weejitz
3 Apr 2019 #601
When I was little my dad would often use an energetic expression that he told me was Polish, but he never told me the translation. I don't know how much of the language my dad knew; my grandparents were were fluent but I never heard my father carry on conversations in Polish, just an occasional word here in there in situations. I bring that up because I don't know how much of the expression father used would actually translate into a meaningful Polish expression, if what he said became Americanized gibberish that means nothing at all.
I wouldn't even know where to begin with how it would be spelled but phonetically it sounded like: SHAH-kah-DINTZ neet-SPOHT-teh ... and sometimes he would just say the first word without the second one, as though it carried the same meaning with or without it. Kind of like "what the hell," and "what the..." If you went with the second option people would know what you're saying and the meaning isn't lost.
Anyway, that's kind of the scenario in which he would use the expression; kind of like an exclamation. As I remember, it would fit into scenarios where someone, in English, would say something like: "what the hell" ... "son of a bit**" ... "oh my god!" ... something like that. If a six year old kid spilled paint on a white rug and my dad walked in the room he might say, SHAH-kah-DINTZ !!! or SHAH-kah-DINTZ neet-SPOHT-teh !!! Not that I ever spilled paint on the rug ... but if I did then he definitely would have said it!
Thanks
I wouldn't even know where to begin with how it would be spelled but phonetically it sounded like: SHAH-kah-DINTZ neet-SPOHT-teh ... and sometimes he would just say the first word without the second one, as though it carried the same meaning with or without it. Kind of like "what the hell," and "what the..." If you went with the second option people would know what you're saying and the meaning isn't lost.
Anyway, that's kind of the scenario in which he would use the expression; kind of like an exclamation. As I remember, it would fit into scenarios where someone, in English, would say something like: "what the hell" ... "son of a bit**" ... "oh my god!" ... something like that. If a six year old kid spilled paint on a white rug and my dad walked in the room he might say, SHAH-kah-DINTZ !!! or SHAH-kah-DINTZ neet-SPOHT-teh !!! Not that I ever spilled paint on the rug ... but if I did then he definitely would have said it!
Thanks