This comes from Newsweek, citing an “Iraqi man who identified himself as a former soldier and now a mujahedin, to a Western reeporter in Hawija”:
"We want the world to know that Bush, the biggest criminal of all, and Blair, that **monkey of the desert**, will not be able to control the Iraqis".
Monkey of the Desert ?! Just got to love these strange insults... not that I disagree... but Aldebaran might care to explain this one to us westerners ?
Reminds me of an Arab League meeting where the two delegates, one Iraqi and another one I forgot, kept threatening to shave the Iraqi's moustache and the Iraqi delegate responded by threatening to shave his beard. Naturally the reporter was kind enough to explain that these are symbols of masculinity... and that shaving them would be a grave humiliation.
An Iranian chum, way back in college, taught me how to say “Dog balls” in Farsi.
Apparently, this term is multi-purpose profanity there, similar to the American term “Fuckin’ A” (circa early eighties usage). It can be used as an intensifier, an insult, an interjection, an adjective…
A friend of mine who was stationed for a year in South Korea told me that “Your mother has a bald pussy” was a big insult there.
I also heard from a Chinese guy in college that “Roll away” is considered very insulting in China. It is apparently an elliptical way to call somebody a bastard. Turtle eggs roll and turtles don’t know who their fathers are.
In ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ which takes place in Spain during the Civil War, there are all sorts of references to
“defiling (by execretion or ejaculation or whatever) thy mother’s milk” or something like that.
Any Spainards out there who can respond to that one?
Back before the whole Iraq invasion started, I remember the Iraqi foreign minister attending a meeting of the Arab league. He threw the meeting into an uproar by pointing at the Kuwaiti foreign minister and screaming what was translated in the press as, “I disrespect your mustache!”
I heard that to call anyone who wasn’t your brother in law ‘brother-in-law’ was a serious insult in the Arabic language. (presumably because it insinuates that you have slept with their sister, rather than insuating that they have slept with your sister? Maybe the language has two terms for the different meanings of brother in law? )
Our favorites as children (we come from a multi-cultural family) were:
(and these are probably spelled incorrectly by the way)
Tu tiene la cara como un creaka, abreo ascendo phhhhhffft (raspberrie noises) meaning: You have a face like a cocha (vagina) thats open and saying rapidly phhhhhffft
and
Pu Tang Ena Mu!
which translated from tagalog into “your mothers a whore” (our stepmother taught us that one.
And the all time favorite you’d better run after saying this one:
“Aye conjo carajo mecajo en la miy que te paso!”
which roughly means "shit on the mother that ever gave you birth.
Unfortunatly, those where the only words I learned in other languages… darn.
)