Timeline for Is "act like a mensch" too localized for ELU readers (U.S. and/or British English)?
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49 events
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| Nov 13, 2020 at 20:11 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 19, 2020 at 3:07 | |||||
| Sep 20, 2017 at 3:00 | answer | added | ab2 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 2:27 | answer | added | Noldorin | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 23:16 | comment | added | Pharap | @aparente001 Regarding numbers: according to 2011 figures only 0.4% of the British population practice judaism, which is less than the number of Hindus and 'other religions'. One estimate puts the number of Jews (presumably both religious and 'ethnic') in Britain at around 370,000. Britain's population was estimated last year to be 65,648,000, which puts the number of Jews at 0.56%. It's possible that I may have had one as e.g. a bus driver, but I've almost certainly not 'met' one (as in held a reasonable conversation with). | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 23:16 | comment | added | Pharap | @aparente001 It depends how you define 'met' or 'knowing someone'. I've definitely met gay people, 5 that I'm aware of (varying degrees of acquaintance) and others I suspect were but it never came up in conversation. There would be no reason for a Jew to not to be open about being Jewish. In America where Jews live in larger numbers and have made a bigger impact there might be some anti-semites around, but in Britain they're in so few number that they haven't really left any impression. Meanwhile there are usually several Mosques and Polish food shops per town (more in the big cities). | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 22:59 | comment | added | aparente001 | "Most of the people my age in the area I live in are non-religious" -- please note, a significant proportion of Jews are not religious. // Tell me more about the number crunching, please! | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 22:57 | comment | added | aparente001 | @Pharap - In terms of impact of Jewish culture in the UK, I don't know anything! But I'm not sure if you can really be certain that you've never met anyone Jewish. I've seen people claim that they don't know anyone who's gay, but I very much doubt that! My guess is that one's Jewish radar may not be finely tuned if one has always lived in a place where there's no open discussion of Jewishness. Also, I wonder how comfortable a Jewish person would be to be open about it where you live. | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 19:05 | comment | added | Pharap | @aparente001 I crunched the numbers and it's highly unlikely. It's possible that I've had a Jew as a bus driver or something, but I'm almost certainly not 'aquainted' with any. Bear in mind that where a person lives and the ages of the people they hang around with also has an impact. If I lived in London I probably would have met several, but most of the people my age in the area I live in are non-religious and there isn't a high concentration of ethnic minorities like in some other areas. Ultimatley though, the point is that they are in small number and thus haven't impacted our culture much. | |
| Aug 26, 2017 at 17:21 | comment | added | aparente001 | @Pharap - Thanks for the info. Make sure you vote for a "yes" answer! // I very much doubt you've never met anyone of Jewish cultural or ethnic background -- and you might even have met someone who practices the religion as well. It is often not obvious. | |
| Aug 25, 2017 at 21:18 | comment | added | Pharap | I respect that this question is old, but for what it's worth, I am British and it took me quite a while to figure out what 'be a mensch' meant. As other have stated, Britain doesn't have many jews (in fact I'm fairly certain I've never met one). Like many people my age, I was forced to study German at school, so I knew the meaning of 'Mensch' as 'human' (I suspect many older Brits would not), but that wasn't enough to extrapolate the precise meaning of a 'decent human being'. This is a localised phrase, if you use it, expect to have to explain it because it is not obvious. | |
| Jun 9, 2017 at 5:05 | comment | added | aparente001 | ... In upstate New York, where I now live, if you are white and you visit someone with a friendly dog, the dog will be licking your hand, but if you are black and you visit the same family, the dog will likely bark your head off until you get in your car and go away. It is possible to handle language well but live in an isolated, rural environment. I don't want to assume anything about you that I don't know; and even if there were things that I knew about you, chances are that after three months I'd have forgotten.... | |
| Jun 9, 2017 at 5:03 | comment | added | aparente001 | @FumbleFingers - I see it now. I was only reading the paragraphs you had in the middle. I completely missed the part over on the right. Aha. You are in the U.K. // There's plenty of popular culture references in the U.S. that zing right over my head, so promoting two people or things I've never heard of won't make me conclude the promoter is in the U.K. // In the U.S., an urban vs. rural background makes a huge difference in many aspects of culture. In Wisconsin I had a housemate who had never met a Jewish person. ... | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 12:12 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | (Do you really suppose urban/rural background makes any difference to the vocabulary of a "past middle-aged" native speaker with a degree in language?) | |
| Jun 8, 2017 at 12:06 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @aparente001: My profile does say I'm UK-based. You could probably guess that anyway, given that I'm currently promoting Charlie Brooker and Philomena Cunk in my profile (I suspect most Americans wouldn't even recognise their names, let alone their humour). I've encountered mensch many times, but it's not in my productive vocabulary, and I make little effort to remember the meaning of words like that. So if you'd asked me before it came up here I couldn't have told you the difference between a mensch and a putz, for example. | |
| Jun 7, 2017 at 22:17 | comment | added | aparente001 | @FumbleFingers - Your profile doesn't say whether you are a UK speaker or US speaker. That would be interesting to know, because your comment suggests you were not familiar with mensch. If you're in the US, it would be interesting to know what part of the country, and whether urban or rural upbringing. | |
| Jun 7, 2017 at 14:38 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | The cited "Interesting Comment" surprises me. However they're counted, there are far more Jews in the US than the UK, and it accords with my personal experience that "Yiddishisms" are far more common in AmE than BrE. So if anything one might suppose that mensch would be "too localised" for Brits, not Americans. If I'm honest though, I always tend to assume any words like that have negative rather than positive associations, and I wouldn't use them myself anyway. | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:49 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://academia.stackexchange.com/ with https://academia.stackexchange.com/
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| Nov 13, 2016 at 15:47 | review | Close votes | |||
| Nov 13, 2016 at 19:50 | |||||
| Nov 2, 2015 at 22:49 | comment | added | DCShannon | I don't know if you've looked at this one in a while, but I just wanted to point out that the majority of these answers indicate that the answerer is not familiar with the word, including one with five times as many votes as the accepted answer. | |
| Sep 18, 2015 at 13:04 | comment | added | Daniel | It appears to be a well-enough known word to have been used in an article on Yahoo: yahoo.com/travel/… | |
| Sep 11, 2015 at 3:47 | vote | accept | aparente001 | ||
| Sep 10, 2015 at 10:24 | history | edited | Mari-Lou A | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
there are more Indian-English speakers than there are Australians and South Africans...
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| S Sep 10, 2015 at 8:50 | history | suggested | smci | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
labels "British, US or other (Australian, South African, European etc)"
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| S Sep 10, 2015 at 8:45 | history | mod moved comments to chat | |||
| S Sep 10, 2015 at 8:45 | comment | added | Andrew Leach♦ | Comments are not for extended discussion; this entire conversation has been moved to chat. | |
| Sep 10, 2015 at 6:57 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 10, 2015 at 8:50 | |||||
| Sep 8, 2015 at 4:44 | answer | added | Nick Gammon | timeline score: 8 | |
| Sep 8, 2015 at 0:46 | answer | added | Glen_b | timeline score: 5 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 12:22 | history | edited | aparente001 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 7, 2015 at 11:12 | answer | added | curiousdannii | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 11:08 | history | protected | RegDwigнt | ||
| Sep 7, 2015 at 10:27 | answer | added | Kickstart | timeline score: 9 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 9:18 | answer | added | stripybadger | timeline score: 13 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 5:34 | answer | added | Mari-Lou A | timeline score: 29 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 5:00 | answer | added | Sven Yargs | timeline score: 25 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 4:52 | answer | added | Steve Shipway | timeline score: 26 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 3:07 | answer | added | Stella Biderman | timeline score: 4 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:29 | answer | added | sig_seg_v | timeline score: 26 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:00 | answer | added | geometrian | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 0:23 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 16, 2015 at 3:01 | |||||
| Sep 6, 2015 at 23:57 | answer | added | Jon Hanna | timeline score: 4 | |
| Sep 6, 2015 at 23:04 | answer | added | David Richerby | timeline score: 42 | |
| Sep 6, 2015 at 17:32 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackEnglish/status/640578252348747776 | ||
| Sep 6, 2015 at 13:09 | history | edited | aparente001 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 6, 2015 at 13:03 | history | edited | aparente001 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 6, 2015 at 12:45 | answer | added | Robusto | timeline score: 29 | |
| Sep 6, 2015 at 12:39 | answer | added | user86291 | timeline score: 58 | |
| Sep 6, 2015 at 12:21 | history | edited | aparente001 |
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| Sep 6, 2015 at 12:19 | history | asked | aparente001 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |