by dawud » Fri Jul 17, 2009 12:26 am
karpuz is also Turkish for watermelon, and though modern Turkish and Arabic don't have need of Persian phrases to curse people on the street - sufficient language riches indigenously - it's highly amusing that Persian still has the most refined polite and imaginative unpolite language phrases out there. Good manners are important enough that you need good phrases to unload on people when they don't have them ;)
oh, and for the few BFCers who may be learning about Central Asia from "Borat", i.e. 'khrum' - Baron-Cohen is actually mostly speaking Yiddish-Hebrew in that film, and he's much more into ridiculing rednecks than Kazakhs - though he's an equal-opportunity instigator
Religion is often criticized for its heavy-handed approach to guilt and shame. The Ford fiasco convinces me that there is an important place for both.