An elastic loaf, please!
Ahmadinejad, Iranian President, is an attention whore. When everybody is looking anxious at the Lebanese-Israeli border he has a simple, populist idea to fight the western world:
He orders governmental agencies and newspapers to use phrases like “elastic loaf” and “short talk” (in Farsi, of cause) instead of the English words “pizza” and “chat”. More than 2000 foreign words will be replaced. Sweet.
It is easy to see through this plan. Ahmadinejad wants to keep western influences out of the Iranian culture and society. Everybody would agree that he should be more tolerant towards other cultures. As a German, I will have to keep in mind this fact, because in Germany there is a large group of people, who want to keep the German language clean of Anglo-Saxon influence. They call the language-mix Denglisch (or Germish).
A nice article for all enemies of Denglisch: “Abendland vor Anglizismus” by Detlef Guertler. 3808 German words have a Latin origin, 2653 are Greek. Only 2464 entries in the German Dictionary Duden are marked as English.
via The Black Iris
