Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Are we the Arabs different from Iranians?

Apparently we are not! I mean our beloved President, who doesn't look so presidential, did include Iraq in his axis of evil.Iranians won the trophy there too.
But I find a lot of difference between us. First, ethnically the Arabs, just like Jews, are Semitic: Iranians are Aryans. Linguistically, Arabic is a Semitic language, again similar to Hebrew and Aramaic, and not Yiddish. Persian belongs to the Indo-European family and a distant relative of Sanskrit. Culturally and historically and despite the legion of religious and folkloric similarities, we've chosen different paths following the defeat of the Persians by Arabic troops some time in the 7th century.

But do Americans spot these differences? Unfortunately not, and being insistent on explaining that to them is a tad tedious. Ergo, using kindergartener's lingo I would suggest watching Maz Jobrani's clip on the difference between Arabs and Persians.

Funny yet true

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

so true