However, it could be worse. Suppose it was all your own fault? Rather than have a random car drive past and soak you, you might have tripped over into the puddle all by yourself, stumbling over the shoelace you hadn’t tied properly. Instead of a power cut, you might have lost your beautifully crafted letter because you’d turned off the computer by accident. Maybe the chair was fine, but you were just too heavy for it. And how much more annoying would it have been if you’d painted the door yourself?
In those cases, it would be your own foolishness or clumsiness that was to blame, and instead of being a hapless schlimazl you’d be a hopeless shlemiel (shlum-EEL). At least if you’re a schlimazl, when people have finished laughing at you, they’ll feel a moment of sympathy for your hard luck. If you’re a shlemiel, a person who is so clumsy and awkward that you only have to pick up something fragile to drop it, then the chances are that the only response you’re likely to get will be a sneering ‘Serves you right.’
And there are refinements of this miserable fate. Sometimes the shlemiel will resent the reputation he has acquired so much that he will try to do ambitious things that even someone who is not naturally clumsy would avoid, just to prove that he’s not as clumsy as everyone thinks. He – or she – will carry tottering piles of plates and glasses, or scoff at the idea of putting down a piece of newspaper before they start painting. The shlemiel will balance a bowl of soup on his outstretched fingers and move it around in the air, just to prove that he can. And, of course, he can’t. It always ends in tears. Not even Yiddish has a word for such a hopeless case. In fact, the bowl of soup can be used as an example to demonstrate the difference between the two: when the shlemiel spills his soup, it lands on the schlimazl.
The two words are ideal as light-hearted insults – the sort of remarks that elicit a rueful smile and a shrug of the shoulders from their object, rather than a punch on the nose. Surely a language can never have too many words like that.
Mafan
(Mandarin)
When it’s all too much bother but, to your mind, not being bothered is not your fault …
We all have them – those moments of angst, world-weariness and frustration when something is just too much trouble. It may be something we’ve done a thousand times before without complaining – taking out the rubbish, washing the car or taking the dog for a walk. Suddenly, for no particular reason, it’s just one thing too many and we’re not going to do it.
‘I can’t be bothered,’ we might say, and it’s likely to make people cross. And, most of the time, and probably with ill grace, we somehow end up doing whatever it is that needs doing.
That’s the problem with ‘I can’t be bothered.’ It’s a blunt phrase that, just at a time when you really don’t feel like taking responsibility, puts you right in the firing line. It’s not what you want to say: the problem is with the suddenly unreasonable demand that is being made, not with your own response to it. What you want is a phrase that throws the blame where you instinctively know it belongs – on the person who has made the request, on the action itself, on the entire world if necessary, but not on you.
The Chinese have an invaluable little word – mafan (MAH-FAHN). Some people say that if you learn only one word of Chinese, then mafan is the one – although that could be a reflection on the frustrations of Chinese bureaucracy rather than a comment on the word itself.
It means something you’ve been asked to do is too bothersome – just too much trouble. It’s frustrating, annoying and completely unreasonable that you have been asked. But the important thing about it is that it focuses the blame where it should be – not on you.
Its applications are almost infinite. A tax form may be too complicated for anyone but a Professor of Incomprehensible Logic to understand, and you would ask, ‘Why is this so mafan?’ Or it could be used against you in a restaurant, when you ask if you could have the noodles but without the meat – ‘No, that’s too mafan for the chef.’
And the beauty of it is that it’s not an exclusively dismissive or negative word. You can apologize – probably insincerely, but no one’s to know – for causing someone so much mafan. Tack -ni, meaning ‘you’, on to it and it is suddenly an extremely polite and courteous way of asking a question, more or less equivalent to ‘Excuse me, may I trouble you?’ So you might say, ‘Mafan-ni, could you tell me the way to the station?’
But we do politeness well in English already. We have plenty of ingratiating little phrases with which to butter people up when we want them to do us a favour. It’s that subtle evasion of responsibility that we need, that deft avoidance of blame. ‘Shouldn’t you take the dog for a walk?’ ‘Mafan.’
It shouldn’t work, of course. It would seem to drip with the same sort of dismissive contempt that an idle teenager can pour over the words ‘Whatever,’ or ‘Yeah, right.’ But the Chinese seem to manage mafan quite successfully. Perhaps we should give it a go in English.
Pochemuchka
(Russian)
Term of endearment for a child who asks a lot of questions – perhaps too many questions
‘Yes, but why?’
As anyone who has children will know, these words bring a thrill of joy to our hearts the first time we hear them, because we are new parents, and idealistic, and optimistic, and we want to encourage a healthy curiosity in our offspring. And so we offer a carefully crafted and well-thought-out explanation, not too simple but pitched at exactly the right level for our child’s understanding.
‘Yes, but why?’
The next explanation has a slightly puzzled edge to it. We thought we’d answered that one the first time. So we try again.
‘Yes, but why?’
The third explanation is probably a little shorter and slightly less carefully crafted. It might even have a barely perceptible edge of frustration. There is, after all, a newspaper that we want to read, or a programme to watch, or a car to polish.
‘Yes, but why?’
The fourth explanation is even shorter. It may well contain an unfortunate phrase like ‘For God’s sake!’ in it, or possibly something even less acceptable. And so it goes on, six or seven times or more, until, to our eternal shame, we come through clenched teeth to the final and unavoidable, ‘Because I say so!’
The diminutive suffix -uchka makes clear that it’s meant affectionately.
This child with the healthy curiosity that we were once so keen to encourage is what the Russians would call a pochemuchka (POH-chay-MOO-chka) – someone who asks too many questions. It comes from the Russian word pocemu (POH-chay-MUH), which means ‘Why?’, and was first used in a popular Soviet-era children’s book[5] whose hero was a little boy given the nickname Alyosha Pochemuchka because he was never satisfied with the answers he got. The book was published in 1939, when Stalin was at the height of his power, so discouraging children from trying to find out too much was probably a wise move for cautious parents, but it’s generally the sort of light-hearted put-down that might be expressed in English with a warning like ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’
5
Boris Zhitkov,