"Referendum, Shmeferendum" used by an Amman news site

[Martin Kaminer]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> I don't know about Arabian websites, but I thought the sh- rhyme was
> pretty standard, at least in the US.

Seems there are good reasons why it has become familiar in the US and
none of those would apply to Jordan . . . to me it seems every bit as
odd as if a popular American news site used some lengthy and ornate
Arabic construction in the headline to communicate the thesis of the
article.

My wife made the point that the construction was memorably imported
into Israel by David Ben Gurion and his "Um-Shmum" comment about the
UN but hard to believe that this in and of itself could establish
sufficient familiarity.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Um-Shmum

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