Languagle #2: Persian
گنه کرد در بلخ آهنگری، به شوشتر زدند گردن مسگری
Gonah kard dar Balkh āhangari, be Shushtar zadand gardan-e mesgari
"A blacksmith committed a crime in Balkh, and they beheaded a coppersmith in Shushtar."
What it means
Used when the wrong person is blamed or punished for a crime committed by someone else, especially when whoever is in charge gets it wrong through incompetence rather than malice.
How to say it
go-NAAH KARD dar BALKH aa-han-GAR-ee, be shoosh-TAR ZA-dand gar-DAN-e mes-GAR-ee
Say a as in cat and aa as in father. kh is the ch in Scottish loch, and the r is a quick tap of the tongue.
Word by word
- گنه go-NAAH: a crime, a sin
- کرد KARD: did, committed
- در بلخ dar BALKH: in Balkh, a city in what is now northern Afghanistan
- آهنگری aa-han-GAR-ee: a blacksmith
- به شوشتر be shoosh-TAR: in Shushtar, a city in southwest Iran
- زدند گردن ZA-dand gar-DAN-e: they struck the neck, meaning they beheaded
- مسگری mes-GAR-ee: a coppersmith
The -i at the end of āhangari and mesgari works like 'a' in English, and it also makes the two halves rhyme. Balkh and Shushtar are more than 1,500 km apart, which is part of the joke.
Where it comes from
In the story behind it, a ruler ordered a blacksmith in Balkh executed for a crime and sent the order by messenger pigeon, but the bird flew to Shushtar instead. Shushtar had no blacksmith, so its governor, assuming the order used a different regional word for the trade, executed the city's only coppersmith in his place.
Where it was found
Persian calls a proverb a zarb-ol-masal (ضربالمثل). This one is from Persian Wikiquote's list of proverbs.
How to recognise Persian
Persian, Arabic and Urdu all use the Arabic alphabet, written right to left, so look for the extra letters. Persian adds four that Arabic doesn't have: پ (p), چ (ch), ژ (zh) and گ (g). This phrase gives itself away with گ, which turns up three times. Arabic has none of those four, and it often has ة, a round letter at the end of words, and ال (al-, 'the') at the start of nouns. Urdu has Persian's extra letters plus its own, like ٹ, ڈ and ڑ with a small ط on top, and ends many words with ے. It is also usually printed in a sloping, hanging style called Nastaliq.
About the Persian language
Persian, called Farsi in Iran and Dari in Afghanistan (and Tajik in Tajikistan, where it is written in Cyrillic), is an Indo-Iranian language with over 70 million native speakers. It has been a language of literature, science and government across Central and South Asia for more than a thousand years; it was the court language of the Mughal Empire. It is written in a modified Arabic alphabet with four extra letters for sounds Arabic does not have: p, ch, zh and g.
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