s(c)hti(c)k (was: Choral vs. coral)

[Mark A. Mandel]

Larry invites me(?):
>>>

In general, Yiddish words are "correctly" transliterated in sh-, not sch-.  
So shtik 'comic bit', as opposed to Ger. St�ck 'piece'.  But the sch- 
rendering is not uncommon, and is often (as in AHD4) listed as the first 
option. -ick vs. -ik is another variable, so for example AHD4 gives "shtick, 
schtick, shtik" in that order (apparently "schtik" is impossible!).  Go 
know. These are all given as derived from Yid. "shtik". I'd go with "shtik" 
myself for the English, but I may be in a minority.

Mark might wish to register a more informed opinion.
<<<

The "'correct'" transliteration Larry refers to is, I think, the YIVO 
transliteration, though he could be talking about any 
scientifically-influenced romanization. But the question is about popular 
English spelling of a loan common noun, not about

 - orthography of the language of origin
 - official or scientific transliteration such as in Library of Congress 
notations, or any linguistic system
 - a proper name from a language not written in Roman letters, such as 
"Kiev"/"Kiyiv"

Similarly, although I write the name of the formalized exercises I (try to) 
do regularly as taiji(quan), I usually see it written 

 - as T'ai Chi (Ch'uan)
 - or with no apostrophes
 - or with a totally unhistorical and confused extra apostrophe (Ch'i) 
that's undoubtedly influenced by "ch'i" ("qi" in pinyin), which is a 
different word. 

But who am I to try to correct other people on this? (Well, Whom*, and 
sometimes I do, at least w.r.t. the extra apostrophe I was just ranting 
about; but that's my personal fussiness.)

Likewise with shtick, or however you want to spell it. I'm content not to 
prescribe. I will note that Yiddish loans are often spelled in English at 
least partly as if they were German, which is not surprising and is actually 
pretty reasonable from the lay point of view.

*  Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian,
   Orthoepist, & Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel