Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren vogebam here. The Yiddish language has gifted
Speaker 1: English speakers with some irresistibly punchy words that defy direct
Speaker 1: translation but are instantly understandable. Schmuck, schmooz, stick, chatsky up, kiss, kluts.
Speaker 1: The list goes on. Kutzpah is a word that should
Speaker 1: be in everyone's arsenal if you're not familiar with kotzbah.
Speaker 1: It's often defined in the dictionary as nerve, gall insolence, arrogance,
Speaker 1: and supreme self confidence. But there's a subtle flavored to
Speaker 1: kotzbah that alludes easy translation into English. The late Leo Raston,
Speaker 1: author of The Joys of Yiddish, wrote that kutzbah means
Speaker 1: presumption plus arrogance, such as no other word and no
Speaker 1: other language can do justice to Kutzpah. Is that quality
Speaker 1: enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father,
Speaker 1: throws himself on the mercy of the court because he
Speaker 1: is an orphan. You might not recognize the word in
Speaker 1: print from having heard it. It's spelled c h u
Speaker 1: t z p a h in Yiddish. The h sound
Speaker 1: is produced in the back of the throat. In phonics,
Speaker 1: it's called an unvoiced dorsal velor non syllabant fricative. If
Speaker 1: you have difficulty making an authentic sound in the back
Speaker 1: of your throat and sorry, that's the sound I usually
Speaker 1: try not to make. Into microphones, you can substitute a
Speaker 1: regular h sound like hutzpah and people will get what
Speaker 1: you mean. Yiddish is derived mostly from German and Hebrew,
Speaker 1: and kutzba can trace its roots back to ancient Hebrew
Speaker 1: and Aramaic words meaning insolent and impudent, which are definitely
Speaker 1: negative descriptors, and it's likely that kutzba was mostly seen
Speaker 1: as a negative quality among Yiddish speakers in Europe, where
Speaker 1: it was once the everyday language of ten million Ashkenazi
Speaker 1: Jewish people. Yiddish is now an endangered language spoken by
Speaker 1: roughly a hundred and fifty Americans, mostly in Orthodox Jewish communities.
Speaker 1: But something happened when Yiddish came to America and mixed
Speaker 1: with the English usage of nerve. If someone has a
Speaker 1: lot of nerve, it's usually a bad thing. But sometimes
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of nerve to speak your mind
Speaker 1: or stand up to a bully, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1: The word kotzba pulls off a nifty trick because, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, it recognizes that someone's behavior is nervy, brazen,
Speaker 1: or arrogant, but it also tips its cap and respect.
Speaker 1: Someone with kotzbah isn't ashamed of bending or breaking the
Speaker 1: rules if it gets them what they want. You might
Speaker 1: not approve of their behavior, but you respect the koksbah
Speaker 1: it took to pull it off. In its definition of kotzbah,
Speaker 1: Miriam Webster cites a news article about the son of
Speaker 1: a Nike executive who sells were sneakers, some of which
Speaker 1: may have been stolen from Nike. Journalist Jeff Manning wrote
Speaker 1: in The Oregonian his company West Coast Streetwear has figured
Speaker 1: out how to use technology and kutzbagh to buy hot
Speaker 1: sneakers in bulk before the rest of the market. It
Speaker 1: takes kutzbug to sell stolen footwear from your mom's company.
Speaker 1: It's illegal, but also kind of cool. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article some nerve kutzpah explained on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, written by Dave Rouse. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of i Heeart Radio in partnership with how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Up, kutzpah, kutzpah. Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is great. This is a really good audio episode.