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wid di code name dem give him on him recent visit to Britain?
the codename was CHALAQUE...the quote is from an article in the Daily Mail re the insult
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">As someone who grew up hearing chalak used to describe someone who is a notch below diabolical, I had to laugh. The West may try to assert cultural prowess economically, militarily, and diplomatically, but Obama’s codename is yet another example of cross-cultural communication lost in translation.
I double-checked with the best person I could find on the nuances of the propriety of South Asian culture: my mother, Sajida Nomani, a native speaker of Urdu schooled in the highly mannered culture, called adab in Arabic, of Lucknow, India, a sort of Charleston, S.C., of South Asia. She is a grandmother with a discerning ear. Chalak, as it’s usually spelled phonetically, isn’t just a Punjabi word, but also found in Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali. Verbally, Hindi and Urdu are very similar, and Punjabi and Bengali are related to Hindi and Urdu.
No doubt about it, she said. “It’s an insult.” My mother dusted off our edition of the Oxford Practical English-Urdu Dictionary, published in Lahore, Pakistan, by the Oriental Book Society on Ganpat Road, and turned to page 156 [PDF], where she read the definition of chalak. It read: “adj. skilful; knowing; crafty; sly.” My father, Zafar Nomani, then faxed me over a copy of pages of the dictionary, including 156</div></div>
the codename was CHALAQUE...the quote is from an article in the Daily Mail re the insult
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">As someone who grew up hearing chalak used to describe someone who is a notch below diabolical, I had to laugh. The West may try to assert cultural prowess economically, militarily, and diplomatically, but Obama’s codename is yet another example of cross-cultural communication lost in translation.
I double-checked with the best person I could find on the nuances of the propriety of South Asian culture: my mother, Sajida Nomani, a native speaker of Urdu schooled in the highly mannered culture, called adab in Arabic, of Lucknow, India, a sort of Charleston, S.C., of South Asia. She is a grandmother with a discerning ear. Chalak, as it’s usually spelled phonetically, isn’t just a Punjabi word, but also found in Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali. Verbally, Hindi and Urdu are very similar, and Punjabi and Bengali are related to Hindi and Urdu.
No doubt about it, she said. “It’s an insult.” My mother dusted off our edition of the Oxford Practical English-Urdu Dictionary, published in Lahore, Pakistan, by the Oriental Book Society on Ganpat Road, and turned to page 156 [PDF], where she read the definition of chalak. It read: “adj. skilful; knowing; crafty; sly.” My father, Zafar Nomani, then faxed me over a copy of pages of the dictionary, including 156</div></div>
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