mrs Henderson Presents" - as a love struck (for one of the naked girls in the stage reviews at London's former famous musical review Windmill Theatre) soldier soon to go to war in WW2.
I was amazed to see how differently the film was trailered in the USA compared with here in the UK. In that quote by Posner, for example, here in the UK it was worded in fulkl, but in the American trailer all Posner said was: "I'm small and I come from Sheffield!" The editing was obvious over there, and they completey omitted to show the scene where Dakin (played by Dominic Cooper) came on to Irwin with his proposition. Aw bless! ;-)
I have no idea whether the censors used their scissors in the film as a whole for showing in America.......
Many of the actors are now making names for themselves in acting here in the UK - mostly in their own regional accents (mostly EERP) - James Corden (Timms), Jamie Parker (Scripps) - a true Londoner but his "Yorkshire" was pretty good!), Andrew Knott (Lockwood) - and of course Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper (I saw him on stage here in Edinburgh recently in something completely different) and, withoiut doubt, Richard Griffiths, who played the central part of Hector.
Richard Griffiths played the part of a police detective who also was a chef running his own restaurant in his spare time - called "Pie In the Sky", the name of the restaurant, and set in a small town on the River Thames, supposedly modelled on Marlow, Buckinhghamshire, where it is filmed. The term "pie in the sky" usually means an airy fairy bit of nonsense, an unattainable bit of wishful thinking.
During one London West End stage performance given by Richard Griffiths - he was in full flow with his lines when the tones of a mobile phone rang out loudy from the full house auditorium. He went ballistic at this interruption, broke off from his lines and he went to the front of the stage and demanded that the culprit make his/herself known. It was a "her" in fact, and "her" was so embarrassed she got up and made her way to the exit and was never seen again. A switched on mobile is a big "no no!" in any UK theatre or cinema. Admittedly, Richard was a wee bit unprofessional in what he did, but he was incensed.
"The Queen" - a fine performance from Dame Helen Mirren - a lass from Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex - close to Southend-on-Sea - actually on the north bank of the Thames Estuary. It's unlikely that you would get the full impact of that film if you are not British - the emphasis was on the perceived lack of "feeling" shown by the Queen at the time of Diana's tragic death....here in Britain at least. Many people felt that she was "too remote from the grief and distress of the people" and she was ultimately "forced" to "make amends" by addressing the nation on TV to show that she "shared the sadness" at that time. In other words, showing the "caring, human side of a Monarchy for so long seen as isolated from the people and out of touch with them at large". It was just unfortunate that she had a Prime Minister at the time (Tony Blair) who was not altogether an ardent royalist anyway, and found it hard to conceal the fact at times, and to make matters worse he had a wife who absolutely made no secret at all of her feeling towards the Monarchy and the Royal Family at any time - the apparently notorious Cherie, the daighjter of an actor with strong left wing beliefs.
Yes, deer are actually the property of the Crown in the UK - they all "belong" to the Queen in theory, and a licence to shoot them is essential. The same applies to swans - they, too, are seen as "royal". It is a serious crime to shoot a swan at any time. All this stems from the days when widespread shooting of these lovely creatures seemed likely to become extinct all because of this wholesale slaughter. So now all swans are allowed to glide along on our waterways at will, and free from bulklets or pellets or whatever, and any instances of "swan-i-cide" (I made that one up) are treated as capoital murder, almost. The same goes for illegal deer shooting.
The wild lands around Balmoral (as elsewhere in the Highjlands of Scotland) are home to some pretty large herds of deer, and that poor magnificent stag is a real sight to behold. I could no more shoot one than thrust a red hot needle into my eyeball.
The History Boys photoshoot:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TTQbMsyC7Fk&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=0&playnext=1
American interview with:
Dominic Cooper (who played the part of Dakin) and Samuel Barnett (who played Posner).
The American pronunciation of the name Barnett: He said Bar-NETT, empahis on second syllable. Samuel himself, like all British people, say: BAR-nett - first syllable stress.
Rehearsing their interviews for Oxford and Cambridge - and Rudge defining History in his own way:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5Y-Db_TL0&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=22
Locker room dialogue:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DjQRhcNzLV4&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=15
(Disregard any typos in the foregoing - I'm too fornyawed to do any proof reading - it's been a hard day's night and I've been working like a dog.....)
I forgot to post the clip showing Dominic Cooper and Samuel Barnett being interviewed on American TV. Note the American way of pronouncing Samuel's last name....
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BUiRd2enPNg
Group discussion:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_B11MUOo4XQ&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=13
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BUiRd2enPNg
Group discussion:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_B11MUOo4XQ&feature=PlayList&p=356AB821F0E072E2&index=13
No, the film itself wasn't censored in the US (at least not on the copy I saw from my local video store). I recognize all the lines you mention. It's been a long time since I saw the original preview, so I don't remember how it compared to the movie itself, but most movie previews opt for a PG (parental guidance, ok for kids) version so they can be shown in movie theaters to a wider audience, even if the movie itself is rated R (restricted, no one under 17 in without a parent). On rental DVDs you occasionally see previews that are themselves rated R. I suppose the studio often cuts two versions to hit different demographics!
Yeah, BAR-nett does sound weird to my ears -- especially because here in Las Cruces, we are home to Barnett Harley-Davidson, which bills itself as the world's largest Harley showroom, and the accent is definitely on the NETT.
The British pronunciation of Bernard is equally odd to me -- BERnurd (or, really, BUH-nuhd), whereas we say Ber-NARD. Or to Caspian & Co., BerrrrNARRRRD. ;P (I notice that most articles in the Guardian that try to transliterate American pronunciation make much of our glorious R's. Which we, in fact, never notice. Except when confronted with their conspicuous absence in English dramas -- sorry, drammers.)
I've never seen the film Maurice, but I understand it was pronounced Morris, while we would, of course, say Mor-REECE. And James Wilby was pretty cute in a Tale of Two Cities.....as was Dominic Cooper, who I remember seeing in Mamma Mia, once it was pointed out to me. Although he was sort of a putz in the History Boys.
I've seen plenty of elk in the US (same species as the stag in the Queen, except ours are bigger and different in color), but I've never seen a wild swan here, although we do have some, according to the bird guides. Given that Canada goose tastes downright awful, I'm inclined to let our swans live out their days in peace as well! Not that they have ever been a big food item here.....
Pie in the sky is also a common expression in the US, but WTF is a "grit skip"?
Yeah, BAR-nett does sound weird to my ears -- especially because here in Las Cruces, we are home to Barnett Harley-Davidson, which bills itself as the world's largest Harley showroom, and the accent is definitely on the NETT.
The British pronunciation of Bernard is equally odd to me -- BERnurd (or, really, BUH-nuhd), whereas we say Ber-NARD. Or to Caspian & Co., BerrrrNARRRRD. ;P (I notice that most articles in the Guardian that try to transliterate American pronunciation make much of our glorious R's. Which we, in fact, never notice. Except when confronted with their conspicuous absence in English dramas -- sorry, drammers.)
I've never seen the film Maurice, but I understand it was pronounced Morris, while we would, of course, say Mor-REECE. And James Wilby was pretty cute in a Tale of Two Cities.....as was Dominic Cooper, who I remember seeing in Mamma Mia, once it was pointed out to me. Although he was sort of a putz in the History Boys.
I've seen plenty of elk in the US (same species as the stag in the Queen, except ours are bigger and different in color), but I've never seen a wild swan here, although we do have some, according to the bird guides. Given that Canada goose tastes downright awful, I'm inclined to let our swans live out their days in peace as well! Not that they have ever been a big food item here.....
Pie in the sky is also a common expression in the US, but WTF is a "grit skip"?
Grit.......that's the stuff the gritting lorries scatter on the roads in icy weather...a mixture of small particles of sand and soil and sometimes salt designed to prevent skidding on frozen surfaces....you know the kind of thng. The guys spring into action as soon as the forecasters issue below freezing conditions.
The skips are the large containers placed by local authorities at the side of the road for motorists to help themselves to the grit whenever they find their vehicles starting to think they are in the Dancing on Ice program on TV.
A skip generally means those large transportable containers used for the dumping of rubbish and waste....garbage or trash as you would probably say. Once full they are lifted up and then carted off to God knows where.
Yes...it's "BURRN-udd" for Bernard over here....at least in Scotland. In England it's more like "BUHHN-udd". My mother has her hair done at an establishment called Paul Bernard - and yes, the guy who runs the business really is true to stereotype, or so my mum says, but she's really satisfied with his artwork, or so she says.
Of course your stags are bigger! Everything in America is bigger! You've got all that space to enable everything to be bigger! ;-)
Swans.....they are profuse over here, pretty much - especially down in England...most village ponds or park lakes have swans gliding about on them gracefully. In Tudor times roasted swan graced many a dinner table and apparently England's Queen Elizabeth I (the so called Virgin Queen - ha! - just ask Essex) was very partial to a bit of swan accompanied by a discovery newly imported from America called the potato. Rather than eat these lovely creatures into extinction the Crown decided to offer them protection, which is why any drunken yobs who choose to attack these birds with air pellets or stones or whatever are severely dealt with.....with a wee bit of luck.
In times long past most village greens and public places used to have stocks in which to lock such yobs thus enabling the local populace to hurl abuse and insults as well as various items of detritus at the miscreants, like rotten cabbages and even more disgusting items. Nowadays you can only find stocks in the museums, but maybe they should be brought back into use to deal with not only swan molesters but also Britain's rampant litter louts, the scourge of your fellow American, now UK resident, the novelist Bill Bryson, the current president of the CPRE - Council for the Protection of Rural England.
Define putz, please. Doesn't sound too nice, or maybe it could be.....I think I can fathom out its meaning with Dakin in mind. He was a wee bit, wasn't he? He was great in Mother Clap's Molly House though. Molly houses.....please don't ask! It's far too early in the day for that kind of thing and I have serious work issues to get my head round right now....maybe later.
The skips are the large containers placed by local authorities at the side of the road for motorists to help themselves to the grit whenever they find their vehicles starting to think they are in the Dancing on Ice program on TV.
A skip generally means those large transportable containers used for the dumping of rubbish and waste....garbage or trash as you would probably say. Once full they are lifted up and then carted off to God knows where.
Yes...it's "BURRN-udd" for Bernard over here....at least in Scotland. In England it's more like "BUHHN-udd". My mother has her hair done at an establishment called Paul Bernard - and yes, the guy who runs the business really is true to stereotype, or so my mum says, but she's really satisfied with his artwork, or so she says.
Of course your stags are bigger! Everything in America is bigger! You've got all that space to enable everything to be bigger! ;-)
Swans.....they are profuse over here, pretty much - especially down in England...most village ponds or park lakes have swans gliding about on them gracefully. In Tudor times roasted swan graced many a dinner table and apparently England's Queen Elizabeth I (the so called Virgin Queen - ha! - just ask Essex) was very partial to a bit of swan accompanied by a discovery newly imported from America called the potato. Rather than eat these lovely creatures into extinction the Crown decided to offer them protection, which is why any drunken yobs who choose to attack these birds with air pellets or stones or whatever are severely dealt with.....with a wee bit of luck.
In times long past most village greens and public places used to have stocks in which to lock such yobs thus enabling the local populace to hurl abuse and insults as well as various items of detritus at the miscreants, like rotten cabbages and even more disgusting items. Nowadays you can only find stocks in the museums, but maybe they should be brought back into use to deal with not only swan molesters but also Britain's rampant litter louts, the scourge of your fellow American, now UK resident, the novelist Bill Bryson, the current president of the CPRE - Council for the Protection of Rural England.
Define putz, please. Doesn't sound too nice, or maybe it could be.....I think I can fathom out its meaning with Dakin in mind. He was a wee bit, wasn't he? He was great in Mother Clap's Molly House though. Molly houses.....please don't ask! It's far too early in the day for that kind of thing and I have serious work issues to get my head round right now....maybe later.
erm,,, interesting.... I'm here since 2003. therefore, an ooooolllldd antimooner myself hehe. Haven't seen mdj in a long time.
Note that the discredited Tom and the discredited moderators enjoy picking on certain posters here and deleting their work. They obviously can't do it to everyone. I was one of their victims and their actions hurt me very badly. You should realize that these discredited people have blood on their hands.
The above can be backed up by the experiences of others. For example: greg and his thread concerning the discredited mjd:
"My Disappointment With MJD"
And the damming evidence goes on and on.
"My Disappointment With MJD"
And the damming evidence goes on and on.
<<Grit.......that's the stuff the gritting lorries scatter on the roads in icy weather...a mixture of small particles of sand and soil and sometimes salt designed to prevent skidding on frozen surfaces>>
Ah. I think we just call this "salting the roads" and we don't have any particular name for the truck that does it.
A "putz" is an asshole. I'll have to look up the original meaning, but I think it comes to us from Yiddish. There is actually quite a bit of Yiddish-American slang, either because it was so colorful that it just naturally caught on, or because the 19th and 20th century entertainment industries, from vaudeville to the major film studios, have been heavily dominated by Jewish Americans, who brought bits of the language into English.
From The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should Know:
<< 1. baleboste
A good homemaker, a woman who’s in charge of her home and will make sure you remember it.
2. bissel
Or bisl - a little bit.
3. bubbe
Or bobe. It means Grandmother, and bobeshi is the more affectionate form. Bubele is a similarly affectionate word, though it isn’t in Yiddish dictionaries.
4. bupkes
Not a word for polite company. Bubkes or bobkes may be related to the Polish word for “beans”, but it really means “goat droppings” or “horse droppings.” It’s often used by American Jews for “trivial, worthless, useless, a ridiculously small amount” - less than nothing, so to speak. “After all the work I did, I got bupkes!”
5. chutzpah
Or khutspe. Nerve, extreme arrogance, brazen presumption. In English, chutzpah often connotes courage or confidence, but among Yiddish speakers, it is not a compliment.
6. feh!
An expression of disgust or disapproval, representative of the sound of spitting.
7. glitch
Or glitsh. Literally “slip,” “skate,” or “nosedive,” which was the origin of the common American usage as “a minor problem or error.”
8. gornisht
More polite than bupkes, and also implies a strong sense of nothing; used in phrases such as “gornisht helfn” (beyond help).
9. goy
A non-Jew, a Gentile. As in Hebrew, one Gentile is a goy, many Gentiles are goyim, the non-Jewish world in general is “the goyim.” Goyish is the adjective form. Putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich is goyish. Putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich on white bread is even more goyish.
10. kibbitz
In Yiddish, it’s spelled kibets, and it’s related to the Hebrew “kibbutz” or “collective.” But it can also mean verbal joking, which after all is a collective activity. It didn’t originally mean giving unwanted advice about someone else’s game - that’s an American innovation.
11. klutz
Or better yet, klots. Literally means “a block of wood,” so it’s often used for a dense, clumsy or awkward person. See schlemiel.
12. kosher
Something that’s acceptable to Orthodox Jews, especially food. Other Jews may also “eat kosher” on some level but are not required to. Food that Orthodox Jews don’t eat - pork, shellfish, etc. - is called traif. An observant Jew might add, “Both pork and shellfish are doubtlessly very tasty. I simply am restricted from eating it.” In English, when you hear something that seems suspicious or shady, you might say, “That doesn’t sound kosher.”
13. kvetsh
In popular English, kvetch means “complain, whine or fret,” but in Yiddish, kvetsh literally means “to press or squeeze,” like a wrong-sized shoe. Reminds you of certain chronic complainers, doesn’t it? But it’s also used on Yiddish web pages for “click” (Click Here).
14. maven
Pronounced meyven. An expert, often used sarcastically.
15. Mazel Tov
Or mazltof. Literally “good luck,” (well, literally, “good constellation”) but it’s a congratulation for what just happened, not a hopeful wish for what might happen in the future. When someone gets married or has a child or graduates from college, this is what you say to them. It can also be used sarcastically to mean “it’s about time,” as in “It’s about time you finished school and stopped sponging off your parents.”
16. mentsh
An honorable, decent person, an authentic person, a person who helps you when you need help. Can be a man, woman or child.
17. mishegas
Insanity or craziness. A meshugener is a crazy man. If you want to insult someone, you can ask them, ”Does it hurt to be crazy?”
18. mishpocheh
Or mishpokhe or mishpucha. It means “family,” as in “Relax, you’re mishpocheh. I’ll sell it to you at wholesale.”
19. nosh
Or nash. To nibble; a light snack, but you won’t be light if you don’t stop noshing. Can also describe plagarism, though not always in a bad sense; you know, picking up little pieces for yourself.
20. nu
A general word that calls for a reply. It can mean, “So?” “Huh?” “Well?” “What’s up?” or “Hello?”
21. oy vey
Exclamation of dismay, grief, or exasperation. The phrase “oy vey iz mir” means “Oh, woe is me.” “Oy gevalt!” is like oy vey, but expresses fear, shock or amazement. When you realize you’re about to be hit by a car, this expression would be appropriate.
22. plotz
Or plats. Literally, to explode, as in aggravation. “Well, don’t plotz!” is similar to “Don’t have a stroke!” or “Don’t have a cow!” Also used in expressions such as, “Oy, am I tired; I just ran the four-minute mile. I could just plotz.” That is, collapse.
23. shalom
It means “deep peace,” and isn’t that a more meaningful greeting than “Hi, how are ya?”
24. shlep
To drag, traditionally something you don’t really need; to carry unwillingly. When people “shlep around,” they are dragging themselves, perhaps slouchingly. On vacation, when I’m the one who ends up carrying the heavy suitcase I begged my wife to leave at home, I shlep it.
25. shlemiel
A clumsy, inept person, similar to a klutz (also a Yiddish word). The kind of person who always spills his soup.
26. schlock
Cheap, shoddy, or inferior, as in, “I don’t know why I bought this schlocky souvenir.”
27. shlimazel
Someone with constant bad luck. When the shlemiel spills his soup, he probably spills it on the shlimazel. Fans of the TV sitcom “Laverne and Shirley” remember these two words from the Yiddish-American hopscotch chant that opened each show.
28. shmendrik
A jerk, a stupid person, popularized in The Last Unicorn and Welcome Back Kotter.
29. shmaltzy
Excessively sentimental, gushing, flattering, over-the-top, corny. This word describes some of Hollywood’s most famous films. From shmaltz, which means chicken fat or grease.
30. shmooze
Chat, make small talk, converse about nothing in particular. But at Hollywood parties, guests often schmooze with people they want to impress.
31. schmuck
Often used as an insulting word for a self-made fool, but you shouldn’t use it in polite company at all, since it refers to male anatomy.
32. spiel
A long, involved sales pitch, as in, “I had to listen to his whole spiel before I found out what he really wanted.” From the German word for play.
33. shikse
A non-Jewish woman, all too often used derogatorily. It has the connotation of “young and beautiful,” so referring to a man’s Gentile wife or girlfriend as a shiksa implies that his primary attraction was her good looks. She is possibly blonde. A shagetz or sheygets means a non-Jewish boy, and has the connotation of a someone who is unruly, even violent.
34. shmutz
Or shmuts. Dirt - a little dirt, not serious grime. If a little boy has shmutz on his face, and he likely will, his mother will quickly wipe it off. It can also mean dirty language. It’s not nice to talk shmutz about shmutz. A current derivation, “schmitzig,” means a “thigamabob” or a “doodad,” but has nothing to do with filth.
35. shtick
Something you’re known for doing, an entertainer’s routine, an actor’s bit, stage business; a gimmick often done to draw attention to yourself.
36. tchatchke
Or tshatshke. Knick-knack, little toy, collectible or giftware. It also appears in sentences such as, “My brother divorced his wife for some little tchatchke.” You can figure that one out.
37. tsuris
Or tsores. Serious troubles, not minor annoyances. Plagues of lice, gnats, flies, locusts, hail, death… now, those were tsuris.
38. tuches
Rear end, bottom, backside, buttocks. In proper Yiddish, it’s spelled tuchis or tuches or tokhis, and was the origin of the American slang word tush.
39. yente
Female busybody or gossip. At one time, high-class parents gave this name to their girls (after all, it has the same root as “gentle”), but it gained the Yiddish meaning of “she-devil”. The matchmaker in “Fiddler on the Roof” was named Yente (and she certainly was a yente though maybe not very high-class), so many people mistakenly think that yente means matchmaker.
40. yiddisher kop
Smart person. Literally means “Jewish head.” I don’t want to know what goyisher kop means.
As in Hebrew, the ch or kh in Yiddish is a “voiceless fricative,” with a pronunciation between h and k. If you don’t know how to make that sound, pronounce it like an h. Pronouncing it like a k is goyish.>>
Personally, I recognized all but 3 or 4 of the words on this list! Most of them would be associated strongly with NYC and New Jersey and the rest of the upper East Coast, although the TV show "Laverne and Shirley", which featured "Schlemiel, Schlimazel" in the opening theme song, was set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, some of them, like schmooze, schmuck, nosh, spiel, schmalz, schlock, schtick, schlep, glitz, kosher, klutz, and chutzpah, are very widespread and we just think of them as plain English.
Ah. I think we just call this "salting the roads" and we don't have any particular name for the truck that does it.
A "putz" is an asshole. I'll have to look up the original meaning, but I think it comes to us from Yiddish. There is actually quite a bit of Yiddish-American slang, either because it was so colorful that it just naturally caught on, or because the 19th and 20th century entertainment industries, from vaudeville to the major film studios, have been heavily dominated by Jewish Americans, who brought bits of the language into English.
From The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should Know:
<< 1. baleboste
A good homemaker, a woman who’s in charge of her home and will make sure you remember it.
2. bissel
Or bisl - a little bit.
3. bubbe
Or bobe. It means Grandmother, and bobeshi is the more affectionate form. Bubele is a similarly affectionate word, though it isn’t in Yiddish dictionaries.
4. bupkes
Not a word for polite company. Bubkes or bobkes may be related to the Polish word for “beans”, but it really means “goat droppings” or “horse droppings.” It’s often used by American Jews for “trivial, worthless, useless, a ridiculously small amount” - less than nothing, so to speak. “After all the work I did, I got bupkes!”
5. chutzpah
Or khutspe. Nerve, extreme arrogance, brazen presumption. In English, chutzpah often connotes courage or confidence, but among Yiddish speakers, it is not a compliment.
6. feh!
An expression of disgust or disapproval, representative of the sound of spitting.
7. glitch
Or glitsh. Literally “slip,” “skate,” or “nosedive,” which was the origin of the common American usage as “a minor problem or error.”
8. gornisht
More polite than bupkes, and also implies a strong sense of nothing; used in phrases such as “gornisht helfn” (beyond help).
9. goy
A non-Jew, a Gentile. As in Hebrew, one Gentile is a goy, many Gentiles are goyim, the non-Jewish world in general is “the goyim.” Goyish is the adjective form. Putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich is goyish. Putting mayonnaise on a pastrami sandwich on white bread is even more goyish.
10. kibbitz
In Yiddish, it’s spelled kibets, and it’s related to the Hebrew “kibbutz” or “collective.” But it can also mean verbal joking, which after all is a collective activity. It didn’t originally mean giving unwanted advice about someone else’s game - that’s an American innovation.
11. klutz
Or better yet, klots. Literally means “a block of wood,” so it’s often used for a dense, clumsy or awkward person. See schlemiel.
12. kosher
Something that’s acceptable to Orthodox Jews, especially food. Other Jews may also “eat kosher” on some level but are not required to. Food that Orthodox Jews don’t eat - pork, shellfish, etc. - is called traif. An observant Jew might add, “Both pork and shellfish are doubtlessly very tasty. I simply am restricted from eating it.” In English, when you hear something that seems suspicious or shady, you might say, “That doesn’t sound kosher.”
13. kvetsh
In popular English, kvetch means “complain, whine or fret,” but in Yiddish, kvetsh literally means “to press or squeeze,” like a wrong-sized shoe. Reminds you of certain chronic complainers, doesn’t it? But it’s also used on Yiddish web pages for “click” (Click Here).
14. maven
Pronounced meyven. An expert, often used sarcastically.
15. Mazel Tov
Or mazltof. Literally “good luck,” (well, literally, “good constellation”) but it’s a congratulation for what just happened, not a hopeful wish for what might happen in the future. When someone gets married or has a child or graduates from college, this is what you say to them. It can also be used sarcastically to mean “it’s about time,” as in “It’s about time you finished school and stopped sponging off your parents.”
16. mentsh
An honorable, decent person, an authentic person, a person who helps you when you need help. Can be a man, woman or child.
17. mishegas
Insanity or craziness. A meshugener is a crazy man. If you want to insult someone, you can ask them, ”Does it hurt to be crazy?”
18. mishpocheh
Or mishpokhe or mishpucha. It means “family,” as in “Relax, you’re mishpocheh. I’ll sell it to you at wholesale.”
19. nosh
Or nash. To nibble; a light snack, but you won’t be light if you don’t stop noshing. Can also describe plagarism, though not always in a bad sense; you know, picking up little pieces for yourself.
20. nu
A general word that calls for a reply. It can mean, “So?” “Huh?” “Well?” “What’s up?” or “Hello?”
21. oy vey
Exclamation of dismay, grief, or exasperation. The phrase “oy vey iz mir” means “Oh, woe is me.” “Oy gevalt!” is like oy vey, but expresses fear, shock or amazement. When you realize you’re about to be hit by a car, this expression would be appropriate.
22. plotz
Or plats. Literally, to explode, as in aggravation. “Well, don’t plotz!” is similar to “Don’t have a stroke!” or “Don’t have a cow!” Also used in expressions such as, “Oy, am I tired; I just ran the four-minute mile. I could just plotz.” That is, collapse.
23. shalom
It means “deep peace,” and isn’t that a more meaningful greeting than “Hi, how are ya?”
24. shlep
To drag, traditionally something you don’t really need; to carry unwillingly. When people “shlep around,” they are dragging themselves, perhaps slouchingly. On vacation, when I’m the one who ends up carrying the heavy suitcase I begged my wife to leave at home, I shlep it.
25. shlemiel
A clumsy, inept person, similar to a klutz (also a Yiddish word). The kind of person who always spills his soup.
26. schlock
Cheap, shoddy, or inferior, as in, “I don’t know why I bought this schlocky souvenir.”
27. shlimazel
Someone with constant bad luck. When the shlemiel spills his soup, he probably spills it on the shlimazel. Fans of the TV sitcom “Laverne and Shirley” remember these two words from the Yiddish-American hopscotch chant that opened each show.
28. shmendrik
A jerk, a stupid person, popularized in The Last Unicorn and Welcome Back Kotter.
29. shmaltzy
Excessively sentimental, gushing, flattering, over-the-top, corny. This word describes some of Hollywood’s most famous films. From shmaltz, which means chicken fat or grease.
30. shmooze
Chat, make small talk, converse about nothing in particular. But at Hollywood parties, guests often schmooze with people they want to impress.
31. schmuck
Often used as an insulting word for a self-made fool, but you shouldn’t use it in polite company at all, since it refers to male anatomy.
32. spiel
A long, involved sales pitch, as in, “I had to listen to his whole spiel before I found out what he really wanted.” From the German word for play.
33. shikse
A non-Jewish woman, all too often used derogatorily. It has the connotation of “young and beautiful,” so referring to a man’s Gentile wife or girlfriend as a shiksa implies that his primary attraction was her good looks. She is possibly blonde. A shagetz or sheygets means a non-Jewish boy, and has the connotation of a someone who is unruly, even violent.
34. shmutz
Or shmuts. Dirt - a little dirt, not serious grime. If a little boy has shmutz on his face, and he likely will, his mother will quickly wipe it off. It can also mean dirty language. It’s not nice to talk shmutz about shmutz. A current derivation, “schmitzig,” means a “thigamabob” or a “doodad,” but has nothing to do with filth.
35. shtick
Something you’re known for doing, an entertainer’s routine, an actor’s bit, stage business; a gimmick often done to draw attention to yourself.
36. tchatchke
Or tshatshke. Knick-knack, little toy, collectible or giftware. It also appears in sentences such as, “My brother divorced his wife for some little tchatchke.” You can figure that one out.
37. tsuris
Or tsores. Serious troubles, not minor annoyances. Plagues of lice, gnats, flies, locusts, hail, death… now, those were tsuris.
38. tuches
Rear end, bottom, backside, buttocks. In proper Yiddish, it’s spelled tuchis or tuches or tokhis, and was the origin of the American slang word tush.
39. yente
Female busybody or gossip. At one time, high-class parents gave this name to their girls (after all, it has the same root as “gentle”), but it gained the Yiddish meaning of “she-devil”. The matchmaker in “Fiddler on the Roof” was named Yente (and she certainly was a yente though maybe not very high-class), so many people mistakenly think that yente means matchmaker.
40. yiddisher kop
Smart person. Literally means “Jewish head.” I don’t want to know what goyisher kop means.
As in Hebrew, the ch or kh in Yiddish is a “voiceless fricative,” with a pronunciation between h and k. If you don’t know how to make that sound, pronounce it like an h. Pronouncing it like a k is goyish.>>
Personally, I recognized all but 3 or 4 of the words on this list! Most of them would be associated strongly with NYC and New Jersey and the rest of the upper East Coast, although the TV show "Laverne and Shirley", which featured "Schlemiel, Schlimazel" in the opening theme song, was set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, some of them, like schmooze, schmuck, nosh, spiel, schmalz, schlock, schtick, schlep, glitz, kosher, klutz, and chutzpah, are very widespread and we just think of them as plain English.
The English forum here is excellent, as it is most of the time. A lot of highly informative and interesting threads, but no draconian anti-fun police moderators. On the other hand, the language forum is a mess and is deteriorating at an unprecedented rate!