It is an old story: putting some foreign words on products to make them seem more interesting and marketable. This writer remembers being horrified one day while teaching children in Korea because a 5 year old girl came into class wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a cartoon character that had “sex goddess” written underneath. And certainly, us North Americans often go weak kneed at things that have French names. And then there are the tattoos of Chinese characters that the bearer thinks means one thing but actually means something else entirely.
Well, in Iran these days, it would seem that English is the language for the cool kids. Restaurants are capitalizing on this. Many menus now feature items with English names (though written phonetically in Persian) and prices are skyrocketing… some are claiming that prices are as much as tripled. On twitter, Sara Salehi wrote “The situation is so bad that even saying ‘sibzamini sorkh karde’ instead of ‘French fries’ is interpreted as defending the Farsi language.”
Read more in The Observers.