MISSING WORDS.

Comments

1. Marc André Bélanger says

   July 11, 2005 at 11:59 am

   I actually have the same problem in English and French and sometime end up borrowing the word from one to the other, or making up something similar. One word I wish existed in French is “oblivious” (and the related “oubliviousness”). We’ve got “inconscient” but it doesn’t convey the full extent of the English word. (Somehow “oblivieux” and “obliviété” don’t seem to be caching on…
   Of course, I always prefer to find a native equivalent, but it’s not always possible, is it.
2. Michael Farris says

   July 11, 2005 at 12:30 pm

   More than particular words, I really miss the Slavic dimunitives (in all their untranslatable many shaded glory) in English, a pathetic language when it comes to diminutives. With (a very few) Polish people I just import them into English, but it’s not an option most of the time.
3. anders says

   July 11, 2005 at 12:35 pm

   I don’t miss an equivalent of ‘mind’ in Swedish. I rather would have writers of English to be more precise. To explain the fuzzy concept of ‘mind’, my 1000 page E-Sw dictionary uses ONE PAGE for that word only.
   To me, ‘mind’ qualifies for my list of words that I find difficult to translate because of their too wide meanings. On that list, I include for example the related terms ‘item’ and ‘assembly’. An ass’y might be made up of items, etc., but it’s a real pain to translate those items into colloquial-sounding Swedish, and I’m no proctologist.
   My Russian is not much better than my non-existent Modern Hebrew, but I get the feeling that the stam case resembles Chinese jiù. That’s sometimes used more or less as a filler, and often, the best way is to leave it untranslated, and in some cases I think it corresponds nicely to English ‘just’, ‘then’, ‘xactly’, …
4. Saif says

   July 11, 2005 at 12:41 pm

   The Welsh use ‘well’ a lot; and Indian subcontinentals by analogy ‘vail’.
   I’ve also heard Finnish speakers slipping in ‘[ja], just det’ constantly.
5. language hat says

   July 11, 2005 at 12:48 pm

   I don’t miss an equivalent of ‘mind’ in Swedish. I rather would have writers of English to be more precise.
   Um, you’re surely not under the impression that aside from this, all words in all languages are “precise”? We humans are not precise, logical beings, which is why all languages are full of vague, hard-to-translate words and the many proposed “logical languages” have never caught on and never will. I suspect you have a problem with mind mainly because it’s not native to you. I’ll bet there are equally problematic (from a logical point of view) words in Swedish that seem perfectly natural, in fact indispensible, to you.
6. Chris Waigl says

   July 11, 2005 at 1:11 pm

   This happens constantly to me, but I tend to forget for which words. Just a minute ago I was grasping for an English equivalent of French tardif (“belated” didn’t work in the context). And the other day I spent a quarter of an hour explaining the concept of German Torschlusspanik to a bilingual crowd.
7. Wayne Leman says

   July 11, 2005 at 1:16 pm

   Wonderful topic, lexical lacunae! We discussed it recently on the Lexicography email list:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/
   There is a mirror of the list messages on the Linguist List site:
   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lexicography.html
8. Justin says

   July 11, 2005 at 1:33 pm

   I often miss the other Hebrew word usually mentioned in the same breath as stam: davka.
   This word comes ultimately from Aramaic, and was originally popularized by Yiddish. It has a wide range of meanings (e.g. “on purpose”, “for spite”) but the one that I need it for is “because the world is out to get me, dammit!” For example: “My car’s been making funny noises all day, but when I bring it in to the mechanic, davka it works just fine!” or “I have been wallowing in unrequited love for Jenny for years. And now that I’m dating someone else, davka, she becomes interested in me!”
   I suppose the nearest English equivalent is “ironically.”
9. Joe says

   July 11, 2005 at 2:19 pm

   That “davka” seems pretty close to “ironic”.
   Of course in the Alanis Morrisette sense, no the O. Henry sense.
10. SN says

    July 11, 2005 at 2:25 pm

    “I suspect you have a problem with mind mainly because it’s not native to you.”
    I don’t think so, actually. I’ve got the very same problem translating “mind”, “assembly” and the like to dutch and danish.
    Those terms cover way too many concepts.
    Especially in more technical texts “assembly” and “item” are barely more than just another way of saying “thingamabob”.
    Same goes for “mind”: often it is simply impossible to guess from context what kind of mind the writer had in mind.
11. language hat says

    July 11, 2005 at 3:10 pm

    But the fact that it’s hard to translate doesn’t mean it’s somehow “bad.” I like words that require a page of a bilingual dictionary to deal with. If all words were monovalent and easily translatable, how boring languages would be!
12. Douglas Davidson says

    July 11, 2005 at 3:42 pm

    Ironically enough, the natural English equivalent for davka as used above would be ‘naturally’. My car’s been making funny noises all day, but when I bring it in to the mechanic, naturally it works just fine…
13. Alex says

    July 11, 2005 at 5:15 pm

    Isn’t the meaning of ведь captured well by the conjunction for? You’ve got both the property of introducing an explanation and the vaguely archaic connotations (unless it’s seen a revival in recent times, ведь for me always carries the air of the folk tale).
14. Margaret S. says

    July 11, 2005 at 6:52 pm

    How would you say “quedarse con las ganas” in English? I can express it in a very literal, clumsy way as “stuck with only the desire,” but I can’t think of anything better. It refers to when you don’t partake of something delicious (literally or figuratively) either because you can’t, or because you decide, for whatever reason, to deny yourself.
15. Antonios says

    July 11, 2005 at 7:53 pm

    Being able to turn an adjective into a person is something English sorely misses. Funes, El Memorioso and Funes, the Memorious is as close to a match as English can get.
    And παρέα (parea) is another word I struggle to translate. It’s a friendly group of people that come together for a cheeky laugh, kind of.
    And já and ya in portuguese and spanish respectively are fantastic words that I’m hoping will enter the English language via the Hispanic community of the USA.
16. kattullus says

    July 11, 2005 at 7:56 pm

    There’s an Icelandic verb, “nenna”, that’s culturally significant and important that’s near impossible to translate properly. The closest I’ve ever come is to say “I know it’s mildly disagreeable but could you be bothered to do [something] for me”, but that doesn’t quite catch it. Used all the freaking time. There are a few other words that also resist translation, but “nenna” is the one that I find myself wanting to use the most.
    It’s kind of weird when the brain does that.
17. kattullus says

    July 11, 2005 at 7:59 pm

    By “that”, I mean when the brain finds a concept it wishes to express and can only think of it in one language, but not in another.
18. Antonios says

    July 11, 2005 at 8:40 pm

    And kattullus, your use of the “that” reminds me of my favourite language related zen game.
    In Greek, there is no this and that. There is only a thing, called αυτό, so that everything is an αυτό. This and that just don’t exist as separate demonstrative nouns in Greek, and so thinking of everything as an αυτό whilst at the same time thinking that they could be this or that gets me feeling all weird and I head off to one-hand-clapping land.
19. John Emerson says

    July 11, 2005 at 8:47 pm

    What I think is a Chinese word which I see showing up in English is “gah”. Probably from kung fu movies. It’s an introductory interjection. I’ve also seen “neh”.
    I have read that ja / ya came into Spanish from Arabic. It seems to fill a lot of the aspectual functions: already, still, yet, etc.
20. John Emerson says

    July 11, 2005 at 8:49 pm

    “To me, ‘mind’ qualifies for my list of words that I find difficult to translate because of their too wide meanings.”
    Hm. Maybe “Philosophy of Mind” is a big boondoggle, the way analytic philosophers claim “Philosophy of Being” is.
21. language hat says

    July 11, 2005 at 8:52 pm

    Margaret: “it wasn’t to be” (literary) or “I/you/he never got to [do whatever]” (colloquial) are two possibilities. Of course, different contexts call for different translations.
22. anders says

    July 12, 2005 at 4:23 am

    One thing I forgot to mention was that I’m reminded of the “most untranslatable words”, from June last year, discussed here and everywhere http://languagehat.com/archives/001416.php
23. MMcM says

    July 12, 2005 at 1:44 pm

    Lots of They have a Word for it lists seem to focus on single words for very specific concepts. Maybe because the exoticism is more evident. I don’t know how much real insight into the speakers’ culture one gets.
    Equally interesting are discourse elements, of which a couple have come up already here. Y’all is one, although I say ‘you guys’ myself. n’est-ce pas / nicht wahr / não é / so desu ka is another. An English dialect (parodied by the Bhangra wannabes on Goodness Gracious Me) has ‘innit’. Des von Bladet’s online idiolect uses ‘isn’t it’.
    For me, generalizations seem more profound. Again this has come up here already. For example, a word for “a lemon or a lime (but not an orange or a grapefruit)”. Or “a dog or a wolf”. Color words, pace Berlin and Kay. A word for “red or pink”. Or “green or blue”. Eskimos could have this meme about how Whites have a single word (!) that means [newly fallen snow] or [crusty snow] or even [dusting of snow] but not [sleet] or [hail].
24. John Emerson says

    July 12, 2005 at 6:08 pm

    From Finnish:
    “Why lose time and energy saying ‘the committee that takes care of negotiations concerning the truce’ when you can use a simple little word like ‘aseleponeuvottelutoimikunta?'”
    http://idiocentrism.com/squib.finn2.htm
25. Margaret S. says

    July 12, 2005 at 8:29 pm

    Great discussion! Languagehat, responding to your response to my comment, your suggestions help to explain the expression, but I’m not sure that they cover what we’d say. Confronted with the situations where the Spanish speaker says “Así que me tuve que quedar con las ganas”, we would probably shape the thought in a different way, “Well, anyway, I’m on a diet.” “Well, anyway, I’m married.” “Well, anyway I only had $10 on me.”
26. Tatyana says

    July 12, 2005 at 9:06 pm

    Agree with Michael Farris, dimunitive suffixes describe situation/object/attitude instantly and economically; too bad English, being elegantly economical language, lacks them.
    Looks like it has been a popular regret (via Blogchik, Russophile Bloglet)
    There is a dialectical South-Ukrainian word (or rather exclamation?) that is very inclusive : “tju!”. Expresses wide variety in a sentence – from “really?” to “look who’s talking”; generally – disbelief to contempt. Russian and Western-Ukranian (and obviously, English), sadly, have nothing to match it.
    I can always spot fellow – southerner by it.
27. vanya says

    July 13, 2005 at 3:58 pm

    John,
    I believe Spanish ya is actually a fine old Latin word descended from iam (and even Cicero probably dropped the final m when he was speaking). It also exists in Italian – già.
28. languagehat says

    April 22, 2020 at 9:09 am

    Balashon on stam. (Unfortunately, the post ends with this bit of nonsense: “And the most fascinating bit of trivia? The English word stem – as in ‘to stem the tide’ – actually derives directly from the Hebrew satam!” The hell it does, it’s from the noun meaning “The curved upright timber or piece of metal at the bow of a vessel, into which the planks of the bow are scarfed; the prow, bows, or the whole forepart of a vessel.” Why would somebody who cares about etymology fall for such obvious bullshit?) (That whole parenthesis results from my careless misreading of the post, which follows it with its own “stam” = j/k. Thanks, Owlmirror!)
29. David Marjanović says

    April 22, 2020 at 9:49 am

    Ah, so an actual stem – a tree trunk.

    Edit: such a detailed story isn’t even necessary. Here’s German stemmen with its Germanic and IE pedigree; sich gegen die Flut stemmen isn’t a fixed idiom, but would be immediately understandable and could already have been coined any number of times independently.

    Further edit: gegen flut stemmen gives 97,700 ghits, the first page involving metaphorical efforts against literal floods.
30. languagehat says

    April 22, 2020 at 9:56 am

    Yup. The OED says:

    The nautical use occurs (sometimes with differentiated form) in several Germanic languages: Old Frisian stevene (West Frisian stjûwn, North Frisian stēven), Dutch, Low German steven (whence German steven; Middle Dutch had also steve), Old Saxon stamn, Old Norse stafn, stamn (masculine) (whence Middle English stam n.1), Danish stavn, also (? from Low German) stævn, Swedish (? from Low German) stäf.
31. David Marjanović says

    April 22, 2020 at 10:11 am

    Vor- und Achtersteven. I’d never have guessed that that’s another mn/vn thing.
32. John Cowan says

    April 22, 2020 at 11:03 am

    I believe it is that old familiar thing, certainly well-known to thee and me: “Post in haste, repent at leisure.”

    But as for stem (the tide), Wikt gives a different story: a ME-age borrowing from ON stemmen ‘stop, dam (up)’, which obviously shares a root with the other stem, but is otherwise confined to North Germanic languages.
33. languagehat says

    April 22, 2020 at 11:12 am

    It’s one thing to make a mistake, that can happen to anyone. But that’s not simply a mistake, it’s a mind-bogglingly idiotic mistake, the kind you could make only if you knew nothing whatever about etymology. Which is, as I say, odd for an etymology blog.

    I M dum; see Owlmirror’s comment below.
34. Owlmirror says

    April 22, 2020 at 11:42 am

    @languagehat:

    Balashon on stam. (Unfortunately, the post ends with this bit of nonsense: “And the most fascinating bit of trivia? The English word stem – as in ‘to stem the tide’ – actually derives directly from the Hebrew satam!”

    The font on the site is rather small, so maybe you missed the last line, which comes right after that. That line’s context is explained earlier in the post.

    Hameyvin yavin . . .
35. languagehat says

    April 22, 2020 at 11:46 am

    Argh, I totally missed that, and I take it all back! Thanks.
36. Owlmirror says

    April 22, 2020 at 11:55 am

    Long, long ago, I saw an Israeli comedian whose routine included the use of “staaaaaaam”, with overemphasized long, drawn out, somewhat singsong tones, and amused sly smugness. I cannot remember the comedian’s name, but on seeing the word in the post shown that way, I immediately “heard” his voice saying the word.

    Thinking about it some more, I perhaps recall a couple of parts of his routine that were linguistically relevant:

    1) The use of “la” to express disbelief. “La”, in Arabic, of course means “no”. But as he explained it, if someone tries to prank you, and you are skeptical, you can say “la” — not drawn out, but in tones of amused disbelief, to demonstrate that you reject what is being claimed.

    2) How idiomatic phrases make no sense in translation. The only one I recall is “lama mi ata?” — literally “why who are you?”, but the actual sense is “who do you think you are?” (which of course makes no sense translated literally either).
37. D.O. says

    April 22, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    2) But it translates great into Russian “Ты кто такой? – А ты кто такой?”
38. David Eddyshaw says

    April 22, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    Maybe as translated out of Russian in the first place?
39. Owlmirror says

    April 23, 2020 at 2:58 am

    I didn’t find anything (yet) on “lama mi ata”, but I did find a balashon post about another Hebrew idiom, “ma pitom”. Since the phrase is analyzed as being a calque from Russian via Yiddish, and Russian is practically the second official Hattic language, I offer relevant quote from the post and from the comments thereunto.

    Literally, ma means “what”, and pitom means “suddenly”. However, “what suddenly” doesn’t make much sense (in English or in Hebrew), so we need to find the origin of the phrase. Rosenthal writes that it is a loan translation (calque) from the Yiddish vos plutsem וואס פלוצעם and the Russian chego vdrug. I asked some Russian speaking friends about chego vdrug, and they told me that:

    The best way to translate this phrase is probably “why all of a sudden” or “why now”
    chego in this case is why
    vdrug: at this moment, suddenly

    So an original meaning of “Why suddenly” makes more sense. As far as the Yiddish, vos means “what” and plutsem is “suddenly”. (It comes from the German plötzlich, meaning “sudden, abrupt” which derives from platzen, “burst”. This is the source of the Yiddish word plotz – “to burst, explode – from strong emotion.) However, the meaning is clearly, “why suddenly”.

    But! The comments offer some quibbles (I selected a few that seemed relevant, and took the liberty of editing them a bit for clarity and link-fixing):

    Eli
    seems like the Yiddish expression is a back translation from Hebrew. At least I’ve never heard it and the guys here either.
    Google gives just one relevant hit. I wonder what Rosenthal’s sources might be. By contrast the Russian “chego vdrug?” or “chego eto vdrug?” is pretty common (but being somewhat rough they are not nearly as common as מה פתאום).
    Sunday, March 01, 2009, 12:37:16 PM

    Philip
    Generally you do a great job, but here your Russian (and possibly your Hebrew) is quite a bit off the mark. Pozvol’te — permit me: “Chto v drug” — “How/Whazzis, all of a sudden? ” “Chego” is a genitive case formation from the word (nominative) “Chto” — meaning, exactly, “what”. More properly, “Chto v drug” would be the Russian expression if it were to be on the lips of Russians. “Chego” is a rusticism, used vulgarly in place of Chto on occasion (often by country-folk in the big city), due to the partitive use which occasionally accrues to the genitive case (cf. French “je voudrait du the”, “I would like some tea”, or even Hebrew “ten li min ha-adom ha-zzeh”). But you will never hear either “Chto v drug” or “Chego v drug” in the mouth of native Russian speakers — it is purely Odessit, from Odessa , where the form is “Cho v drug”, or “Sho v drug”. Cho or sho (the latter more, er, Odessa) can sometimes be confused with the genitive, as the g in chego is always pronounced like a v in Russian, and in Russian the v has a tendency to be pronounced between the two lips and phonetically elides – Chevo –> Chewo –> almost Cho. But Cho is actually nominative, and it means “What”, not “Why”. As I mentioned Cho v Drug is purely Odessa . Like half the slang of Odessa , it is Jewish Russian. So, what we most likely have here is a Yiddush calque, nothing more, nothing less. Now, there is a fair old amount of Yiddush or Hebrew in real Russian (slang generally) which passed through the port of Odessa most likely through the Jewish criminal jargon there (cf. Isaac Babel and his Odessa tales). The following is just a small list with the Russian meanings:
    Csiva – Document
    Pots – Just like in Hebrew
    Khokhma – A wiseacre joke
    Shmon – a police search (reportedly, cells were turned over during 8:00 am lineup, although this may be folk etymology)
    There are many more. But we should not be satisfied to go to the Yiddush, as you have done. Because… and here is, I believe, the crux of the matter, the Yiddush vos plutsem is itself most likely a derived usage,… from the Hebrew! Now “Ma”, in Hebrew, has several meanings… the most common meaning, what. But there is the common Semitic* device of the “ma” of surprise —- “ma tovu ohaleykha Ya’aqov” — “How well were your tents done up, Jake” (sorry). Here, the “ma” means “how”. And this “ma” of surprise shows up in another place. The Haggada, where in the “four questions” we would actually have 5, except the first one doesn’t count… “ma nishtanah ha-llayla ha-zzeh”… “How different this night is from all the other nights!”. So now we have a background for Yiddush to use the “ma” of surprise, and in what better context than a Hebraic construction
    … “ma pit’om” —- “How sudden!”. To translate this as “why”? Ma pit’om! *I *think* that this is attested to in the Arabic, as well (unfortunately I have been living in Moscow for 10 yrs and my Wright is still in London, but you can find it there, probably right after the Ma al-Hijaziy, if memory serves — can anybody out there say?).
    Monday, March 02, 2009, 7:05:50 PM

    Moshe
    I think that Philip is thinking of what the Arabic grammarians call “ma il-ta`ajjubiyya” (Wright I 98). The use of this “ma” in Arabic is limited to very specific constructions, and is interpreted by the native grammarians as either a 3m.s. af’ala perfect or the elative (af`ala). It’s also worth pointing out that the interrogative mah is not regarded as common Semitic, since it is not found in Akkadian or Ethiopic, both of which use forms based upon *min(t)-. Interrogative mah is now seen as characterising proto-Central Semitic. However, Early Akkadian does occasionally use ma in expressions of doubt or disbelief. See John Huehnergard, ‘Features of Central Semitic. Biblical and oriental essays in memory of William L.Moran’, ed. by Agustinus Gianto, 2008,
    Friday, March 06, 2009, 10:55:09 AM

    Dave (Balashon)
    I sent an email about this question to Keren Dubnov of the Hebrew Language Academy, who’s also an expert in Russian and Yiddish. Here’s her reply:
    —-
    ליידיש ולרוסית ואחיותיה דיאלקטים וסוציאולקטים רבים. בעידן “התחייה” של העברית השפיעו מאוד ניבים מערביים של רוסית ואוקריינית. הם שונים מןו הרוסית המדוברת המודרנית. נראה לי שבעיקרון הטענה צודקת: השיח הסלווי והיידי אזורי הוא ההשראה ליצירת “מה פתאום”. בכל זאת ברוסית מודרנית מצוי
    shto/chevo-eto vdrud ,
    אבל נפוץ יותר באותו עניין
    s kakoj stati.
    —-
    (My translation): Yiddish, Russian and the related languages have many dialects and socialects [dialect determined by social factors rather than by geography]. In the renaissance of Modern Hebrew, there was much influence of phrases from Western Russian and Ukraninan. They are different from those in Modern Russian spoken today. It appears to me that the claim is correct: The Slavic and local Yiddish expression were the inspiration for “ma pitom”. In any case, in spoken Russian we find “shto/chevo-eto vdrud”, but it is more common to find “s kakoj stati”.
    —-
    As I’m not a speaker of Russian or Yiddish, I think I’ll rely on Dr. Dubnov. In any case, it would be interesting to see early examples of the phrase in both its Hebrew and Yiddish forms.
    Friday, March 06, 2009, 11:33:21 AM

    Philip
    I fear that Dr. Dubnov is not correct, first in that s kakoy stati has a rather different implication, more like the Hebrew “minayin lakh” only much much more coarse, something like the English “where do you get off with that”? Close, but not the elative surprise of mah pit’om or sho vdrug! Moshe hit the nail on the head — the Arabic parallel to this mah of surprise was indeed the ma il-ta`jubiyya. I really do appreciate your finding it — it is like a visit from an old friend. Ma ahsanta! 🙂
    Friday, March 06, 2009, 7:32:28 PM

    Milhouse
    “Suddenly” in Yiddish is פלוצלינג; I’ve never heard of פלוצים. But the expression I hear all the time is וואָס מיטאַמאָל.
    Thursday, December 23, 2010, 5:08:50 PM

    Zackary Sholem Berger
    פלוצעם and פלוצלינג are variants. However, I have never heard וואס פלוצעם from the mouth of a native Yiddish speaker – not sure how much that means. Stutchkoff does not list the phrase in his thesaurus which is pretty
    comprehensive (try searching for “plutsem” at this link)
40. languagehat says

    April 23, 2020 at 9:01 am

    Very interesting, thanks for that! (Also, it was smart of you to leave a placeholder comment with a link to a pastebin file of the comment you wanted to post; it made my life easier. I don’t know what Akismet did with it, but it wasn’t in either the moderation queue or the spam file.)
41. David Marjanović says

    April 23, 2020 at 1:09 pm

    Akismet probably nuked it from orbit, because that’s the only way to be sure a long comment with lots of non-Latin letters and three links doesn’t see the light of day – although it isn’t that long, there isn’t that much non-Latin text at least proportionally, and three links are well below the limit…
42. D.O. says

    April 23, 2020 at 2:29 pm

    That’s quite a discussion. I have no idea who stole “why now?” from whom, but Philip is quite wrong to confine “chego” in the sense “why” to Odessa. Maybe it’s where it came from, but it is now a common Russian word (of sub-literary/colorful variety) in addition to perfectly standard genetive of “chto”.
43. Hans says

    April 26, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    I can also confirm that I have heard chego “why” as well as chego eto vdrug, chego on /ona vdrug etc. many times from Russian speakers, as far away from Odessa as Almaty and Tashkent.
44. Owlmirror says

    January 17, 2021 at 10:44 am

    Regarding this bit about plutsling/plutsem:

    פלוצעם and פלוצלינג are variants. However, I have never heard וואס פלוצעם from the mouth of a native Yiddish speaker – not sure how much that means. Stutchkoff does not list the phrase in his thesaurus which is pretty comprehensive (try searching for “plutsem” at this link)

    Dovid Katz has an Atlas of Northeastern Yiddish; one of the maps is for ‘suddenly’, which includes variants in Lithuanian Yiddish of:

    plútsling
    plútsing
    plútslung
    plútsung
    plútsundik
    plútsim
    plútslim
    plútslakh, plútsləkh
    plétsləkh
    plútsnik
    plítsling
    pícling
    plítslang
    plítslakh

    That’s a heck of a lot of variants for one word…
45. languagehat says

    January 17, 2021 at 11:17 am

    It warms my heart to see them — long live variation!
46. John Cowan says

    January 19, 2021 at 12:30 pm

    The best way to translate this phrase is probably “why all of a sudden”

    I’m reasonably sure that Why all of a sudden? is itself a Yiddishism in English, though I can find no direct evidence. Typical translations of it are just ‘Why suddenly?’, like ¿Por qué de repente? and Warum plötzlich?. But Why all of a sudden? has that fuck-you attitude towards the host language that Wexler discusses so eloquently when he’s not banging on about how Yiddish is essentially Polish with German words (though of course there is some truth in this) spoken by a bunch of Iranian descendants with no connection to Palestine. And while I’m at it, here is Alexis Manaster Ramer in 2014, damning the state of Yiddish linguistics with his characteristic over-the-top eloquence well familiar to sci.lang regulars back in the day:

    When you read Mein Kampf, you do not respond by saying Prof. Hitler has made a cogent and important case for Jews being vermin who should be exterminated, however on p. 250 we note that his discussion of whatever the fuck it is is perhaps not documented sufficiently, and we might consider the alternative theory that they are merely scum who deserve to be put to slave labor or slowly starved to death, although of course in light of his powerful arguments passim, very likely the former hypothesis is correct after all. This is the kind of mealy-mouthed and indeed respectful reaction that even the most irresponsible and incompetent work in this field gets. And this makes the situation much worse than if blatant error and deliberate misrepresentation were simply ignored the way scientists often simply disregard pseudo-science.
47. Owlmirror says

    January 19, 2021 at 1:45 pm

    I’m struggling to parse the blockquoted text — should the part from “Prof. Hitler” to “after all” be in quotes or italicized or a sub-blockquote or something?
48. PlasticPaddy says

    January 19, 2021 at 4:04 pm

    @jc
    Re phrase “all of a sudden”
    T of the S, Act I Scene 1
    Tranio. I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible
    That love should of a sudden take such hold?

    Tit. Andr., Act I Scene 1
    Marcus Andronicus. My lord, to step out of these dreary dumps,
    How comes it that the subtle Queen of Goths
    Is of a sudden thus advanced in Rome?
49. John Emerson says

    January 19, 2021 at 4:36 pm

    “All of a sudden” seems perfectly colloquial to me, and it could only have become so via movies if it’s a Yiddishism, because Jews are few and localized in the Upper Midwest.
50. Y says

    January 20, 2021 at 12:20 am

    Hebrew ?מָה פִּתְאֹם ma pit’om? lit. ‘what all of a sudden?’ is another reflection of this Yiddishism, expressing surprise with some disapproval, say if a friend, chatting with you on a winter evening, uncharacteristically suggests you go out for ice cream. Or if a 40-year old is asked at a store whether they are eligible for a senior discount. Maybe not so much if they are asked if they are eligible for a youth discount.
51. John Cowan says

    January 20, 2021 at 1:04 pm

    I’m struggling to parse the blockquoted text — should the part from “Prof. Hitler” to “after all” be in quotes or italicized or a sub-blockquote or something?

    No, because it is intended as indirect discourse. The formal problem is that “however” is not a strong enough connective to bind what follows it into the indirect discourse preceding it: the clauses it separates are still independent clauses. This version adds the implicit “that” and restructures everything following it to be clauses that depend on “his discussion […] is not documented sufficiently”, the one and only independent clause:

    When you read Mein Kampf, you do not respond by saying that while Prof. Hitler has made a cogent and important case for Jews being vermin who should be exterminated, on p. 250 we note that his discussion of whatever the fuck it is is perhaps not documented sufficiently, which might encourage us to consider the alternative theory that they are merely scum who deserve to be put to slave labor or slowly starved to death, although of course in light of his powerful arguments passim, very likely the former hypothesis is correct after all.

    However, I would say that Manaster Ramer’s original version is rhetorically more powerful, especially if spoken aloud, precisely because of its grammatical informality. Similarly, Muhammad Ali’s lesser-known remark about the Vietnam War and conscription, “I’m not gonna help nobody get something my negroes don’t have”, carried much more weight in a public context than it would if Ali had said “I’m not going to help anyone …” precisely because of its AAVE grammar.
52. David Eddyshaw says

    January 20, 2021 at 1:17 pm

    While the context perhaps goes some way to explaining (if not excusing) the comparison, on the face of it this looks like a sort of ne plus ultra of Godwin’s Law.