The AP just reported that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has ordered his government and cultural leaders to cease and desist from using any words of foreign origin such as "pizza" which will now be called (in Iranian Arabic, "elastic loaf").
KLAP (Keep Language Above Politics) is the hope for the world. We need this organization to be organized to save us from the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads of the world.
I was being far more prophetic than I thought when I wrote "Immigrant Foods Threaten America" on Blogcritics. This is the power of words. We can only save the world from a fall into some kind of Mahmoud in Wonderland by opening borders freely to words of all origins.
As the AP reported,
The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.
Answers Please has pages of words of foreign origin organized by the languages of their origin. It is a fine resource for those who will be joining the KLAP movement.
In the kind of vocabularian response to the Iranian threat, they have noted these (among others) Arabic words (many of which reached English through the Spanish) which we must now stop using as a retaliation against President Ahmadinehad's preemptive attack on the vocabularies of the Western world.
Alcohol, alcove, algebra, algorithm, artichoke and arsenal will present some difficulties. Almanac, alchemy, adobe and alembic will be easier to replace. Actually, I am not so sure about artichoke. I, personally, will miss them.
Safari, sahara, satin, sequin, soda, sorbet and zenith will also be annoying but we can replace them. Mocha ( مخا al-mukhaa "Mocha" from Yemen) may affect the Starbucks crowd. Magazine (makhaazin "storehouses," from the Crusades) is a bummer but we can just use "blog on paper".
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Why how positively FRENCH of the Iranians...
I half expected to see the 'satire' tag on this one.
Dave
2 - RedTard
What do they call freedom fries?
3 - Dean
What do they call freedom fries?
"Tasty food" in any language.
4 - SFC SKI
I found this to be an interesting article because I am also fasicnated by etymology and the dynamics of language.
Only one minor mistake, the Iranian language is Persian Farsi, not Arabic. Both Arabic and Persian Farsi, as well as Dari, and several other "'stan" languages are written in Arabic script, but are very dissimilar in grammar and word use.
5 - Walrus
Hitler tried the same thing. The German word for "nose" being of non-Germanic origin, it was replaced with "face-anchor". Needless to say, it never caught on... Ahmadinejad would probably be flattered to know he is following in Hitler's footsteps in yet another way.
SFC SKI is correct, so you're going to have to rewrite your list of words we'll need to avoid. Iranians are not Arabs and they do not speak Arabic.
6 - Howard Dratch
Satire, Dave. How could one satirize an attack on words? Heavens! Satire is an attack by words.
SFC SKI. Amazingly, I recently explained to a Mexican friend that the language of which he was speaking was called Farsi. Then I sat there today and wrote "Arabic". Thank you for correcting the error.
Howard
7 - katie
please do not comment on the Middle East if you have no basis of understanding elemantry-level geography and politics of the region. Iranians are Persians, and vehemently not Arabs. They speak Farsi (a dialect of Persian) and not "Iranian Arabic." The langauges are in different langauges families (Persian is Indo-European--the same family as English--while Arabic is Semitic. The then Shah of Persia got along very well with Hitler because of their shared desire for Aryan dominance) and therefore have very different grammatical structures. The Persians have a long and bloody history with the Arabs and mutual suspicians run deep. Please stop embarressing yourself and your country. Please stop writing on this topic.
8 - Dave Nalle
For that matter, Katie, it could be argued that Iran isn't in the Middle East, but in Central Asia.
You have a point on geography, but are a bit off on your history. I assume you're referring to Reza Shah. He was strongly anti-Nazi and hated Hitler, and was allied with the US and Britain who eventually removed him from power in favor of his son, because he wanted to remain neutral and didn't want them running guns through Iran into Russia.
Dave
9 - Eskandar Jabbari
As an Iranian American with a deep hatred for the Islamic Regime and Ahmadinejad, I must say: this is one of the stupidest, most ignorant articles I've read on the subject. First of all, as pointed out, the official language of Iran is PERSIAN, not "Iranian Arabic." Iranians are not Arabs, they do not speak Arabic. Arabic and Persian are as dissimilar as English and Hebrew.
Secondly, this is not a new phenomenon in Iran. Iranian linguists have been attempting to re-Persianize the language (after the Arab conquest of Persia, the Arab caliphates forced thousands and thousands of Arabic words upon the Persian language) since the 10th century!
I could go on and on, but I'm afraid this post will fall on deaf ears. Someone ignorant enough to write this post is not likely to listen to rational information from an informed Iranian.
10 - Howard Dratch
Dave. Thank you for the defense. You do have a better grasp of Persian/Iranian politics than do I. To Katie and Eskandar: You are quite right to call me on my knowledge of the language of an area of which we, in the West, are woefully ignorant.
However, this article was not really about language. It was about the absurdity of authoritarian regimes in trying to control their own society and the world.
Rather than "someone ignorant enough to write this post" who would not listen to "rational information" I would hope, instead, to be someone who values freedom and responds to the face of evil when it makes itself known. I regret not researching Persian history and linguistics since the 10th century. I do not regret voicing an opinion on the machinations of totalitarian governments.
I do not speak German but, hopefully, would have recognized the evil that began to take control in 1932. I do not speak Chinese (whichever dialect is appropriate) but felt for those killed in the response to free speech in Tianaman Square in, I think, 1989. My Russian is almost non-existent but I hope that I would have known to flee from Stalinist extremes. In short, you are surely correct in my ignorance of Persia/Iran and Farsi or Iranian Persian, but you have missed the idea.
Words are the stuff of ideas and the Iranian attempt to purge its' society of global ideas is not absurd. It is sad and dangerous. Far from embarrassing my country, I would hope that defending the notions of freedom of thought and freedom from authoritarian control is to remind the world that the West with its' democratic traditions of legal rights and individual liberty will win out over the now barbaric forces that threaten the 21st century.
I realize that Persia was a cradle of civilization. However, that was then and this is now and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not, we hope, speak for Persians in any language and will not be allowed by the world to threaten it with words, terrorism nor nuclear weaponry.
11 - Clavos
Well said, Howard! #10 couldn't be more clearly stated.