With all the current…uh…excitement in the world, I did what I usually do: I went to the library. Along with a big stack of books, I also brought home some Arabic language tapes. (I love studying languages.) Thus I found out that the word “Taliban” means not simply “students,” as we non-Arabic-speakers know from the media, but specifically “two students.” It’s a plural form not found in English, French, German, etc. - a “dual” form (used as we might say, “Hey, you two,” rather than “Hey, you” or “Hey, y’all”).
So: Who might those “two students” be? An original pair of scholars, or what? My big stack of books yields no clue, but I trust the SDMB to enlighten me.
A “behind the news” piece on CNN said that the Taliban was originally started as a vigilante squad to avenge the rape and murder of two female students. Perhaps that’s the origin of the name, but I can’t find a corroborating cite.
Wozzo, you gots a case of (tuffah wa-burtuqal) apples and oranges here.
In Arabic, -an is a dual suffix.
But in Persian, -an is a plural suffix. It’s the Persian that applies here; they speak Persian in Afghanistan, not Arabic. There are, unfortunately, more than just two of those creeps.