Kvetch Marketing

If you could learn any new language, what would it be?

My first choice would be Yiddish. Syriac is a close second (Syriously). Yiddish is very expressive and it's filled with delicious neurotic hints. Plus I already know Hebrew, so that helps. And there's the historic argument: Just three generations ago this was the language my family spoke.

But far more important than these trivial facts is the following Yiddish/English sentence I just created:

"Hey Shlemiel! Stop shmoozing with that shmaltzy Shmendrik's shikse. Her spiel is all shtick."

Case closed. I'm learning Yiddish.

Whoah! Wait just a minute.

I just thought of yet another reason: I could become the world expert in Yiddish marketing! Why have I never thought of this before? And to think that all this time I've been competing with thousands of other English language copywriters.

There are 215,000 Yiddish speaking Israelis out there who I should be selling shmaltz herring to.

I'll call my business "Kvetsh Marketing"

It's one of the great things about English: the plethora of foreign loan words. You can express nearly any feeling or emotion with the hundreds of "English" words which are ultimately taken from other cultures and languages.

Suprisingly, (or perhaps not) Yiddish provides a large number of these loan words to English.

I present you with The Yiddish Handbook, 40 words you should know from dailywritingtips.com. Click here for the guide. For a more complete list, check out the 'haimish' wikipedia.

A few of my personal favorites that I use regularly:

2) bissel - a little bit

11) klutz - clumsy person, literally "block of wood"

19) nosh - a light snack

Do these three words sum up my life? Quite possibly.