premise: Yiddish is especially versatile in describing those poor souls who inhabit the world of the ineffectual, and each is assigned a distinct place in the gallery of pathetic  schmo, schmendrik, schnook, schmegegge, schlep, schlub, schmuck, putz, klutz, kvetch , and nudnik .  Yiddish easily coins new names for new  a nudnik is a `pest'; a phudnik is a `nudnik with a Ph.D.'  The rich nuances that suffuse this roll call are seen in the timeless distinction between a schlemiel `clumsy jerk' and a schlimazel `habitual loser': the schlemiel inevitably trips and spills his hot soup'all over the schlimazel.
hypothesis: The Yiddish language is poor at distinguishing between the different aspects of incompetence.