News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Taʿârof, the ceremony of courtesy. Parent comment

Re:Taʿârof, the ceremony of courtesy by rezashirazian on Friday December 04, 2015 @09:25PM (#10680527)
It is actually much simplier than that. The word you're speaking of is "Farangi" which is Farsi for foreigner.

Farsi is an indo-european language so beside loan words which infiltrated the language during Reza Shah's moderinization of Iran, many of them actually share the same root as other Indo-European languages like English, French or German.

Farangi is one of those words. It is not a borrowed word

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Taʿârof, the ceremony of courtesy by PopePompous on Friday December 04, 2015 @10:11PM (#10680631)
Farsi has plenty of cognates with English too. My favorite is "Behtar" which means better. The nice twist is that "Beh" means good, so "Behtar" literally means "gooder". English, or some earlier language that became English, probably had a word like "beh" which meant good. But we lost that word, but kept better. Farsi still has both words.
[ Parent | on HN ]