Hey, Balazs! Welcome to the community! I must confess that I'd have some probs with pronunciation of your name. Z and S are difficult to pronouce together, hehe.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening! It is suddenly getting much colder in Korea. Especially, the flu is so rampant. Take care of your health. I'd like to ask you what a social linguistic failure is. From the book i

If there are any with the S pronunciation, they must be extremely rare. I can't think of a single one. CJ

Hi, Thank you both. I asked this because I thought the aswer to it would be pretty straightforward. But, as it turns out, it is slightly more complicated. Good information though. Why I want to know this? Partly because I find it interesting, but

Thank God you clarified that point, Jim. I can just see me putting my foot in my mouth by mixing those two up, thus making a real schlemiel of myself.

I don't remember ever having heard the word SCHLIMAZEL (though I may have and just simply forgotten it), but it reminds me of another word -- one which I've heard: schlemiel (Not sure of the spelling...)

I am grateful to you all. Hulk Hogan used this tricky word in his autobiography. Tom

Of course, it's hard to avoid it if you get a sudden urge to sing the opening theme to the old sit-com Laverne and Shirley. Has it ever been used anywhere else? shluh-MAH-zel.

Do native speakers use this word enough? I don't think that's the question you really wanted to ask. I think you wanted to know if native speakers use the word often. The answer is "No". CJ

It doesn't matter whether native speakers frequently use a certain word; what matters, however, is: how they pronounce it when they see a new word. Their native phonolgy which they find hard to describe when you ask them puts some constraints