The gas workers at the Natural gas facility were all speaking Hindi. Even in the first scene, they all spoke Hindi instead of Farsi or Urdu.
I suppose since they couldn't get Iranians or shoot in Iran, they passed off Hindi as Farsi/Urdu.
Otherwise, the movie is decent.
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Yep, you are thinking of Punjabi. According to the CIA World Factbook:
Punjabi 48%, Sindhi 12%, Siraiki (a Punjabi variant) 10%, Pashtu 8%, Urdu (official) 8%, Balochi 3%, Hindko 2%, Brahui 1%, English (official; lingua franca of Pakistani elite and most government ministries), Burushaski and other 8%
- Anwar
lol that wasn't punjabi cause i sure didn't understand it that well :P
sharelol that wasn't punjabi cause i sure didn't understand it that well :P
They were speaking Urdu, or at least that was the intention... Hindu and Urdu are considered by some to be two forms of the same language (Hindustani), and essentially sound the same to most observers... i.e., I learned Hindu but can now speak and understand Urdu pretty well (there is a Persian influence in the language that changes the vocab a bit). It's obviously more complicated than that but they certainly were speaking Urdu...
To think Gaghan wrote them in as Pakistanis because he couldn't get Iranians is laughable... I'm sure there are many talented Iranian and Iranian-American actors he could have found, and certainly more so than Pakistanis, but he deliberately made them Pakistani immigrants to show the realistic pressures that even the "terrorists" are placed under that lead to these decisions, and to shed light on our misunderstandings of their motivations. The young man's family moving away from Pakistan is not-unlike many immigrants moving to the U.S., trying to hold on to a job, earn a work visa, and make enough money to bring their families' over...
The first couple times Clooney is asked to explain things (to the White House lady, then his son), he opens with "it's complicated" to preface an explanation that will leave us with no clear choice... no answer that seems morally right or reprehensible.
They were speaking Urdu. Urdu is nothing but a mix of Hindi and Farsi words in Hindi syntax. Which is why they're very similar.
At least the father of the boy had a strong Punjabi accent in his Urdu.
Off course Pakistanis speak hindi, well Urdu but they are practically the same thing, like a Spaniard talking to a Mexican.
You know what the Queen said? If I had balls, I'd be King.
Don't know about the language part, I assumed it was Urdu.
But the reason why they spoke it was because they were "guest workers" which is not far from slaves.
Just like the US uses mexicans for cheap slave labour, the arab countries use people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Philippines etc.
Yes, I read that countries like the United Arab Emirates import thousands of cheap "workers" from Pakistan, India, Nepal, China,... to build fancy skyscrapers.
But are they in Iran? Is this ever explicitly mentioned? At one point, they are told to learn the language: Arabic. Now I know that Arabic is also spoken in some parts of Iran, but isn't it more likely that they are on the southern shore of the Persian gulf in an Arab country?
They are in the unnamed, fictional "Emirate". "The Emirate" is portrayed as an Arabic country and there is one clue in the movie where it is located - south of Iran (when Nasir and Woodman are talking about using Iranian pipelines to Europe). The "map" drawn in the sand makes "the Emirate" look like part of the UAE.
- Anwar
But when the son has to translate for his father, what language were the employers speaking?
And what did language did they use to communicate with the blue-eyed arab?
Wasim, his father and his friend Farooq are itinerant workers from Pakistan, working (and then laid off) in an unnamed Persian Gulf Emirate where the native language is Arabic. The locals speak Arabic.
It is not clarified what language is spoken during Wasim and Farooq's exchanges with Mohammed Sheik Agiza (MSA, the "blue-eyed Egyptian"). It could be Arabic, or perhaps their native Urdu.
MSA appears to be an educated person of some means; we know that he travels internationally (at least to Iran to purchase a black market Stinger missile), and according to the CIA briefing on Prince Nasir, was employed by the Emirate's Water Ministry. It is plausible that he speaks more than one language, although we observe that he does not know Farsi in his encounter with Bob in Tehran.
In a nutshell, Urdu and Hindi are generally the same( I speak Urdu and I can perfectly understand and speak in Hindi, or at least 98% of it). They were speaking Urdu in the movie to each other.
shareUrdu and Hindi are NOT the same. Dumbed down Hindi can be understood by Urdu speakers, but when someone speaks proper pure Hindi an Urdu speaker would only understand 10% or so.
Then I guess India doesn't speak " proper pure Hindi" since I have a perfect conversation with all of them and they understand me.
shareTry watching PTV news and then an Indian news channel- in formal situations they are very different.
shareHere's what wikipedia has to say about it (emphasis mine):
Urdu is often contrasted with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani.[8] The main differences between the two are that Standard Urdu is conventionally written in Nastaliq calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and draws vocabulary more heavily from Persian and Arabic than Hindi,[9] while Standard Hindi is conventionally written in Devanāgarī and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit comparatively[10] more heavily.[6] Some linguists nonetheless consider Urdu and Hindi to be two standardized forms of the same language;[11][12] however, others classify them separately due to sociolinguistic differences.[13]
If you guys remember the first scene (shot) of the movie where some people get into the bus with some weapons (tools mostly) in hands.they were all Indians by the looks , dressing and the language they speak etc.. and also to support this the bus they get into is a "TATA" manufactured one..
i couldn't even relate that scene with the rest of the movie.. and as soon as the scene cuts we are shown IRAN..and George Clooney..!
Any thoughts on this..?
That scene depicts itinerant workers in the fictional Emirate's oil fields, boarding a bus in the morning to go to work. They are of mixed ethnicity. According to the screenplay, they are "Pakistani and Filipino laborers" (scene 19). Wasim and his father Saleem are supposed to be among them, although I don't recall seeing them in that scene. It is the morning of the day that they will all be laid off, due to the Emirate turning their oil fields over from Connex to the Chinese.
Wait a second...
But the scene in Tehran where Bob is at the Amiri Brother's party, they're all speaking Persian right?
Sounded like Farsi, I've got a lot of Persian friends.
I agree though, Wasim and his family and friends were speaking Urdu for the most part.
His Arabic although quite poor, was at a decent conversational level; as is evidenced when he speaks to the Arab businessman at the docks whom he asks for a job, obviously in Arabic, but the guy still remarks to him: "If you want to work here, learn the language. Learn Arabic".
He did have difficulty reading and writing it, later shown when he's at the Madrassa struggling to write out an Arabic sentence.
When the Defecation hits the Oscillation.
But the scene in Tehran where Bob is at the Amiri Brother's party, they're all speaking Persian right?Right. In the missile sale scene, which takes place in Tehran, Bob even says to the blue-eyed Egyptian MSA (in Farsi) "You don't speak Farsi, do you, you son of a goat?"
I also thought the same - there were turbaned Sikhs in that group as well. They were clearly Indians. I think they intended to show migrant pakistanis but somehow took a shot of an Indian crowd.
shareThere is some misconception here.
1. There is or was no language called Hindustani. However, during the later 19th century onwards, Urdu began to be referenced (in a very limited way) as Hindustani (Hindustan itself is the URDU word for India).
2. Urdu and Hindi are comparable languages because the syntax (sentence structure and grammar) are the same as Hindi. However, they are also NOT comparable because the vocabulary is completely different.
3. Due to the sizeable population of muslims in India and due to Bollywood movies (which are actually Urdu movies although they are officially released as Hindi movies), many Indians can understand Urdu.
4. Yes, the scripts are different. Sanskrit was originally written in many scripts including Brahmee and Dewanaagaree. Hindi uses the latter as script.
You're right. "proper pure" Hindi is not spoken in most parts of India.
Modern Hindi is a mix of many languages, including Persian and, of late, English.
If pure Persian words are used in Urdu, it will be difficult for us (Hindi speakers) to understand.
"Bollywoodised" Hindi (used in movies) is close to Urdu - which is a reason why many hindi speakers can understand Urdu to an extent.
I agree - Urdu and Hindi are not the same although the syntax is Hindi in both cases.
The vocabulary is a mix of Urdu and Hindi. The proportion would also depend on the region and that may make Urdu easy or difficult to understand for a Hindi speaker (and vice versa).
Knowing Hindi, I can follow 80-90% of PTV (pakistan TV) news. But I doubt if they would be able to follow Sanskritised (pure) Hindi.
What MSA speaks appears to be Arabic.
Note that the new recruits from pakistan are learning Arabic very sincerely. They could speak broken arabic even earlier in the movie.
So, towards the end of the movie, I guess they were able to converse in Arabic quite well.
Its Tehran. I believe they mention that several times in the movie.
You know what the Queen said? If I had balls, I'd be King.
The beginning scenes are set in Tehran. Later the movie takes place in Lebanon and in the unnamed Emirate - definitely not Iran.
- Anwar
---
One man's sockpuppet is another man's freedom fighter.
1. pakistanis don't speak Farsi (unless they learn it on their own).
2. The official language there is Urdu which is nothing but (Hindi + Farsi) words in Hindi syntax. If you know Hindi (which itself has many Persian words now due to several centuries of muslim rule in India), you are likely to understand a quite a bit of Urdu.
3. The pakistanis in the movie were speaking Urdu with a Punjabi accent. After partition from India, a very large part of Punjab became pakistani territory. Their inhabitants were also punjabi-speaking muslims. However, the dialects of Punjabi spoken in pakistan are different from the ones spoken in Indian Punjab.
1. pakistanis don't speak Farsi (unless they learn it on their own).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Pakistan#Persian_.28cultural _language.29
Persian is spoken by a sizeable proportion of Pakistanis. Although Persian has no official status, it had been the lingua franca for a thousand years and a preferred language amongst the educated Muslim elite, and was the official and cultural language of the Mughal Empire and other Turkic Empires and various Muslim princely states based in what is now Pakistan. The Persian speaking Qizilbash tribe settled in northern regions of modern Pakistan and their numbers were further increased with the arrival of tens of thousands of Qizilbash refugees from neighboring Afghanistan when they were termed enemies of the state by the then Emir of Afghanistan for allegedly siding with the British Raj in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839 to 1842). Persian was officially abolished from the region with the arrival of the British to the province of Sindh in 1843 and Punjab in 1849 to minimize the influence of Persia and Afghanistan on the regions that now make up Pakistan and integrate these regions with the rest of South Asia under a common Urdu language. Nevertheless Persian culture continues to influence the country to this day. It has influenced and formed the base for many of Pakistan's native languages, and has greatly influenced Urdu in more recent times. It is still spoken and understood by the educated elite as a literary and prestigious language, especially in the fields of music (Qawwali) and art. The National Anthem of Pakistan is in Persian.share
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