Classical Arabic

Lord Wright of Richmond, former British Ambassador to Syria, writes in a letter in today's FT that if "classical Arabic" means the language of the Koran, it is best heard today in south Arabia. He says some years ago a bespectacled English traveller in a remote mountain village in Yemen heard a girl running to her mother and saying (with all the conjugations, declensions and duals in perfect order), "Oh my mother, I have seen a man and there were, upon his two eyes, two jewels!"

Acronym of the day: ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy)