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Greeks mangling English
Poster sighed in Athens, for a book fair.
If only Greek have been in contact with a Near Eastern language, from which it could have already borrowed the word bazaar.
Oh wait…
What’s that? The word παζάρι means “market” so it wouldn’t work here?
Why? What exactly do you think “bazaar” means here to begin with? It’s a book fair, not palm dates and camel meat…
This poster did my head in even more, but Facebook crashed when I was about to post it.
It is, I think, an ad for a poetry slam.
All very street, all very hip, but still. Poets. Whose business is the potential of the Greek language. Even in hip hop.
The event is called:
POETIC MEÏKHEM.
Who is Meïkhem, you ask?
…
…
“Mayhem”.
…
The contemporary Greek language, as I would expect a goddamn poet to apprehend, however Street they may be, has a dozen words for mayhem. Κομφούζιο, αλαλούμ, αφασία, το έλα να δεις, μπάχαλο, αναστάτωση, γης Μαδιάμ.
But noooo. It has to be in English to be street talk, for the same reason socialites here in the ’50s parroted undigested French.
Not that “mayhem” is particularly Street in English to begin with.
Schmucks. That street enough for ya?
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