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Do you remember "Perfect Strangers," the late 1980s-early 1990s sitcom? About an indeterminately foreign shepherd guy who showed up on his "cousin" Larry Appleton's Chicago apartment doorstep and moved in with him?
This will blow your mind.
Thread.
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This will blow your mind.
Thread.
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A bunch of us in grad school at Berkeley had this epiphany fifteen years ago but I was just reminded of it today in Turkish class.
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Part of the premise of the show was that it's not clear if Balki, a lovable rustic claiming to hail from the (fictional) island of "Mipos", was *actually* Larry's cousin. The specter of that doubt hung over all of the pair's antics.
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On the basis of two details -- the name Balki and the island of Mipos -- we can vaguely place his origin in the eastern Aegean. And we can appreciate the cosmopolitan depths of the show creators' genius.
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"Mipos" (μήπως) in Greek means "Perhaps...?"
(It is only used in questions; a statement "perhaps ... x" is ίσως. These words are often confused by foreigners speaking Greek.)
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(It is only used in questions; a statement "perhaps ... x" is ίσως. These words are often confused by foreigners speaking Greek.)
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On the other hand, in Turkish the word "belki" -- which sounds much like "balki" to an Anglophone's ear -- means: "Maybe."
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So now you can see how, thanks to these sly multilingual gestures, Balki-from-Mipos' true relation to Cousin Larry Appleton is left aggressively, insistently unclear.
Thank you and καληνύχτα/iyi geceler to all
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Thank you and καληνύχτα/iyi geceler to all
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