In darker times, which are now unfortunately in front of us, this was called "Sprachregelung". It served as the basis for Orwell when he wrote his book.

Elastic language is double-plus ungood.

Posted by: ZionistYoungster at August 2, 2006 8:06 AM

The desire for maintaining the purity, or supposed purity, of this or that language, by banning foreign words and phrases, and insisting on constructing versions, calqued from the native tongue, is not limited to the current regime in Iran. In recent centuries, it has been commponly associated with those of reactionary bent.

In Russia, in the early 19th century, the mania for foreign things, and especially for French things and the French language, gently mocked in Griboyedov's "Woe From Wit" where someone famously chats (Famusov! Chatsky!) in a mix of Nizhniy-Novgorodian and French, Admiral Shishkov (his name will be re-cycled much later in Russian literature) attempted to ban foreign words and the lexical liberals, such as Pushkin, mocked him.

In France, the phrase "Defense de la langue francaise" is telling. What was the French Academy, or the Real Academia Espanola, if not intended originally to defend the language against impurities, to weigh the value of new words of foreign origin, to stamp their passport, or attempt to expel them, to grant or withhold naturalization?

Mussolini was big on this business of expelling foreign words, and re-introducing older, presumably more authentic, Italian forms. Nazi Germany, of course, made a fetish of echt deutsche everything. Imperial Japan, one assumes, was not

Those inclined to assume that this is all silliness should take account of the way in which the monstrous speed of modern technology, and its seemingly unstoppable power, encourages linguistic change that might once have taken decades, or centuries, and what might be ephemeral slang can be relayed across the globe, picked up, and used to affect, or as some might view it, infect other langugages.

English is welcoming, no doubt partly a reflection of its two quite distinct strands, the Anglo-Saxon and the Latinate. And this openness is perhaps now an aspect of the language, an aspect that makes the reception of so many foreign words easier. But what about other languages, with different histories? Should Rene Etiemble, in those antediluvian days of the early 1960s, when he first warned about "franglais," have been mocked then or now? Was he wrong to worry? Or did he have a point, and has the problem with English words being used so often in French, and often in an unnatural way, only gotten much much worse?

Why should perfectly good native words be driven out, or at least be forced to fight for their survival because, say, some Italian journalists or mezzobusti on television decided that the perfectly good Italian word "entroterra" should be replaced by the perfectly good English word "hinterland"?

English may be the most capacious of languages. And we are all so pleased, are we not, as native speakers of English, to discover that it has the largest lexicon, and is now the world's language -- something maddening to planners in Peking, or Beijing, depending on your preference for pinyin or Wade-Giles. But what of the degradation, the debasement into a kind of pidgin, of that language, so that the whole wide world will speak and read it, but with a coarseness, a lack of any sense of that language as an instrument for more than business or sports, and certainly no feeling for the history of its individual words through time and space.

What irks about Iran is that the move is for a "purity" not aesthetic, but religio-political in nature. Underneath, it is not a rejection of the most colossally damaging linguistic imperialism -- that of Arabic, and that which Firdowsi is celebrated for having prevented with his "Shahnameh." And here are the primitives, in every sense, of the Islamic Republic of Iran, trying to keep away the words of the Infidels, words no doubt as "najis" or unclean as those who use them, but in a most un-Firdowsi like spirit, to welcome still, words of Arabic origin.

So now the Iranian who attended the Teheran lycee in the bad old days, along with assorted Tabatabais and others whose first names are Cyrus and Darius, with nary a Mohammed among them, will have to be careful, otherwise he may find his mouth being washed out with soap -- and then some, on the najis-negating theory that pakizegi is next to godliness. I'd reverse it for Iran after the next revolution. Keep the French. Hold the Arabic.

But don't forget all the words from Persian and Arabic that in the last few years have entered English, French, Russian, Italian, German, Spanish. Here's a devil's dozen: Ayatollah. Fatwa. Imam. Mullah. Madrasa. Shahid. Jihad. Muhajedin. Burka. Hijab. Chador. Niqab. Dhimmi.

One more thing. The article above echoes Jay Leno's monologue, for last night, this Iranian law, and especially this "elastic loaf," were mentioned, along with such other words supposedly banned -- words such as "peace" and "nuclear disarmament" And Robert claims he never watches television.

Posted by: Hugh at August 2, 2006 8:35 AM

Hmmmmm....wonder what they will rename their nukes? Their cell phones. Their computers? Chevy's? All dhimmi inventions.

Posted by: freewoman at August 2, 2006 8:36 AM

ZionistYoungster:

I'm not sure about your reference to Orwell, who wrote of "double speak", which is analogous to "spin-doctoring" rather than this Nazi-like attempt to cleanse modern Farsi of any "foreign" influence. (Hitler's regime sought to ban non-Germanic words. Hence the invention of Scottish-born Alexander Graham-Bell was to be called a fahrensprechen, instead of telephone, which is Greek in provenance.)

Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 2, 2006 8:37 AM

Anyone calling 'pizza' 'elastic loaf' never had pizza.

Posted by: Kim Hartveld at August 2, 2006 8:48 AM

As you already mentioned, something similar happened in France. Back then I thought it was ridiculous of the French to ban words like "hamburger" or "airbag" from the French lexicon. I took that for fear, for a sign of cultural weakness and still do. Not that I welcome stabbing a national language with foreign words when there are native words just as suited, but banning words is simply ridiculous.

This latest action can and should be interpreted as the realization that Iran's youth is b eing conquered by the west. Ban films, ban western music, ban western clothes, ban western food... You are going down and you know it, AJ.

Posted by: cruzado at August 2, 2006 9:19 AM

waterdragon52,

Not "doublespeak" it is I was referring to but another important concept in Orwell's 1984: "Newspeak", the use of language modification in order to control human thought. The idea, tallying with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is that political dissent can be made impossible if words that enable political dissent are excised from the language. It's my guess the Iranian mullahs want to prevent any possibility of "gharb-zadegi" (intoxication with the West) on the part of their subjects by purifying the language of all those snazzy, racy, attractive, seductive Western words.

Posted by: ZionistYoungster at August 2, 2006 9:27 AM

On this business about the 'purity' of languages, an ex-colleague from Korea once told me that while in S Korea, a lot of English words are used, in N Korea, a more puritan version of the language - sans any foreign words - is typically used.

I agree with Hugh that the presense of words like Ayatollah. Fatwa. Imam. Mullah. Madrasa. Shahid. Jihad. Muhajedin. Burka. Hijab. Chador. Niqab. Dhimmi are unwelcome - not just in English, but in any language. And it irritates me when I hear Hindi being spoken in Urdu, with words like sahib, ghulam, bibi, shahed, mulaqat, salaam, zindabad, murdabad, hazar... IMNSHO, it's even worse when some Farsi words are used in Bengali. Fortunately, these days, more English terms are creeping into these languages.

De-Arabization of languages will need to be a part of the Jihad against Islam. In the case of India, with all due apologies to the Zoroastrian Parsi community (although Indian Zoroastrians typically speak Gujrati or a Mumbaiya Hindi or English - they hardly use Farsi the way Muslims in Pakistan might), de-Farsization of Sanskrit based languages will be needed as well, since in India's case, Farsi, more than Arabic, has been a vehicle of Islamic supremacy (it was Warren Hasting's abolition of Farsi as the official language that really started the decline of the Indian ummah, more than the limited Maratha conquests of much of India).

Also, Urdu needs to go - with the Mohammedans.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at August 2, 2006 12:34 PM

Kim, pizza is elastic - except for the crust. I don't know whether it's crispier in Europe than in the US.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at August 2, 2006 12:35 PM

I love the richness of American English, and gladly embrace the utility of words like dhimmi, burka, jihad, blitzkrieg, manana and chutzpah as they enter the language.

Posted by: MP at August 2, 2006 1:00 PM

Proper Neapolitan pizza is not elastic, less so than pitta and not more than ordinary bread. However, this is one issue on which I have mixed feelings. Anyone who witnessed the hideous things that have been happening to Italian of late - with dozens of English words being used absolutely without need, and for no other reason than the odious Italian vice of provincialism - would feel some sympathy with the Thug-in-Chief. It is just because I, unlike most of these linguistic rapists, do speak English, that I know just how useless this constant abuse of foreign words really is. All it amounts to is: lookitme, ain't I clever! I know twenty English words! Frankly, if I could outlaw this sort of trash, I would.

Posted by: Paolo at August 2, 2006 1:15 PM

Come to think of it, what is the bready part of a pizza but a flat loaf of nang?

Posted by: Kepha at August 2, 2006 4:48 PM

Mustapha Kemal had a lot of Arabic words replaced by Turkish equivelents as part of his counter-Islam policy. No doubt nationalist feeling helped these changes stick but the disdain of a former imperial ruler for its the culture of its ex-subjects may have helped.

Posted by: wallyUK at August 2, 2006 7:23 PM

Banning foreign words is proof positive of cultural inferiority, only that which feels itself inferior is so insecure as to need to protect themselves by banning foreign influences.

And BTW Hugh you forgot Spanish, especially Mexico, there is an official committee in Mexico that sits down and redesigns foreign words (especially technical and engineering) for Spanish correctness.

If I recall correctly, they use parts of a bird to describe parts of an airplane., I'm not sure how these countries are keeping up with a fast changing world and the internet revolution. I'm not sure that I know what an iPod is, or what Ringtones are.

And where the product is a branded name, they pronounce it in Spanish style e.g. Colgate is pronounced Coal ga te, and Safeway pronounced Sa Fe Way.

And although English speakers will butcher a dipthong or two with which they are not familiar, and which rolls not easily off the tongue (such as the Spanish r and rr, or the Spanish LL or ellyay (pronunciado elldjay en Castellaño), we do try to defer because we pronounce it taco not Take o, and mohave, not Mo jave. And we do pronounce the Spanish ñ or enyay as in manyana (mañana)

Posted by: Nariz at August 2, 2006 8:46 PM

Why doesn't he ban pizza tehn pray tell, since it's not an Islamic/Persian food...good god would the prophet have eaten it, most likely behind his tent loaded up pork sausage......

Posted by: bondservant at August 2, 2006 10:06 PM

Paolo, I agree. I watch RAI 1 news here in Australia and cannot understand why they use English words like 'leaders', 'killers' etc. Nearly fell off my chair when the blond (Maria Grazia ?) said 'feelings', what's wrong with the beautiful Italian word SENTIMENTI ? Also, never forgot what Italian TV called the Lewinski scandal...'sexgate' and 'sexygate' !

Back to Islam bashing....

Posted by: PAS at August 2, 2006 11:34 PM

OK, the word "dhimmi" has entered the English language. But how is it pronounced? I've been saying "thimmi" with a soft "th" like that found in "the." This is based on my feeble knowledge of Arabic, but I have yet to find it in any Arabic dictionary, so how about sharing what you know?

Posted by: JFP at August 2, 2006 11:44 PM

Can't blame the Iranians for being loco...the French are doing the same for some time...and it was ordered by their government too. They try to replace every English word with a French one...inventive people ;-)), aren't they?
But if you read the OBIN-report on schools in France, they are on the best way to succumb to the Islamists already.
OK...thats a little bit far-fetched
But I guess that Europe is not strong enough the fight the influence of Islamist in a proper way due to our multi-kulti (multiple culture) notions and too much political correctness.
In Germany there is still a discussion whether a muslim teacher (female) can wear her scarf in class while in Turkey there is no discussion...she wears it- she is fired, full stop.

Posted by: LTC Ripley at August 3, 2006 4:23 AM

Can't blame the Iranians for being loco...the French are doing the same for some time...and it was ordered by their government too. They try to replace every English word with a French one...inventive people ;-)), aren't they?
But if you read the OBIN-report on schools in France, they are on the best way to succumb to the Islamists already.
OK...thats a little bit far-fetched
But I guess that Europe is not strong enough the fight the influence of Islamist in a proper way due to our multi-kulti (multiple culture) notions and too much political correctness.
In Germany there is still a discussion whether a muslim teacher (female) can wear her scarf in class while in Turkey there is no discussion...she wears it- she is fired, full stop.

Posted by: LTC Ripley at August 3, 2006 4:23 AM

Can't blame the Iranians for being loco...the French are doing the same for some time...and it was ordered by their government too. They try to replace every English word with a French one...inventive people ;-)), aren't they?
But if you read the OBIN-report on schools in France, they are on the best way to succumb to the Islamists already.
OK...thats a little bit far-fetched
But I guess that Europe is not strong enough the fight the influence of Islamist in a proper way due to our multi-kulti (multiple culture) notions and too much political correctness.
In Germany there is still a discussion whether a muslim teacher (female) can wear her scarf in class while in Turkey there is no discussion...she wears it- she is fired, full stop.

Posted by: LTC Ripley at August 3, 2006 4:24 AM

The presidential decree, issued earlier in the 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...
.................

Some people have, idiotically, compared this (and the earlier "Flowers of Mohammed" for Danish pastries) to the "Freedom Fries" incident here in the US. Personally, I thought that "Freedom Fries" (to replace "French Fries") was fairly silly.

It must be noted, though, that the only place where this changed "officially" was in the Congressional cafeteria. There were probably a handful of restaurants around the country that changed their menus, but most places continued to call the side dish "French Fries", or just "Fries". There was no presidential decree, no pressure on people to adopt this bit of silliness, nor any official coersive change to usage by news outlets or academia. In fact, most people who did say "Freedom Fries" were using it a bit tongue-in-cheek.

Posted by: gravenimage at August 5, 2006 5:53 AM