Hostage Letter Written by Tehran

This won't exactly come as shocking news. But it's interesting, nonetheless: The latest British hostage letter wasn't actually written by a native English speaker.* * Its combination of "out-of-tune" phrases and awkward syntax leads to University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman to believe that Leading Seaman Faye Turney's "confession" was "largely dictated by [the] Iranian captors."

Over at the Language Log, he picks apart the note, line-by-line. Here's a sample:

The first problem is between the first and second words in the salutation, "To British People". This feels wrong -- L/S Turney ought to be addressing herself "To the British People". As a syntactician of slavic origin is said to have explained, "in English, is sometimes necessary to use article". Persian lacks definite articles, and so the subtleties of their use in English are likely to be difficult for native speakers of Persian to master. For example, in the International Bulletin of the Tudeh Party of Iran for May 2006, we find:

Unlike some of the political forces in Iran, Tudeh Party of Iran does not believe that the external intervention in Iran is the way to achieve freedom and democratic rights for Iranian people.

Like Haninah says, "Not a shocker. But at least it's something better than idle speculation, which has been the currency of choice on these issues."

Meanwhile, I'm curious to hear what you guys think of this story that's making the rounds:

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines...

The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or
Afghanistan.

(High five: RC, Drudge)