Cultural English 443 - Fiddler on the Roof; How to sue someone; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 443.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 443. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Today we’re going to talk about an American musical – a play with music and singing – called Fiddler on the Roof. We’ll also give you the steps you must take to sue someone in the U.S., in case you have been hurt or damaged in some way by another person or group. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We begin this Café with the musical Fiddler on the Roof. A “musical” (musical) is a play that has songs and dancing as well as speaking as part of the performance. Fiddler on the Roof is the story of how people learn to change and accept new things in life.

The story is about a man named Tevye and his wife and their five daughters. They are all members of a Jewish family that lives in a very small town in Russia back in the year 1905. The musical is based on a short story called “Tevye and His Daughters” by Sholom Aleichem. The title of the musical actually comes from a famous painting by Marc Chagall called “The Fiddler.”

In the musical, the audience learns at the very beginning that Tevye, the family’s father, believes that the world is a difficult place to live in. He’s a poor milkman – a person who delivers milk to people’s houses – who dreams about being rich. One of his most famous songs is called “If I Were a Rich Man.” Part of the song is just Tevye singing some nonsense, or made up syllables, like “yubby dibby dibby” and “biddy biddy bum.”

If I were a rich man,
Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.

In other parts of the song, he tells us what he would do with the money. But that’s one of the most famous parts of the song, what I just sang.

Tevye believes that the only thing that helps make it possible to have a normal life is to follow traditions. “Traditions” (traditions) are the ways people have been doing things for many, many years. A more general term for these practices is “customs.” “Customs” are things that people do typically in certain situations. One tradition or custom, for example, is for people celebrating a birthday to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. Of course, there are more serious traditions and customs that develop in different cultures, including ones related to marriage, school, and religion.

Tevye sings about this in the opening song of the musical called, of course, “Tradition.” Before listening to the words of this song, I should mention that a “fiddler” (fiddler) is a person who plays a musical instrument called a “fiddle,” which is just another name for a violin. The “roof” is the top of your house. So, a “fiddler on the roof” would be a violin player on the top of your house. I just have birds and squirrels on the top of my house, but in the musical, they have a fiddler!

Actually, the point of the title is that life and tradition, like the situation of a fiddler standing on a roof, is dangerous and difficult, and can easily become a disaster. Obviously, you could fall down if you tried to play the violin on your roof. I don’t recommend it.

Tevye and the other fathers in the small village or town where they live sing about the “role,” or the responsibilities, of the father in a house and in the family.

Who, day and night, must scramble for a living,
Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers?
And who has the right, as master of the house,
To have the final word at home?
The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.

In this first part of the song, Tevye says that it is the father who must “scramble,” or work very hard to make something happen. The father has to build a home and make sure that his family has enough to eat. That’s what he means by “scramble (scramble) for a living.” A father must feed or give food to his wife and children, according to Tevye.

A father also takes the time to pray, or speak to God, each day. Tevye also says that because of this work, fathers are the masters or rulers of the house and have “the final word at home.” “To have the final word” means that you make the decision, especially in cases where other people might disagree with you. In the government, a king or president might have the final word. They make the final decision which everybody else must respect or agree to.

Next, Tevye’s wife and the other women of the village sing about the wife and mother’s roles in the house. So we hear the women’s view of things.

Who must know the way to make a proper home,
A quiet home, a kosher home?
Who must raise the family and run the home,
So Papa’s free to read the holy books?
The Mama, the Mama! Tradition!

The women sing that it is the mother’s job to make, or create, a home the correct or “proper” way, that is “kosher.” “Kosher” (kosher) here means following the traditional rules of the Jewish religion. They sing that it is also the mother’s job to “raise the family” – that is, to take care of the children. Mothers must also “run the home,” or take care of things inside the house. One reason they must do all of this work is to give the father – the “Papa” – time to read the holy books, which would be the sacred writings of Judaism, the Jewish religion.

Tevye’s daughters are old enough to get married when the musical begins. The oldest one is told by the village matchmaker that she should marry a man named Lazar. A “matchmaker” (matchmaker) is a person with the job or responsibility of helping decide which two people should marry in the village. Well, the oldest daughter doesn’t want to marry this man because she is in love, of course, with another boy. So the oldest daughter asks Tevye, the father, to let her marry the man she loves instead of the man the matchmaker said she must marry. Tevye decides to go against, or not follow, tradition and let her marry the man she loves.

At their wedding, Tevye and his wife sing the most well-known song from the musical, one which, I would bet, most Americans know even today. The song is called “Sunrise, Sunset.”

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

The song is about the years passing by quickly. “Sunrise” is when the sun appears in the morning; “sunset” is when the sun goes down or “sets” in the evening. “Sunrise, sunset” probably refers to a single day, but the days “fly” or pass by “swiftly,” or rapidly, quickly.

They also sing about how each year is “laden” (laden), or full of, both happy and sad moments – “laden with happiness and tears.” When you cry, your eyes produce tears, liquid that comes out of them. The couple are happy about the marriage of their daughter, but feel that they are getting old and their lives are passing by. As they get older, many things around them change, including the respect for traditions.

The historical setting is important in the musical. During this early part of the twentieth century, many people in Russia were unhappy with the government. The people were “protesting,” or going out in large groups into public places and loudly saying how unhappy they were. More importantly, the Russian government was starting to force Jews to leave their homes, causing many of them to “emigrate” (emigrate) or leave the country for a better life elsewhere. That also takes place in the musical.

The rest of the story continues with the marriages of the other daughters, but I won’t tell you more so you’ll be able to enjoy the play on your own.

Fiddler on the Roof first appeared on Broadway in September 1964. When we say a musical or play “appeared on Broadway,” we mean it was performed in a major theater in New York. The street where the big theaters are located in New York is called Broadway. The musical “ran for,” or was performed for, eight years, totaling more than three thousand performances. In 1965, Fiddler on the Roof won eight Tony Awards, the awards for plays and musicals on Broadway, including the awards for Best Musical and Best Actor in a Musical.

Fiddler on the Roof was also made into a movie in 1971, which is the version that I grew up with and most Americans know. The movie of the musical won three Academy Awards, the most important awards given to movies in the U.S., including the award for Best Music.

Fiddler on the Roof continues to be a well-loved musical today. It is sometimes performed by high school students in school plays. Some students from the school I went to performed this musical one year. I was not in the play, however, although I’m ready to sing if someone asks me to join a production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Let’s turn now to the topics of how to “sue” (sue) someone. “To sue” means to take a person or a company to court to get money from them because they hurt you in some way. These cases are where – these cases where you sue someone for money are called “suits” (suits). They take place in what is called “civil court.”

A “civil (civil) court” hears or listens to cases that involve family issues, disagreements over contracts, and people’s injuries – when someone is hurt by another person physically. The other kind of court we have is called “criminal (criminal) court.” “Criminal court” is where you go when you break the law for things like stealing or burglary or murder. In civil cases, the person who says something bad happened to them is called the “plaintiff.” The “plaintiff” (plaintiff) tells the court how another person or company, called the “defendant” (defendant), hurt him or her.

Then the plaintiff asks the court to make the defendant either stop doing what they’re doing – whatever it was they were doing – or, more commonly, to give the plaintiff money to fix the problem. Suits are all about money, just like in the times of the ancient Greeks with the famous law courts in Athens. America is a little like ancient Greece in that people love to sue one another for just about any damage they think the other person has caused them.

In civil court, the plaintiff must show a “preponderance of evidence” against the defendant to win his case. “Preponderance” (preponderance) means a greater amount of evidence – showing enough examples or other evidence that makes it possible for the court to believe his story. If the plaintiff shows enough evidence that his story is true, then he will win the case. If he does not show enough examples or evidence that he is telling the truth, then he will of course lose the case.

This is very different from criminal court where, instead of a plaintiff, there is a government prosecutor who is accusing or saying that someone broke the law. The government – the prosecutor – must show that the defendant is guilty, not with a preponderance of evidence, but “beyond a reasonable doubt.” “Beyond a reasonable doubt” means that there is no serious question in the minds of the jury (the group of usually 12 people who decides the case) that the defendant committed the crime.

In an American criminal court, a person accused of a crime is said to be “innocent until proven guilty,” meaning that we assume the person did not break the law, and the government prosecutor must prove that he did. In civil court, however, the judge or the jury may not be completely sure that the plaintiff is telling the truth. That’s okay; they just need to believe that the plaintiff is most probably telling the truth because of the examples and evidence he showed.

Judges often try to get the plaintiff and defendant to settle. “To settle” (settle) means to agree on their own about how to fix the problem instead of having an actual trial where they come before the judge and/or jury and argue their case. However, if they are unable to settle their case, then we say the case “goes to trial,” meaning that they have to go in front of the judge and explain their positions. Sometimes the judge alone decides if the plaintiff is right, sometimes a jury decides.

During the trial, if there is a trial, both the plaintiff and the defendant show evidence to support their arguments. Each side can have what are called “witnesses.” A “witness” (witness) is a person who knows something about the case or information about the case to help the judge or jury make a decision.

If the court finds that the plaintiff is right, is correct, and the defendant did hurt or harm the plaintiff, then the court will award or give the plaintiff “damages.” “Damages” (damages) refer to either money that the defendant must now give the plaintiff or some action that will somehow take care of the harm the defendant has caused the plaintiff.

So, that’s a little about how to sue someone in the United States, if you really want to. I’ve never sued anyone and have never been sued – not yet, anyway.

Now let’s answer a few of your questions.

Our first question comes from Ruby (Ruby) in China. Ruby wants to know the meanings of the words “reporter,” “journalist,” and “correspondent.” All three of these terms refer to someone who works for a newspaper, a magazine, a television station, or nowadays, a blog.

A “reporter” (reporter) is a person who reports – that is, who investigates the news story and then tells the people either listening to the television or radio or reading in the newspaper what happened. A reporter is supposed to go out and get information about some news event and accurately convey, or give, that information to the people who are either reading him or her or watching him or her.

The word “journalist” (journalist) is very similar to “reporter.” We usually refer to a person as a “journalist” who works for a newspaper or a magazine, although the people who prepare the news for reading on the television and the radio are also sometimes called journalists. For the most part, these two words, “reporter” and “journalist,” are interchangeable. You can typically use one for the other.

A “correspondent” (correspondent) is a person who works for a newspaper or other media and reports typically on either one particular area of the world or country or on one particular topic. So, some newspapers will have reporters, journalists, correspondents who live in, say, Tokyo or Rome or Moscow. These correspondents are responsible for reporting or finding out about the news in those special areas.

Again, there is no strict definition, no exact definition, distinguishing a correspondent from a journalist from a reporter. The word “correspondent” is used, however, when someone has some particular area of expertise that they report on or who investigates the news in one particular area of the world.

Our next question comes from Do Trong Bang from Vietnam. The question has to do once again with three similar words: “expense,” “cost,” and “expenditure.” Let’s start with “expense” (expense). An “expense” is something that you have to pay in order to do what you want to do. That’s a very general definition, but if you think for example of a company that is making computers, the company has to pay employees. It has to pay for the materials of the computer. It has to pay for selling the computers and transporting the computers and so on. All of these are the company’s “expenses.”

“Expenses” refers to the money that you have to spend in order to make your product. You could also have expenses at home – your rent, the money you have to pay for food, the money you pay for gasoline, for your car. All of these can be considered expenses.

“Cost” (cost) is a more general word referring to anything that you have to buy. The cost could be a monetary cost – it could be dollars and cents that you have to pay. The cost could also be something that is not related to money; we might talk about the “psychological cost” of being married. Normally, however, “cost” as a noun refers to the price of something. We also use this word as a verb, such as in the question, “How much does this cost?” meaning, “What is the price? How much money do I have to give to you in order to get it?”

“Expenditure” (expenditure) is a somewhat more formal word that you will hear in connection with the money the government spends. “Expenditure” can refer to the act of spending money, especially for a large organization such as the government. “Expenditure” can also mean basically the same as expense – the amount of money that you pay for certain thing. Usually, when you read the word “expenditure” in the newspaper, it refers to the amount of money that the government is spending on something, which is usually a lot.

Edgar (Edgar) from an unknown country – Country Alpha Beta – wants to know the meanings of a term and an expression. The term is “bottom line,” and the expression is “run this by him.” Let’s start with “bottom line.” The “bottom line” is, when it’s used in the most general sense, the most important thing to consider. Usually, you’ll hear someone say this when they are giving their reasons or giving an account of something that happened – they’re telling you what happened, and at the end, they are giving you the most important point or the consequence of this action or story.

So, for example, you get home late from work, and your wife or husband asks you where you were. You start telling him or her what happened to you, and after about five minutes, you may say, “Well, the bottom line is my car ran out of gas and I had to go get some more.” That’s the most important thing. That’s the most important point for them to know about.

Now, technically “bottom line” comes from the world of finance, where you are determining, for example, how much money a company made last year. The bottom line would be the difference between how much they spent and how much money they brought in. But in general terms, it just means the most important thing to consider or the result of some action.

“To run something by (by) someone” means to tell someone about something in order to get their opinion or reaction. This is an expression you’ll often hear in the business world when someone tells you that you need to get the opinion – and often the approval – of one of your bosses or managers. Someone may tell you, “Run your idea past [or “by”] John and see what he thinks.” He’s telling you to go and tell your idea to John so that John can give his opinion or his approval.

You may also hear this expression in a slightly different situation. If someone says to you, “Run that by me again,” he’s telling you to repeat what you just said to him, because either it was confusing to him or maybe it was so surprising or shocking that he wants to make sure that he understood what you were saying correctly.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thanks for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

musical – a play that has songs and dancing in addition to speaking as part of the story being told

* The musical The Sound of Music include the song “My Favorite Things.”

tradition – the way that people have been doing things for many, many years

* The Di family has a tradition of eating cake for breakfast on New Year’s Day.

role – the job or actions that a person is expected to do or perform

* Ms. Min’s role in this schools is to teach foreign languages.

to scramble – to struggle and work very hard at something difficult to make something happen

* There are more guests than expected, so we scrambled to make enough food.

kosher – for food to be prepared, served, and eaten according to Jewish religious laws and rules

* It is especially important for everything to be kosher on Saturday, which is the Jewish day of rest and prayer.

to protest – to go out in large groups into public places and loudly say how unhappy one is

* The students were unhappy that the cost of attending school was going up, so they protested outside the university president’s office.

to sue – to take someone to court to get money or some other benefit from them because they hurt one in some way

* Sonya sued the other driver in the accident to get help paying her medical bills.

civil court – a court that hears cases that involve family issues, disagreements over contracts, person’s injuries, and similar issues and similar issues

* When the apartment owner refused to help get the bugs out of his apartment, Johann took the owner to civil court.

plaintiff – the person in court who states that something bad happened to them as a result of someone else’s actions

* The plaintiff in the case was a mother who said that her ex-husband had not been paying her to support their children.

defendant – the person in court accused of doing something wrong

* The defendant in the case was a woman who was accused of not paying her rent for six months.

preponderance – a larger or greater amount or number of something

* The preponderance of women at the party made Jim nervous.

witness – a person who sees, hears, or knows something important about a criminal activity or private disagreement and tells what they know in court

* The witness testified that she saw the defendant commit the burglary.

damages – the amount of money that a court tells the defendant in a court case to pay the plaintiff because of the defendant’s wrong or hurtful actions

* The men and women on the jury listened to both sides of the case and then The defendant was told to pay $10,000 in damages.

reporter – a person whose job is to report news or conduct interviews for news organizations

* We have a reporter at the scene of the accident to tell us what happened.

journalist – a person whose job is to write for newspapers or magazines, or prepares news to be broadcast on radio or television

* As a business journalist, Jolene researches and writes stories that affect both large companies and small businesses.

correspondent – a person employed by a news organization to report on a special subject or to send reports from a foreign country

* Lara has been a correspondent in the Middle East for 10 years.

expense – the amount of money one pays for something

* As a family, we have to reduce our expenses on food to help pay the bills.

expenditure – the action of spending money; an amount of money spent for something

* Our department’s large travel expenditures this year can’t be justified.

cost – a amount that has to be paid or spent to buy or obtain something; an amount paid for a purchase; a price

* What is the cost of renting an apartment in Beverly Hills for a year?

bottom line – the result; the final outcome; the most important thing to consider

* The bottom line is that Kinisha refused the offer and accepted a job elsewhere.
to run (something) by (someone) – to tell someone about something, especially in order to get their opinion or reaction

* Be sure to run your idea by Khalid before you present it to the client.

What Insiders Know

The Streisand Effect

The Streisand Effect is a “phenomenon” (unusual or remarkable event) that occurs when a plan to hide or “censor” (not allow the public to see) some type of information “backfires” (has the opposite effect). Instead, what is supposed to be secret or hidden is “publicized” (made known to the public) and becomes even more popular, often with the help of the Internet.

This phenomenon was named after the American singer, actress, and entertainer Barbara Streisand, who, in 2003, “attempted” (tried) and failed to keep photographs of her home in Malibu, California, from being released to the public. Mike Masnick, “CEO” (Chief Executive Officer; highest level manager) of the blog Techdirt, “coined the term” (invented the name or title) after Streisand sued Kenneth Adelman and the website Pictopia.com for “violation of privacy” (breaking the law that allows to keep certain things private or secret). Adelman took photographs of Streisand’s beach property in 2002 to show “coastal erosion” (the disappearance of land next to the ocean over time) as part of the California Coastal Records Project, a project intended to influence government policymakers.

The $50 million “lawsuit” (case in court) was filed to prevent the “aerial” (taken from the sky) photograph of Streisand’s mansion from being included. Before the lawsuit was filed, the photograph, which was called “Image3850” and was not identified as Streisand’s home, had only been downloaded from Adelman’s website six times. However, when news of the case became known, people wanted to see the photo, resulting in more than 420,000 people visiting Adelman’s website the following month.