The Funniest Language

We Americans speak English, yes?
Well, more or less.
With a little bit of luck
a Yank will guess a lorry is a truck.
A loo is where the British do
number one and number two.
Most Americans, I assume,
do those things in a bathroom.
An ice lolly, flavored frozen water atop stick, will
be here in America a popsicle.
Yes, Americans find British
English funny.
But no language, for my money,
has words more funny than Yiddish!

A schlemiel farts and burps.
A schlemiel’s jaws’ll
not hold the soup he slurps.
It will spill on the unlucky schlimazel.
In case you didn’t know,
a schlemiel is also a shmo.

That stuff in your pipik,
yours and his –
some call it muh-muh,
some call it pfnerd,
neither of which, bubba,
is a Yiddish word.
But pipik, a belly-button, is!

Oy gavalt! Oy vey!
Things just aren’t going my way.
I confess,
things are a mess –
I am under stress.
What else can I say
but “Oy gavalt! or Oy vey!”?

A rag in Yiddish is a schmatah.
A Yiddish insult is to say,
“You look good today.
See, everybody’s staring.
It must be that they covet
that schmatah you are wearing.
Don’t you just love it!”
But if you do say such a thing, you gotta
be ready either to apologize
or to receive blackened eyes.

Calling someone a shmuck
is like calling him a dork –
there is a penile connotation.
With a little bit of luck,
you will not be poked with a fork.
nor suffer worse forms of immolation.

A yenta is a shrew, did
you not know?
A yekl is stupid.
Gelt is money – loot!
A fresser really gulps food down.
A nafka is a prostitute.
And a letz is a funnyman, a clown –
ho, ho, ho.

A mensch has noble character.
On the other hand, a schlub is gauche in
every way. A schmendrick is a no-account.
Poor fellow! No amount
of schooling will make him any other way.
If you want these words there at your
fingertips, don’t be skittish –
get in motion, go buy Leo Rosten’s Joys of Yiddish.
Then you too can say –
with conviction –
in your improved Yiddish diction,
gehe avec, oy gavalt, and oy vay.

raggindragon