According to a list of Egyptian hieroglyphs I was looking at today, Ancient Egyptian uses the same ideogram for "enemy" as it does for "foreigner".
And the sign for "pertaining to" is a picture of a man with a sharp knife.
Much as I distrust the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I can't help thinking that Ancient Egypt would not have been a fun place to travel to on a diplomatic mission.
Technorati tags: linguistics, humour, George Bush, Egyptian
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