Carefully examining the many threats to Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad detected them even in the foreign words and phrases that have managed to slip into the Persian language. So he sent forth a linguistic proclamation from his well-versed mind that all government and cultural bodies must replace these cursed verbal intrusions with purely Persian words, modified to replace the offending flights of variety and elegance.
The presidential decree sternly requires that all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications use only those words deemed appropriate by the official monitor of the treasured Farsi language, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, which, though its verbal felicity, managed to give itself a name that may be unrivaled in the history of linguistic ineptitude.
The august academy, dutifully obliging its dangerously idiotic president, has managed to concoct over 2,000 words that should be used as alternatives for all words labeled foreign to Farsi.
These newly hatched verbal sublimities are, you might have guessed, primarily aimed at words from the much maligned West but less at intrusive Arabic words. Why? Why, of course! The Koran is, unfortunately for Farsi, in Arabic.
Explicating these farcical replacements, Iran's state media, Irna, reported that from this date forward such items as "pizzas" must, by Presidential degree, be referred to as "elastic loaves," We also find on the official Website of the academy instructions that the demonstrably decadent word "chat" is to become a "short talk" and another degrading horror, a "cabin," is to be referred to as a "small room."
Are we in Lilliput or what? And then what shall we call a "small mind"? What else but what we see, in our illustration of the week, sporting a bandage, where the death-evading tyrant of the moment presents his repaired butt for our cosmic laughter, as part of our reflection of this week's especially distressing crop of the world's dilemmas, delusions, and downright dumb doings.
About the Author
Tom Attea, humorist and creator of NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced Off-Broadway. Critics have called his writing "delightfully funny," "witty," with "great humor and ebullience" and "good, genuine laughs."
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