Linguisticky question

[fearfaoin]

I have no idea if this exists outside of the
US, but I'm curious about the following slang
construction:

If someone wished to discount a one-word
subject, he might replace (some of) the first
consonants of that subject with "Schm-".
For example, if someone mentioned taxes,
and I wished to ignore my taxes, I might say,
"Taxes schmaxes, I have better things to do!"

Does anyone know the roots of this? I had
always assumed it was rooted in Yiddish,
perhaps solely because of the "Schm-"...

Is there a name for this sort of phenomenon?

[I.D.10-t]

Shm-reduplication

[fearfaoin]

Sweet! Thanks. Looks like I was
correct in thinking it was Yiddish.

[CHasR]

Sweet! Thanks. Looks like I was
correct in thinking it was Yiddish.

Thinking, schminking! It's instinct , I tell ya

[avanutria]

Another fun linguistic phenomenon is called expletive infixing and was the subject of an entire lecture in my programme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expletive_infixation

Please note that the list of examples may trigger some non-work-safe warning systems. it *is* called expletive infixing, after all.

[fearfaoin]

Another fun linguistic phenomenon is called expletive infixing and was the subject of an entire lecture in my programme.

I bet that was a fun lecture.

I came across that wiki page recently (probably
back when nano mentioned Tmesis and I had to
look that up). It's one of my favorite expletive
morphologies (followed closely by "Clitic" which
is not itself about expletives, but I include it
because it sounds dirty).