Syndicated cartoon gets its Yiddish inflections wrong -- and guilty cartoonist says: "OOPS!"

Syndicated cartoon gets its Yiddish inflections wrong -- and guilty
cartoonist says : "OOPS!"

by Dan E. Bloom

Bill Griffith is one of America's most famous newspaper cartoonists,
and his comic strip called ZIPPY is syndicated in newspapers around
the country, and overseas as well. You can view his website at
http://zippythepinhead.com

Griffith's cartoons have been called surreal, intellectual, zany,
goofy, underground, catchy, you name it. He is a brilliant satirizer
of American culture, and he takes aim at almost everyone, VIP
personages to celebrities to, well, to everyone. Griffith has an eye
for what's happening in American culture, and he's been doing this for
years. His fan base in legion.

Now to the Yididsh story.

The August 15 edition of ZIPPY, published already in newspapers around
the nation, was a pointed jab at how technology is often taking over
our lives, and the very first panel of the strip began with one of the
characters reading a book and saying to his pal, who was watchiing TV:
"Kindle, schwindle....I still like a real page-turner with pages you can
turn!"

To which his pal replies: "Twitter, schwitter....I still like network
TV ....where commercials rule!"

Spot the mistake? See the gaffe? Read the dialog phrases above again.

Of course, the cartoonist meant to write "Kindle, schmindle" and
Twitter, schmitter" ... but he absentmindedly mixed up the schm sound
with the schw sound, and of course, in Yiddish, the schm sound rules!
As in "Cancer, schmancer, as long as you're healthy!" and other
Yiddish sayings. Actually, the "schw" sound does not mean anything in
Yiddish-inflected English or even in Yiddish. It's the "schm" sound
that packs the comic punch.

See the cartoon here.

http://zippy1300.blogspot.com/2009/08/kindle-schmindle-twitter-schmitter.html

When the cartoonist was contacted at his home office in Connecticut,
the Long Island native -- who was actually born in Levittown; yes,
that famous Levittown -- and who actually knows very well how
Yiddish-English should be inflected for best comic results, replied:
"Oops!"

But it's too late to change the comic strip. It's already in print in
over 500 newspapers worldwide and online as well. The good news? It's
now a collector's item!