Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Kvetch.
It's actually a synonym for "to complain." Never knew that.
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It's Yiddish, and it becomes part of your vocabulary if you live in NYC. Yiddish has marvelous invective.
Yiddish has sometimes been called the language of retail, because it has entered the retailing vocabulary. (Spend time working in retail, and you get
lots of excuse to use invective.) My SO once reported passing a couple of Indian shopkeepers chattering away at each other. What she heard was "Hindi Hindi Hindi
Schmuck! Hindi Hindi..." I assumed "schmuck" was a reference to their landlord. :-)
If you can find a copy, Leo Rosten's "The Joys of Yiddish" is immensely entertaining.
(I also once overheard a Latino in NYC asking an Indian "How you say "asshole" in Tamil?" Unfortunately, I
didn't overhear the answer.)
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Dennis