When Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan hit theaters in 2006, audiences assumed the gibberish-sounding language was some approximation of Kazakh. They were completely wrong.

Cohen, who is Jewish and speaks fluent Hebrew, was speaking his native tongue the entire time. His co-star Ken Davitian (who played Azamat) responded in Armenian. Two guys pretending to be from Kazakhstan, speaking Middle Eastern languages to each other, and nobody noticed.

The Ultimate Linguistic Troll

This wasn't laziness—it was deliberate comedy genius. Cohen knew that Western audiences couldn't distinguish between Central Asian languages anyway, so why bother learning Kazakh? Hebrew worked perfectly for the absurdist tone he was going for.

The few Hebrew speakers in theaters had a completely different experience watching the film. While everyone else heard "foreign movie gibberish," they caught every word of Cohen casually discussing mundane topics or occasionally saying things that had nothing to do with the subtitles on screen.

Kazakhstan's Confused Response

The Kazakh government initially banned the film and condemned it as offensive to their national image. Officials were furious about the portrayal of their country as backward and primitive.

But here's the twist: they eventually realized the movie was fantastic advertising. Tourism to Kazakhstan increased by 10 times after the film's release. By 2012, the country's foreign minister actually thanked Cohen for the publicity boost.

The government even adopted "Very Nice!" as an official tourism slogan in 2020, fully embracing the Borat phenomenon they once despised.

Why Hebrew?

Cohen grew up in a Jewish family in London and spent time on a kibbutz in Israel during his youth. Hebrew is essentially his second language. When creating Borat's voice and mannerisms, defaulting to Hebrew was natural—and hilarious for anyone in on the joke.

It also added another layer to Cohen's satirical commentary. Here was a character embodying antisemitic stereotypes and casual bigotry, being performed by a Jewish actor literally speaking Hebrew. The irony was intentional.

A Pattern of Linguistic Chaos

This wasn't Cohen's only language fake-out:

In The Dictator, his character Admiral General Aladeen speaks a mix of Hebrew and made-up words
Bruno featured similarly improvised "Austrian German" that native speakers found baffling
Ali G's slang was an exaggerated mishmash that confused both British and American audiences

Cohen has built a career on making people uncomfortable while they're too confused to realize exactly how they're being mocked. The Hebrew-as-Kazakh trick was just the most successful example.

Fifteen years later, most people still don't know that Borat was speaking a real language—one with millions of speakers who found the whole thing absolutely hilarious.

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