- Shm-reduplication
Shm-reduplication is a form of
reduplication in which the original word or its first syllable (the base) is repeated with the copy (the reduplicant) beginning with shm-, IPA IPA| [ʃm] . The construction is generally used to indicate irony, derision or scepticism with respect to comments about the discussed object::He's just a baby!:Baby-shmaby. He's already 5 years old!A classic example of shm-reduplication is "Latin schmatin", a slang phrase for
binomial nomenclature .Phonological properties
* Words beginning with a single consonant typically replace that consonant with shm- (table shmable).
* Words beginning with a consonant cluster are more variable: some speakers replace only the first consonant if possible (breakfast shmreakfast), others replace the entire cluster (breakfast shmeakfast).
* Vowel-initial words append the shm- directly to the beginning of the reduplicant (apple shmapple).
* Some speakers target the stressed syllable rather than the first syllable (incredible inshmedible); a subset of these do not copy base material preceding the stressed syllable (incredible shmedible; cf. Spitzer 1952).
* Shm-reduplication is generally avoided or altered with words that already begin with shm-; for instance, schmuck does not yield the expected *schmuck schmuck, but rather total avoidance or mutation of the shm- (giving forms like schmuck shluck, schmuck fluck, and so on).
* Many speakers use sm- instead of shm- with words that contain a sh (Ashmont Smashmont, not *shmashmont). Further phonological details revealed by Bert Vaux and Andrew Nevins' online survey of shm-reduplication can be found here [http://php-dev.imt.uwm.edu/prjs/markj/projects/fll_surveys/shm/] .Origins and sociolinguistic distribution
The construction appears to have originated in Yiddish and was subsequently transferred to English, especially urban northeastern
American English , by Yiddish speaking Jews. It is now known and used by many non-Jewish English speakers. The construction also transferred into modern Hebrew usage, as inDavid Ben Gurion 's famous dismissal of the UN - "Oum Shmoum" ("U.N. Shmu-N") - during aMarch 29 1955 government meeting.Bibliography
* Feinsilver, Lillian. 1961. On Yiddish Shm-. American Speech 36: 302-3.
* Nevins, Andrew; and Vaux, Bert. 2003. Metalinguistic, shmetalinguistic: The phonology of shm-reduplication. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society annual meeting, April 2003.
* Southern, Mark. 2005. Contagious Couplings: Transmission of Expressives in Yiddish Echo Phrases. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group.
* Spitzer, Leo. 1952. Confusion shmooshun. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51: 226-33.See also
*
Joe Shmoe
*Reduplication
* Redundancy
*Pig Latin
*Spoonerism s
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