UPDATE!
I had no idea that "teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs" was an actual English idiom. The Persian phrase in the dictionary (Beh Loghmân pand âmukhtan) means "to give Loghman advice", which corresponds to the English idiom's meaning, which is to offer advice to an expert.
Teach not thy parent’s mother to extract
The embryo juices of the bird by suction.
The good old lady can that feat enact,
Quite irrespective of your kind instruction.
6 comments:
and, um, how how can tell my grandmother to suck eggs in farsi?
possibly like this:
Mâdarbozorg, in chand tâ tokhme morgh râ mek bezanid!
oh good. thanks.
I'm curious as to why you've chosen the transliteration style you use. (â = ا, i = ی, etc.)
I haven't done much research, but I just try to copy Shoghi Effendi's style. (á = ا, í = ی, etc.)
While I really do appreciate the importance of consistent standards for Baha'i use, I can't help but think that the "official" system, is, in several ways, pretty cruddy (inasmuch as it elicits terrible pronunciations of Arabic and Persian words by Westerners).
The worst problem, in my opinion, is using "u" and "i" for short vowels. These would much more accurately be represented as "o" and "e", reserving "u" and "i" for long vowels. Short "a" is fine as is, which just leaves the third long vowel in need of representation. Some people use "aa", which I dislike. I prefer "â" or an "a" with a horizontal line over it (though I can't figure out how to type that, so I use the first). The problem with using the acute accents for the long vowels is that they are commonly mistaken as indicators of stress, as in Spanish.
I know this is a rather small and ultimately not-that-important thing to care so much about, but I cringe when I hear people say things like "KOO-DOOS" and "SEE-YEED KUH-ZEEM".
I can understand then.
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