Timeline for Is "act like a mensch" too localized for ELU readers (U.S. and/or British English)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 17, 2018 at 2:21 | comment | added | user298438 | Potato????????? | |
| Sep 10, 2015 at 16:11 | history | edited | sig_seg_v | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
I'm from North Carolina, actually
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| Sep 10, 2015 at 13:53 | comment | added | Travis Christian | Another American here who's never heard the term. I too would have thought of "Ubermensch" but I had to come to the comments to see what it could mean in context. | |
| S Sep 10, 2015 at 10:05 | history | suggested | smci | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
important to note he's from the midwest
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| Sep 10, 2015 at 6:37 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Sep 10, 2015 at 10:05 | |||||
| Sep 10, 2015 at 5:42 | comment | added | aparente001 | @AndrewCoonce - Interesting! By a roundabout path that I didn't really understand, you eventually got to the same place as me! "They have to at least be decent to you" is exactly what I was trying to convey. Decent is exactly right. | |
| Sep 8, 2015 at 14:10 | comment | added | alc | @aparente001: In short, unless there are lots of American Jews in a given region, I wouldn't expect a reader to understand "mensch"; context or otherwise. It's inappropriate for an utterance that's intended to be understood by a wider audience of unknown origins. | |
| Sep 8, 2015 at 14:08 | comment | added | alc | @aparente001: I'm an American mid west city-dweller. I would have parsed mensch, in context, as a reference to Nietzsche's "Ubermensch" as well. My understanding of the sentence would have been "You need an advisor you can trust to act like (at least) a man (with a heavy subtext that you intentionally didn't choose to say act like a superman)". Thus, the meaning I attributed would have been closer to "they have to at least be decent to you". | |
| Sep 8, 2015 at 4:04 | comment | added | aparente001 | @Foon - I hope I didn't get too tangled up in the complex stuff at the end of your comment.... But a mensch is nothing if not humble. | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 14:00 | comment | added | Foon | Not the original poster, but as another American who has never heard that idiom, let me point out another issue that I'm suprised no one has mentioned (and maybe that's because it's just me). A similar term I _have_heard is Ubermensch, as in Nietzsche. Ignoring the Nazi-perversion aspects (and untermensch), given that I know Ubermensch can be translated as "Superman", I would have assumed mensch had more overtones of humbleness than I think you meant. | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:43 | history | edited | sig_seg_v | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 469 characters in body
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| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:37 | comment | added | aparente001 | Thanks for weighing in. Can you tell me whether the context ("I don't think that particular research team would be a healthy place for you. The guy behaved badly. You need an advisor you can trust to act like a mensch") was helpful? | |
| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:33 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 7, 2015 at 9:31 | |||||
| Sep 7, 2015 at 1:29 | history | answered | sig_seg_v | CC BY-SA 3.0 |