Up to Here

For some reason I’ve been thinking about ways to talk about having had enough of something. And not in a good way. I mean like when you want to stand up and shout “enough is enough” or in Hebrew, something that translates roughly into די!

די is a funny one because, as someone pointed out to me a few weeks ago, if you shout it at your kid in public in America you will likely find yourself arrested, or at least visited on occasion by a creepy lady from Social Services. In English we’d say “knock it off,” “cut it out” or “cool it” which all mean stop doing what you’re doing. But I was thinking about how there are so many Hebrew phrases that describe being tired of something or being emotionally worn down. There’s מיואש, גמורה, מחוק, שפוכה to name just a few. In English you say “sick and tired” which doesn’t mean you are ill or even sleepy, but just that you don’t have the emotional strength to deal with something anymore. And what’s funny is that I find myself resorting to Hebrew when I want to describe this state, because those Hebrew words just seem to do it so well. I wonder what that says about the mental state of our population. So without further ado, here’s a list of sick and tired phrases and words in English:

• I’ve had it up to here – this can come with a hand motion where you motion just above your head, as if you yourself are totally full of whatever it is that you’ve had enough of and just can’t take any more.
• Fed up – English being what it is, this, of course, has nothing to do with food. It means that you are tired of something and you can use it on its own “I am just fed up” and you can also specify what you’re tire of “I am fed up with your behavior.”
• Disenchanted – This means that you used to have good feelings about something, or believe in it, but now you don’t anymore. “I’ve become disenchanted with the shuk since my wallet was stolen there while I was buying olives.”
• Disgruntled – This means you’re really bitter about something and have trouble keeping it to yourself; you hear this word a lot in connection with people’s places of work. “The disgruntled employees gathered into the conference room to voice their concerns.”
• Jaded – Jaded is when you used to be able to think the best about someone or something, or see the good in them, but you’ve been exposed to too much and now you are much more cynical and can no longer expect the best or see the good in a situation. I haven’t found a translation for this word in Hebrew. I thought for a while that it was צבוע but that turns out only to mean hypocritical, which means you act one way and feel another. “She was so jaded after the fourth startup closed down, that she started packing her desk the minute she saw the email from the CEO.”

Me, on the other hand, I’m quite sure that next week’s tips will be more uplifting. There’s got to be some optimism coming our way!

Egg the Monkeys

My friend Dave is great at finding funny comics and passing them along; the one I usually like the best is called Pearls Before Swine because the artist, Stephan Pastis, pokes fun at language by using a strange-looking pig whose grasp of English is often entertaining. In one of my favorites, the pig mistakes the acronym e.g. for the word egg.

Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis

It may be unlikely for someone to imagine e.g. means egg, but it isn’t unusual to see people making mistakes when they use the acronym.
Knowing when to use both e.g. and i.e. can be confusing.

• e.g. is short for exempli gratia meaning ‘for the sake of example’ in Latin.
• i.e. is short for id est meaning ‘that is to say’ or ‘in other words’ in Latin; in Hebrew it’s זאת אומרת .

Because they stand for Latin words, they’re hard to remember (unless you speak Latin). There are lots of memory tricks for trying to remember what they mean – some people try to remember these terms by imagining that i.e. stands for in essence and e.g. stands for egg-sample.
It’s important to know that e.g. introduces an example (part of a longer list):

• Neta loves flowers, e.g. daisies, roses, cyclamen, and sunflowers.
  (Neta likes these flowers as well as other flowers.)
• David plays sports, e.g. basketball, tennis, football and hockey.
  (David plays these and other sports.)

i.e. introduces a further clarification (these are the only items in the list):

• Neta loves flowers, i.e. sunflowers.
  (These are the only flowers Neta likes.)
• David plays sports, i.e. basketball and tennis.
  (The only sports David plays are basketball and tennis.)

My best advice about i.e. and e.g.: avoid them.
According to the Microsoft Style Guide for Technical Publications:

• Instead of i.e. write ‘that is’
• Instead of e.g. write ‘for example’

That’s pretty good advice, unless you want to take your chances with the eggs.

Caring

 
I recently invited a friend and his family over for dinner and was rather shocked when, in response to my heartfelt invitation for delicious food, the friend said “I don’t care about coming to dinner.”
If you can imagine my shock, you probably don’t need this tip. And before you recommend that I quickly run out and make some new, more polite, friends, take a breath (like I did) and think about the translation.
In Hebrew, we have the wonderful phrase לא אכפת לי   and if you have any teenagers in the house like I do, you’ll definitely be familiar with the many faceted faces and shrugs that can go along with this loaded phrase.
And, in truth, my friend’s translation wasn’t really wrong, it was just misplaced. There are many ways to let someone know you don’t care in English—many of them pretty foul. So here are the (clean) phrases that can be associated with not caring in English and the proper ways they should be used:

• I don’t care, I couldn’t care less: This means that something is unimportant to you.
  Throwing your plastic bottles in the street is like saying I don’t care about the environment.
  Do you want pizza or pasta? I don’t care, either one would be fine.
  I couldn’t care less who finished the wine as long as there’s another bottle.
• I don’t care for: adding for after I don’t care changes the meaning. This means I don’t like.
  I don’t care for raw onions in my salad. I pick them out and leave them on the side of the plate.
  I’m leaving you, Martha, because I’ve realized that I don’t care for the perfume you wear.
• I don’t mind: this means something does not bother you.
  I don’t mind picking little Jimmy up after kickboxing practice, you picked up last week and besides, I have nothing better to do than drive around in circles picking up the kids.
  Do you mind passing me the water? No, I don’t mind at all – here’s the water.
  
  Now, there is one funny use of do you mind which is using it on its own to let someone know that they are doing something really annoying, and this is a big one used by teenagers.
  When I stick my head into my daughter’s room without knocking she might whine “Mom!!! Do you mind??!!”
  If someone you don’t know seems to be eavesdropping on your conversation at a restaurant, you can give them THE look and say “Do you mind??!!”
  It’s sort of an expression and sort of a question and it’s full of attitude so you might want to be careful who you say it to.

So I imagine my friend meant to say that he wouldn’t mind coming for dinner. Which may not be enthusiastic enough for me to ever invite him again, but it isn’t as bad as saying I don’t care.
My advice to you is that in English, unless you really feel strongly about something it’s always better not to let people know when you “couldn’t give a shit.”

Exaggeration

I just got back from a really long vacation with a lot of juicy stories. People are always accusing me of exaggerating. And though I won’t admit it to anyone, they’re probably right; I just like to think of it as embellishing for the sake of storytelling. Subtlety might be highly praised in other cultures, but us Americans, we like things louder and bigger and brighter, trust me on this – I was just at Disney World. And I’d argue that Israelis are just the same, only much louder… they just don’t like to admit it. That being said, the Hebrew word for exaggerate causes a lot of confusion for English speakers. In Hebrew, we’ve got the word להגזים  which can mean so many things that all have their own expression in English. So it often comes off as funny when a Hebrew speaker uses “exaggerate” as a translation into English. So here’s a list of situations in which you would use the Hebrew word להגזים  and what you should actually say in English.

·         You have over done it.
We say this in cases where you have done too much, usually in a rather negative way; it’s a statement of concern and consternation.
You have a cold and worked all day long. You are chubby and out-of-shape and jogged 10 KM. You are really in shape and jogged 50 KM on a snowy day in your gym shorts. You have really over done it.

·         You’ve gone overboard.
This one is very similar to the previous one. We say this when someone has done too much, but it’s perhaps a bit less harsh. You can say this to someone when you’re really pleased they have gone to a lot of trouble for you, in order to express that they didn’t really have to fuss quite as much.
You make a huge meal for someone expecting a sandwich, but who really wants a sandwich anyway? You’ve purchased three books for your friend’s birthday instead of one, but who doesn’t want three books? You’ve really gone overboard.

·         You have out done yourself.
We say this when you’ve done more than was expected of you, but this time in a positive manner; the speaker is very impressed with your efforts.
You were supposed to prepare dinner but you’ve made a six course meal that includes homemade pasta and crème brulle.  You usually straighten up the house on Friday but this time you also weeded the garden and ironed the drapes. Wow, you have really out done yourself.

·         You have gone too far.
This one is negative too. We use it when someone has crossed a line or behaved too badly or done something one too many times.
You insulted her mother, her daughter and her cousin, but then you insulted her dog. You brought over some clothes, took over his closet and left a toothbrush in his bathroom, but when you put pink sheets on his bed, he said that you had gone too far.

·         Over the top.
This one can be good or bad – it depends on the context. We use it for when something was a bit too much.
We knew he was crazy about her but a four carat diamond ring from Tiffany’s? That’s over the top. The wedding was just as extravagant – 800 people and live performances by Madonna, Sting and Michael Jackson back from the grave. It was totally over the top.

·         Blowing things out of proportion.
This is pretty self-explanatory. You use it when someone is making a bigger deal than necessary about something.
You refuse to ever talk to your neighbor again because his dog accidentally peed on your roses. You quit your job because you got a room with a really lousy view. Well, once again you are blowing things totally out of proportion.

I think I can go on like this for pages – almost every time someone translates להגזים as exaggerate I can think of a more fitting expression. Let’s start with these and feel free to let me know if you have more.

·         Exaggerate.
Ahhh, you knew I would get to it eventually – the one you feel most comfortable throwing around. So there are instances when you should use exaggerate – and they all have to do with overstating something.
When you say that everything in Michigan is covered in melted processed cheese except the breakfast cereal. If you describe the fall you took after flying through the air on skis as being deadly (ok, so you got snow up your shirt from your waist to your chin and the bruises to prove it). When you describe the tickets to Disney World as costing a fortune and the roller coaster at Universal as the scariest thing in the world. Well, I wouldn’t admit it in a public forum, but yes, those things are exaggerations. Except the cheese. They really do put it on everything.
Exaggerations? probably. More entertaining? Definitely!

Sick and tired

I don’t know what this winter has been like for you, but from my vantage point it loosely resembles a tissue box. That’s right, just because it’s been nice and warm out doesn’t seem to mean I was safe from the winter cold season, the flu seems to be everywhere.

Here are some words and phrases having to do with illness that might help you explain to your English speaking co-workers why you’re so slow to respond to their e-mail:

• Coming down with something: This means getting sick.
  I’m afraid I’m coming down with something and won’t be able to attend the meeting tonight.
• Under the weather: This means, in a word, sick.
   Sorry for the slow response, I’m a bit under the weather this week.
• Laid up : This means sick enough to be stuck in bed.
   I wasn’t able to answer all the e-mails piling up in my inbox since I was laid up with the flu all week.
• Sick as a dog: This means REALLY sick.
   Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, I have been sick as a dog for days.
•  Clean bill of health: This means you’re no longer sick.
  I thought I would miss the wedding but the doctor gave me a clean bill of health before the weekend.
• Ship shape:  This means feeling completely well, good as new.
  You’ll be in ship shape before you know it.
• Right as rain: Just like ship shape and good as new.
  I went to bed with a burning fever and woke up right as rain.
• God bless you: This is what you say when someone sneezes. You can shorten it to “bless you” if you’d rather avoid religion.
  But if you want to make sure your coworkers think you are polite, make sure you say it. Every time.
• White as a sheet: This is how you can describe a coworker who looks sickly pale. Don’t say “white as a wall.”
  I knew she was coming down with something when she showed up to the meeting looking white as a sheet.
• Catch your death: You might get sick.
  Put a coat on before you catch your death.
• Runny nose: I’m not going to describe this one, you can figure it out on your own, but suffice it to say that this is runny nose and not running nose.
  When she showed up at work with watery eyes, a runny nose and rosy cheeks we were afraid she had the flu.
• Burning up: To have a fever.
  You’re burning up. You should take something to bring that fever down.

 

So, I’m sorry the Tip Tippa has been sporadic lately, I have a cold that I can’ t seem to kick.  So I hope you’re not coming down with something, but if you’re under the weather, well, bless you.

Put-put for the fun of it…

There are endless idioms that make strange use of the word put. So many, in fact, that this will be part one of a two part post on Put. These idioms can either help you out or even get you in trouble, so it’s pretty important to know how to use them before you really put your foot in it.

• Put up with – to deal with or stand for something like לסבול
  The teacher said “I won’t put up with this kind of behavior in my classroom”
• Put down – this can either mean to insult or offend, in which case it can either be a verb phrase or a noun; or, in the context of animals, it is the way to say kill for the purpose of saving them pain
  Don’t put down your sister by telling her she’s lousy at math; it’s not good for her self confidence.
  When he told me I was a lousy swimmer it was a real put down.
  It was so sad when we had to put down our dog, but he was really suffering.
• Putting me on – to joke or kid
  I thought he was serious when he told me he was a professional puppeteer but it turns out he was just putting me on.
  I won the prize? Don’t put me on, be serious with me.
• Put something away – I know it sounds really strange, but this can mean to eat or drink.
  Boy, Ralf really can put away the burgers, that guy is a bottomless pit.
  I can put away a whole bottle of wine but don’t expect me to be on time for work the next morning.
  Woah, that guy can really put it away.
• Put a dent in – it comes from car speak but it can be used to refer to making progress in something big.
  She had been working for three hours and had hardly put a dent in her homework.
  How can you be done with lunch, you’ve hardly put a dent in that sandwich.

And put-put was just mean of me to include, because it’s pronounced to rhyme with cut-cut and has nothing at all to do with the word put, but actually is the way you say mini-golf in the Mid-West. Stay tuned for next week’s second installment of other useful Put idioms.

Put up or shut up

Another week, another opportunity to learn more English. But language is kind of like muscles. You can read about it all you want, but you won’t really make a difference if you don’t go to the gym. Maybe that metaphor didn’t work so well but what I’m trying to say is that if you don’t practice speaking English, you won’t really be able to make use of these things. When I started learning Hebrew someone told me that there’s a rule of three – you hear a word or expression once and you become familiar with it, you hear it a second time and you remember what it means and then the third time you use it yourself and then you own it. People have been asking my advice pretty frequently “how can I improve my English” and my answer is like a broken record: Talk. Ok, that’s a pretty short broken record and who the hell remembers what records are anyway? But you get the point. So now that I’ve lectured in my own best interest (everyone speaking English), here are the idioms I promised a few weeks ago. Let me know if you start to notice how frequently they’re used now that you recognize them… Hard put – this means to be in a difficult situation or struggle with something. You remember everything we did on the trip and I’d be hard put to even remember the name of the city we stayed in. I’ll be hard put to finish the proposal by the end of the week, but I’ll do the best I can. Put it past someone – this is particularly useful. It is something you say when you think someone is capable of something, not necessarily in a positive way. I wouldn’t put it past Marcy to forget our anniversary entirely. That Joe is such an overachiever, I wouldn’t put it past him to finish the proposal and make it on time to his son’s school play. Put one over – this means to get away with tricking someone. I signed up for the service but I have a bad feeling they’re trying to put one over on me. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on Sergeant Dickens. Put you out – to make you do too much or go out of your way. This is a great thing to say to Americans, it has everything to do with being polite about other people’s time and putting yourself in a position where you are asking for something, but in a way that appreciates other people’s effort. The closest translation might be רק אם  זה נוח לך I wouldn’t want to put you out, but if you’re making yourself a copy can you make an extra for me? It would be great if you could pick up Billy after baseball, but only if it wouldn’t put you out too much. If it wouldn’t put you out, can you swing by on your way home from work? Only if it wouldn’t put you out too much. One warning to the wise is that when using this you have to be careful put the word YOU between put and out – otherwise you will wind up saying put out, which is something else entirely. Put out – this means annoyed I have been really put out with Josh ever since he insulted my singing. The only thing you have to be careful about here is that put out has another meaning, but that kind of language is outside the scope of this post and you’ll have to look it up yourself. Suffice it to say that you’ll never need it at work. J Put a damper on – this is actually a great saying. It means to tone something down. Emily’s new roommate really puts a damper on all the fun at the weekly parties. Can I please ask you to put a damper on all that noise so we can get some sleep?

I don’t know about you, but that’s all the put idioms I can put up with for one night.

Condolences

My grandmother passed away last night. She was my last living grandparent and lived until she was 97 years old. She was a woman of few words, my grandmother, and unlike me didn’t really like to tell a story. But she did talk about what it was like to be a woman many years ago and how few options women had; and despite that, she was one of the most independent women I’ve met, living alone and driving herself around until she was 92. She collected teacups, made delicious cinnamon cookies, played a mean game of canasta and read every book she could get her hands on. Which is what I’ve been telling the well-wishers who have been calling and writing all day. And all day I’ve been translating between Hebrew to English and back again. So here’s a list of what you’re supposed to say to English speakers when someone dies. First rule is this: don’t say die or dead or croaked or kicked-the-bucket any other form of the definitive end-of-life. The “gentle” way to talk about death in English is to refer to a person’s passing or loss. I’m so sorry for your loss – this is pretty standard and pretty tame. You can say it to just about anyone in the extended family and it works well. If someone at work loses a family member (loses means death, not that someone wandered off at Costco and you can’t find them anywhere near the jumbo jars of Advil where you left them) you would do well to send this empty sentiment in an email. In general being really sorry is a good thing when it comes to death. You can just hold someone’s hand and say “I’m so sorry,” or send an email that says “I’m really sorry to hear about your uncle,” and you’re covered. My condolences – Condolence means sympathy, or sympathy with someone else’s sorrow (I thought that was empathy). So this is probably the closest you can get to the Hebrew משתתף בצערך which is actually pretty nice, but doesn’t really translate well – you can’t say “I participate in your sorrow.” Condolence is actually pretty cumbersome to use. You can basically only say it like a vague offering “my condolences,” unless you’re sending them through someone else, which works better “please send Paul my condolences.” May you be comforted with the mourners of Zion –Apparently, we Jews say this to each other. In my family we call it the “hukkum mukkum” because that’s what it sounds like people are saying. I’ve personally never really connected with this phrase on any level, and it seems ghastly long for something you need to say when you’re already feeling awkward, but in an email, well, knock yourself out.   The bottom line is that when your colleague tells you that the thing you’re waiting for is going to be late due to a death in the family, your email response has to acknowledge their grief in some way before dealing with the business at hand. I always go back to a previous boss who, when told that one of his employees was going to be late for work because of his grandfather’s funeral, responded in email with “ok.” Ouch. It doesn’t get a lot colder than that in Alaska. For my part, I’m going to make myself a cup of tea and look at some pictures of Grandma Jean. And if you’d like to participate in my sorrow, you’re welcome to stop by for a cinnamon cookie.

 

Who’s on first?



Who’s on first is probably the most famous Abbott and Costello skit, in which they joke about a baseball game full of people with names that are really confusing (Who, What and I Don’t Know).
But the word who’s is pretty confusing even without all the silly antics.

The thing is, an apostrophe sometimes works to indicate a contraction (two words combined into one, like doesn’t and aren’t) but most of the time it’s possessive, meaning that it shows that something belongs to someone or something. For example, Andy’s shoes means the shoes that belong to Andy. But in who’s, it gets all confusing.

Who’s basically only works as a contraction of who and is, or who and has:

• The guy who’s coming for dinner is bringing the wine.
• Amy, who’s been here before, knows we prefer red.

That seems pretty simple, until you remember that there’s also whose. Whose is the possessive of who:

• The guy whose shoes were left under the table at dinner came back to pick them up later. (they are his shoes)
• Whose book was published last month? (to whom did the book belong?)

And of course this is confusing because for most other words we use an apostrophe followed by an s to indicate possession. Unless you’re talking about a guy called Who, and we’re talking about something that belongs to him. But that’s unnecessarily confusing if you’re not writing a comedy skit in the 1930s.

Etc.

The truth is, even many native English speakers mess up their abbreviations, and etcetera is no exception.

We use the abbreviation etc. to mean “and the rest” from the Latin et cetera.

Here are some wrong examples of the use of the word etc.:

• She loves water sports, fishing, diving etc but doesn’t like to snorkel.
• The child loves to read, draw, paint, play, etc..
• Nate excelled at all sports, for example soccer, tennis, basketball, etc.

Here are the rules:

When using the abbreviation etc., we separate it from the last item in the list with a comma.
Etc. always ends with a period.
If etc. is the last word in a sentence, as it often is, do not add a double period.
It is also wrong to use etc. when describing an example (“for example,” or “including”) – once you have stated that the items in the list are a sampling of all the possibilities, it is obvious that there are more items that could be included.

Here are some examples of etc. used correctly:

• Nizan packed clothes, blankets, toiletries, etc. while Jean was responsible for preparing the food.
• Danny loved candy, gum, cookies, etc. He ate way too many sweets.
• Lucy loved green vegetables, including spinach, asparagus, broccoli and artichokes.
  (Note that there was no need to add “etc.” to this list, because “including” already lets the reader know that there are more items in the list.)