RivkahChaya, maybe you can answer a question for me.
In an early episode of All in the Family, Archie ’ s TV set conks out; he gets a repairman. He wants the set fixed right away, but the repairman is Orthodox Jewish and sundown Friday is approaching.
Archie can’t convince the guy to stay and fix the set, and makes a slur against Jews. The repairman says (approximately): “Sena leben en a hois mit a toizen Zimmers an boyek deeten in yeyde zimmer!”
Since it’s been years since I heard this I’m not sure I have it right, but I’d like to know what the English translation is. Archie didn’t know; the repairman said “believe me, I got even!”
You didn’t get it right-- maybe you can find it on youtube, or Hulu, or something. I think he’s basically telling him he can be happy in a home without a TV, but he can’t be happy in a home with a jackass. It sounds vaguely like something I’ve heard before, so it might actually be a Yiddish saying, with “TV,” subbed in for some older thing, and you didn’t get it quite right. I’m pretty sure, for example, that “zimmers,” is “zei mir,” and “sena” would be better rendered as “sineh.”
Oh, yeah; that’s a very common saying. I didn’t get that at all from what dougie_monty wrote. All I could guess was “There’s no suffering in a house without a TV, but I wouldn’t want to live with [insult] you.” I really had no idea what “boyek deeten” was, so I thought it was a bad word I hadn’t been taught.
It’s been a while. The word which I think translates as “headache” sounded much like “book Dietrich” to me. Besides, when I was keying in that post, a neighbor’s noisy dog was barking wildly, and distracting me; and my experience with other dialects of German influences me.
Just want to add for those playing along at home: as I suggested in the parenthesis, but am not positive (hence the parenthetical hedge), “bentsching” is transitive: " when do we bentsch Licht"/say the prayer of light (any ceremony where you light candles, come to think of it).
The intransitive word for pray/praying used in Yiddish or English, is “daven/davening.”
Take it away Rivka on etymology.
ETA: just found this “Jewish-English” glossaryon-line. Needless to say there are superb ones in print.
The strange-sounding title reflects the fact that Yinglish doesn’t cover all the loan words or concoctions in English. Besides Yiddish there is Hebrew, of course, bits of Slavic languages, and who knows what all.
Took me a moment.