Genug Shoyn

Enough Already! 

    In clear violation of the statements I made in the "About This Blog" section of this blog, I was about to post about subjects relating to current affairs rather than obscure older ones. The current subjects you will be aware of and they mostly relate to those who feel they have been short-changed or feel left out, or who feel they are victims. Note the words 'feel' since most of these topics have to do with identity and feelings rather than ideology or thinking. When I recently had nerve enough to try and look at the news, these same subjects were to be seen across all channels, being discussed by the same people, when they weren't discussing Trump or Trudeau. As a verbal gesture of exasperation, I probably gasped out loud what I was thinking, which was "Enough Already." It is derived from the Yiddish expression above which, of course, make sense since the Jews have had many reasons to feel exasperated and and not a few of them were real victims.

  Given that you also have likely had enough of these subjects and that I implied I was not going to post about them, I will now do so and justify it by noting historical examples of such frustrations and by letting others finish most of this post. Also explained is how a barely unilingual person such as myself came to know the Yiddish words, 'genug shoyn'.

   They were found in a column by William Safire written almost thirty-five years ago when people had already had enough already. It was in a newspaper back when there were more of them and there was more in them. The column was about language and usually funny as well as scholarly. The question he addressed was whether there should be a comma in the phrase! Here is a portion of it and you will see that our Globe and Mail has a mention:

" 'What red-blooded American hasn't surveyed the muck and mire of our national politics,'' writes Mark Jurkowitz of The Boston Globe, ''and said, 'Enough, already'?''

   ''Time magazine reports that Clinton's woes have left U.S. foreign policy adrift,'' writes The Guardian of London, ''though Garrison Keillor says, 'Enough already!'
   ''Howard Fineman of Newsweek asks, ''Is there any way out of this mess?'' leading to an inch-high, 102-point, block-letter headline: ''enough already.''

   The stylistic issue raised is: Should there be a comma between the first and second words of this increasingly important phrase? The publication that pioneered in its popularization is The Toronto Globe and Mail; of the 19,000 entries in the Dow Jones database, the first 22 uses (from 1977 to 1983) were in that newspaper. According to Warren Clements, style editor, ''We abandoned the comma in 1979 because enough already was considered one of those expressions that is almost one word. It rips rollingly off the tongue; the comma would slow it down.'' Adds Michael Kesterton of that newspaper, ''I know it's a Yiddishism, but it just fits the Canadian soul -- you know, 'I've had it and I'm not gonna take it anymore.'"

   The origin is the Yiddish genug shoyn, literally ''enough already.'' It is part of an array of phrases using shoyn for emphasis, from the similar gut shoyn, ''All right already!'' in the sense of ''Stop bugging me,'' to shvayg shtil shoyn, ''Shut up already!'' one calibration more irritated than genug shoyn.

   ''This use of already began to appear early in the century,'' says Sol Steinmetz, the lexicographer who has taken the place of the late Leo Rosten as my primary Yiddish adviser, ''among immigrant Yiddish speakers living in New York who were just starting to talk English. By the 1930's it had become common usage among their children who no longer spoke Yiddish -- a development that enabled it to entrench itself in the American language...."

   We have seen how this Yiddishism has been thoroughly assimilated and is now an Americanism. Because other American English expressions have been adopted in many other languages -- O.K. and no problem are examples -- does this mean that this particular emphasis of exasperation is taking root elsewhere?

   Some evidence exists that it does. Here is a letter to The Washington Post from Robert Hill, an American working in a large Saudi hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: ''The overwhelming -- by 9 to 1 -- response to the Clinton affair varies among 'What is the very big deal?' to 'What about the problems in the rest of the world?' to 'Enough already!' ''

The Source: 

  "On Language; Enough Already! What Am I, Chopped Liver?", William Safire, The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 25, 1998.

   Attentive readers will have noticed Michael Kesterton's name in relation to The Globe and Mail. They will also have realized that I mentioned following in his foot steps in MM: "A Gathering of Kestertons."

   

The Post Script:

   It is difficult for me to leave current affairs without a couple of additional comments. The first one has to do with Fox News. A few folks up here have petitioned the CRTC to keep Fox out of Canada. I think that would be a mistake. Most Canadians I know dislike Trump (to put it mildly) and find it hard to believe that Americans don't. Well, many millions of them don't and a lot of those are in a state close to Ontario. It might be useful to see what these people are seeing and hearing in order to try and understand what they are thinking and feeling (that word again.) Fox has far more viewers than the other networks. The screenshot which follows is from Fox and the chyron reveals that Fox seems to favour the real president from whom the election was stolen.

This appeared on Fox News Tonight. I don't think those up here who are opposed to Fox News would be offended by this chyron since it probably doesn't qualify as "hate speech." It's just about two old, hetero white males, although admittedly the "real" president could be accused (and has been) of treating women badly. 

About another controversy, the SAUDI/PGA Bone Saw Tour, this cartoon illustrates all you need to know.