Sorry, Dave, I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was your quote. Since you had the excerpt in a blockquote, I thought it was pretty obvious that it was a Monitor error.

Yeah, John, I have vague recollections of those extra dots and such, used primarily, it seemed to me, to give appropriate pronunciation to Arabicized foreign words. My Arabic interest never got much further west than Libya, so I didn't run across much of that.

The 10 or so dialects that I "focused" on were sufficient to hold my interest for 20 years. Ahem.

Also, Ahmadinejad's brand of folk religion, with the claims that the hidden Imam is directing the country's affairs, and bathing him in light

Maybe it's true......

Boyd: North African dialects of Arabic (i.e. 'Maghrebi') often have a 'V' sound, indicated by an extra dot under the letter 'fa'. There are so many loan words from French that they had to make some adjustments. Similarly, Maghrebi Arabic will indicate a 'P' sound with a dot under a 'ba'.

Classical Arabic, of course, has neither a 'V' or 'P' sound natural to it.

I speak several languages but neither Arabic nor Farsi is one of them. I suspect you're right. I just quoted; it's the Monitor's flub.

The supposed Arabic quote strikes me as incorrect, at least as far as it being in Arabic. While I don't claim fluency, I'm still pretty familiar with the language, as well as having a bit of Farsi understanding. Since there's no "v" equivalent in Modern Standard Arabic (there may be a dialect with it, but I'm not familiar with one), and the tendency in Farsi (but not Arabic) to end words in "-e" or "-ye", I'd be willing to bet that the quote is in Farsi, not Arabic.

I don't know what that says about the rest of their article, but I'm pretty sure they missed the boat on that point.

Here ends the linguistic nerd portion of your comments. We return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Ali Sistani is deserving of praise as the Monitor reminds us. His example and teaching stand in stark opposition to Khomeinism and as such he presents a rebuke and threat to the Iranian ruling oligarchy.

Michael Rubin claimed last week in the L.A. Times that "the majority of Iran's grand ayatollahs oppose the concept of theological rule. Not by coincidence, the majority are now in prison or under house arrest." There is a base of religous opposition to the regime.

Also, Ahmadinejad's brand of folk religion, with the claims that the hidden Imam is directing the country's affairs, and bathing him in light, are offending other clerics as well.