Last night, I saw Adam Sandler's movie "You Don't Mess with the Zohan".The comedy was hilarious at many points but rude, crude, and literally "cheeky" at other points. (It has some scenes not for the prudish nor for children.) Not a great movie but I got enough good laughs to be satisfied.

Rather than going into a detailed review of the film, I figure I can do more good by giving a glossary for some of the Arabic (A), Hebrew (H), and Yiddish(Y) words & references I recollect from the movie.

• Abba (H) - Father, Daddy
• Boker tov (H) - Good morning.
• Fattoush (A) - A Middle Eastern salad. (One of the characters turns out to have been named Fattoush. I wonder if the joke was that it sounded like "fat tush" or that it was akin to a US tough guy named "tatter salad". Maybe both.<g>)
• Feygeleh (Y) - "Little bird", often slang reference to a male homosexual.
• Imma / Eemma (pronounced like "ee-mah"] (H) - Mother, Mum
• ShabaH / (A) - Phantom. "The Phantom" character often wore a maroonish headband with the word written in Arabic: شبح
  [Note below on movie head gear texts.]
  
• Sharmuta (A) - Slang for "whore" or "skank". The expletive was uttered by one of the hair stylists as she was hanging up the phone. (The word has also been picked by Israeli Hebrew slang.)

If you recollect any other Arabic or Hebrew words from the Zohan movie that I missed, let me know.

ADDITION & UPDATES (as of 26 June2008)

Transliteration note: I use an upper case "H" to represent the "ح" in Arabic. There isn't an equivalent sound in English. It is an emphatic "h" sound that some describe as the sound you might make if you just swallowed something really hot or spicy.

• Sheket (H) - Quiet; shut up.
• Arabic numbers as in reciting a phone number. One of the gags involved a character giving a phone number in Arabic. The way he says them is what's funny independent of knowing exactly what he said. (I'm not going to give away the joke itself.) Anyway, here are the numbers 0 through 9 in Arabic:
  
0. Sifr (By the way, we get the word "cipher" from this word.)
1. WaaHid
2. Ithnaan
3. Thalaatha
4. 'Arba'a
5. Khamsa
6. Sitta
7. Sab'aa
8. Tamaaniya
9. Tis'aa

"Don't Mess with the Yonatan,"
Jonathan "J.D." Abolins

PS.: The cleverest headgear text gag I ever saw was on the "Blazing Saddles" movie poster. It depicted Mel Brooks wearing a Sioux chief's war bonnet and the beadwork said "כשר לפסח" ( Kasher LePesach" "kosher for Passover" in Hebrew).