Denis McAuley

In Syria I heard “لكل فولة مسوّسة كيّالها,” “Every bean with a bug inside finds someone who will eat it”

Well, not necessarily, because it might mean remote learning. And for every child doing remote learning, there’s a parent standing behind them while also somehow doing their own job

Yes, I just sat down with the lyrics and a dictionary, and a lot of it didn’t hang together because I hadn’t seen anything like it before

Oh wow! I read that line a couple of decades ago when I was a relative beginner, didn’t get it, and moved on. And today I got it!

Grammar aside, that’s the most lyrical use of the word ist that I’ve seen possibly ever

OTOH, I had a French teacher who suddenly switched from calling us tu to vous when we started our penultimate year of school. It was jarring at first (“me and who else?”), but it signalled a shift towards taking us more seriously, and I think teacher-class relations actually improved.

There’s a story (possibly apocryphal) that a journalist asked President Mitterrand, « Alors, on peut se tutoyer? », to which the answer was « si vous voulez ». Devastating.

Ziyād ibn Abīh (Ziad son of his father)
Herman the German
Roland the Farter

What a name!

I did see lots of clips of South Asian grammarians cautioning against “amn’t”, so it must be A Thing there too, at least on some level

Yep, the n is pronounced, with a slight schwa between the m and the n. I was looking for a clip of someone doing it unselfconsciously and haven’t found one yet, but it is pretty common in Ireland.

But we do say amn’t I (in Ireland at least)

A bunch of those لا ones, including لا أبالي, have become adjectives in Persian:

For my then toddler, Chinese was “French what Shan Shan speak” and Arabic was “French what Hammed speak”

Glad to hear it! My kids are still listening to Homeschool Histories a loop

ABBA do it: “Now we're old and grey Fernando / since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand”

Brugse Zot is an excellent local beer. As others have said, basically all the beers (though anything called kriek/geuze is likely to be divisive. I personally like it, but many don’t).

Yes! Also, bring back تأبّط شراً

Wow! Even for him, that is a lot

I’m here for it! I think there’s virtue in doing something that isn’t (*gestures at everything*)

(A word of solace for times of adversity. It amounts to "Hang in there, this too shall pass," but that sounds so much more confident when Hafez says it)

"Good news! the days of grief and pain
won't stay like this -
As others went, these won't remain
or stay like this"
(Hafez, tr. Dick Davis)

رسید مژده که ایّامِ غم نخواهد ماند چنان نماند چنین نیز هم نخواهد ماند

Reminds me of the old Michael Redmond line “People often ask me: what are you doing in my garden?”

(This is a subtweet of basically everything)

“With eyes wide open, we have seen things that would be plenty even for a dream” (Ibn al-Rūmī)

لَرَأَيْنا مُسْتَيْقِظينَ أُمورًا / حَسْبُنا أَنْ تَكونَ رُؤْيا مَنام