
#REDIRECT Persian language
Persian (فارسی), (local name in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan: ''Fârsi''), Pârsi (older local name, but still used by some speakers), Tajik language (a Central Asian dialect) or Dari (Afghanistan) (Another local name in Tajikistan, Afghanistan), is a language spoken in Iran,Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain. Persian has official-language status in some of those countries. There are over 75 million native speakers [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1000]. It belongs to the Indo-European languages language family. It is of the Subject Object Verb type. ==History== Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, and within that family it belongs to the Indo-Iranian languages (Aryan) branch. Scholars believe the Iranian subbranch consists of the following chronological linguistic path: Old Persian (Avestan and Achaemenids Persian) → Middle Persian (Pahlavi, Parthian, and Sassanids Persian) → Modern Persian (Dari, c. 900 to present Persian). Old Persian, the main language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, should not be confused with the non-Indo-European Elamite language (see Behistun inscription). Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified from the complex conjugation and declension system of Old Persian to the almost completely regularized morphology and rigid syntax of Modern Persian, in a manner often described as paralleling the development of English language. Additionally, many words were introduced from neighboring languages, including Aramaic language and Greek language in earlier times, and later Arabic language and to a lesser extent Turkish language. In more recent times, some Western European words have entered the language (notably from French language and English language). The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments, new words and idioms are created and enter into Persian like any other language. In Iran the Academy of Persian Language and Literature is a center that evaluates the new words in order to initiate and advise its Persian equivalent. In Afghanistan, the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan does the same for Afghan Persian (among other languages). ==Nomenclature== ''Persian'', the more widely used and official name of the language in English language, is the Hellenized form of the native term ''Parsi''. ''Farsi'' is the Arabicized form of Parsi due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Its use in the English language is very recent. Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fârsi" in modern usage. ISO, the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, and many other sources call the language Persian. The government of Afghanistan uses both "Dari" and "Persian" in English communications. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature as well as most linguists and lexicographers believe that "Farsi" is not the appropriate term used for the Persian language in English. In the ISO 639-1, the local names form the basis for the language codes and for this reason "fa" is the designation for the Persian language in that system. ==Dialects and close languages== Communication is generally mutually intelligible between Iranians, Tajiks, and Persian-speaking Afghans; however, by popular definition: *Dari (Afghanistan) is the local name for the eastern dialect of Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, including Hazaragi — spoken by the Hazara people of central Afghanistan. *Tajik language could also be considered an eastern dialect of Persian, but, contrary to Iranian and Afghan Persian, it is written in the Cyrillic script. The following are some of the closely related languages of various Iranian peoples within modern Iran proper: * Guilaki, or Gilaki — spoken in northern Iran, mainly in the province of Guilan. * Talysh, or Talishi — spoken in northern Iran and southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. * Luri, or Lori — spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian province of Lorestan. * Tat (''a.k.a.'' Tati, or Eshtehardi) — spoken in parts of the Iranian provinces of East Azarbaijan, Zanjan Province and Qazvin Province. * Dari (Zoroastrian) or Gabri — spoken originally in Yazd and Kerman by the Zoroastrians of Iran. Also called Yazdi by some. *Dzhidi language or Judæo-Persian — a collection of languages or dialects spoken by the many varied and ancient Jewish communities throughout the former greatest extent of the Persian Empire, one of the many Jewish languages. ==Orthography and vocabulary== Modern Persian uses a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (see below). After the conversion of Persia to Islam, it took approximately one hundred fifty years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, the Persian language (Middle Persian or Pahlavi at that time) used two different alphabets: a modified version of the Aramaic alphabet, and a native Iranian alphabet called ''Dîndapirak'' (literally: religion script). Despite their shared alphabet, however, Persian and Arabic are entirely different languages, from different linguistic families and with different phonology and grammar. Persian adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet for its use, due to the fact that four sounds that exist in Persian do not exist in Arabic. Additionally, it changes the shape of another two. Some people call this modified alphabet the Perso-Arabic alphabet. The additional four letters are: {| border="1" align="center" style="text-align: center" | sound | shape | Unicode name |- | [p] |style="font-size: larger"| پ | Peh |- | (ch) |style="font-size: larger"| چ | Tcheh |- | (zh) |style="font-size: larger"| ژ | Jeh |- | [g] |style="font-size: larger"| گ | Gaf |} The letters different in shape are: {| border="1" align="center" style="text-align: center" | sound | original Arabic letter | modified Persian letter | name |- | [k] |style="font-size: larger"| ك |style="font-size: larger"| ک | Kaf |- | [j] and [i:], or rarely [a:] |style="font-size: larger"| ي or ى |style="font-size: larger"| ی | Yeh |} The diacritical marks used in the Arabic script, a.k.a. ''harakat'', are also used in Persian, although some of them have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic ''Damma'' is pronounced as /u/, while in Persian it is pronounced as /o/. Persian also adds the notion of a pseudo-space to the Arabic script, called a Zero Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ) by the Unicode Standard. It acts like a space in disconnecting two otherwise-joining adjacent letters, but does not have a visual width. It should also be noted that many Persian words with an Arabic root are spelled differently from the original Arabic word. ''Alef with hamza below'' ( إ ) always changes to ''alef'' ( ا ); ''teh marbuta'' ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to ''teh'' ( ت ) or ''heh'' ( ه ); and words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول). Other languages, such as Pashto or Urdu, have taken those notions and have sometimes extended them with new letters or punctuation. There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from the Arabic language, English language, French language, and Turkic languages. Also, the words that have originated in the languages spoken in the region before the Arab invasion are usually changed in the pronunciation. Pinglish is the name given to texts written in Persian using the English language alphabet. It is common for writing emails, posting to forums, and chatting. ==Phonology== Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels , , ) with the short vowels (, , ). In Modern Persian, this distinction of quantity is neutralized in most environments; short vowels lengthen in closed syllables. Because the neutralization is not complete and other processes, including a number of vowel quality alternations, depend on this distinction of length, it is not possible to analyze the underlying vowel inventory of Modern Persian without length. On the other hand, for reasons of concreteness, it is not desirable to analyze the short and long vowels as identical in quality (with their respective differences being derived by rule.) Thus, the most concrete and adequate representation of the vowel inventory is that given below. Also note that and are affricates, not stops.
==Morphology==
Suffixes predominate, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender.
==Syntax==
Normal sentences are structured as "(S) (PP) (O) V". If the object is definite, then the order is "(S) (O + "rɑ:") (PP) V".
==See also==
* Dzhidi language
* Persian literature
* Pahlavi literature
* Persian grammar
* Persian and Urdu
* List of English words of Persian origin
==References==
* Mace, J. (2003). ''Persian Grammar: For reference and revision''. Routledge-Curzon, London.
* Mahootian, S. (1997). ''Persian''. Descriptive Grammars. Routledge, London.
* Windfuhr, G. L. (1987). Persian. In Comrie, B., editor, ''The Worlds Major Languages'', pages 523–546. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
==External links==
* [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=PRS Ethnologue report for Eastern Persian]
* [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=PES Ethnologue report for Western Persian]
* [http://www.easypersian.com/ Easypersian.com]
Iranian languages
Classical languages
Languages of Afghanistan
Languages of Iran
Languages of Tajikistan
Languages of Uzbekistan
az:Fars dili
fa:فارسی
hy:Պարսկերեն
th:ภาษาเปอร์เซีย
== Urdu and Persian == Hey all... I am a big fan of the Persian language, primarily since as an Indian I've come into a vast inheritance known as Urdu, which is essentially a mix of Sanskrit, Prakrit (proto-Indian language), Persian and Arabic, a sister language of Hindi. Urdu, as an Indian language, has a vast literature and some incredible fusions of Persian-Islamic and traditional Indian culture. Much of modern Indian language, especially Hindi/Urdu (which are essentially blended into a mix called Hindustani) has huge amounts of Persian influence. I was wondering if the Persian page might, if only in a small section, include a word on its massive influence on India through Mughal culture and, in particular, Urdu. The ties between high Urdu literature and Persian literature is also of great interest, with understandings of how Sufism altered in crossing to the Indian subcontinent, how the ghazal retained or changed form to adapt to Indian art. Heck, even some Hindu writers have takhallus! So, hope to hear more on this. --User:LordSuryaofShropshire 01:38, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC) Oh, by the way, in India, we mostly refer to Persian as Farsi. I think it's mainly because Zoroastrian Persians, whom we refer to as Parsis, settled in India in the 8th century under the protection of a local Hindu king. Also, I seem to have read somewhere that the original area was called Fars. Beats me. Peace --User:LordSuryaofShropshire 01:40, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC) This needs wikification, fact checking, and removing irrelevant parts (possibly also checking for copyvios). Please add to the main article after that. User:Roozbeh 16:15, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) I would think this is largely true, though a bit gushing. User:Refdoc 22:18, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) I suggest if we want to keep the stuff below, then the solution would be to add a section on Influence of Persian language on other languages. What can be said about Urdu can probably said too (to maybe a lesser degree, but nevertheless) about Turkish. Also there is a fair number of English words coming either straight out of Farsi or via Urdu out of Farsi User:Refdoc 23:24, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) ===Persian and Urdu in the Indian subcontinent=== Among many notable attributes of the Persian language was its great adaptability and influence in India. When the Mughal conquest of India had resulted in a vast Islamic empire, especially in the North and middle areas, a new hybrid language began to form around the 10th and 11th centuries CE, one that would eventually be known as Urdu ("tent" in Turkish in allusion to the army barracks of visiting troops). It grew from the interaction of Muslim soldiers and native Hindu peoples, merging with the local Prakrit and Sanskrit-based Khari boli (standing tongue), a proto-Hindi dialect of the north. Soon, the Persian script and nastaliq form of cursive was adopted, with additional figures added to accommodate the Indian phonic system, and a rich new language based on Indian grammar and a predominantly Persian (and indirectly Arabic) base of words came into being. Urdu soon gained distinction as the most prized of languages in the Persian courts of India and to this day retains a distinctive place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals, and culture, such as Sufism, came to both influence and be affected by Indian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle and South Eastern heritages. Urdu is known as the "Kohinoor" ("Mountain of Light"), a famed and massive diamond, of Indian languages due to its richness of sound and piquant ability to emote. Persian language and literature has not infrequently been termed an adopted classical language of India beside Sanskrit due to its centrality to Urdu and Indian tradition. I would like to propose that we remove the section on the Persian influence on Urdu. The section, as it is written, places too great an emphasis on this influence, which to my knowledge is confined almost entirely to lexical borrowings. In this, it is no more noteworthy than other cases of the same, e.g. French and English, French and Germanic. It certainly doesnt deserve a section in the *Persian language* article; it should be moved to the Urdu article. --User:Maziart 09:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) : I copied this section to a new article, called Persian and Urdu, a few months ago. While there is useful information in it, I agree that it simply does not belong in the Persian language article. Rather, I've been wanting to create a section called something like ''Language Contact'' on this page. This new section would document both imports and exports, for multiple languages, not just Urdu. Both lexical items and other linguistics elements would be treated. --User:Jonsafari 19:27, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) The old persian is DARI that still use in Afghanistan ( the land of Persia) and because of inviroment it changes to FARSI now it Use in Iran. and Urdu that has lots of Persian words and use in India and Pakistan. : Since the Persian and Urdu section has been copied to a new article, Im going to delete the section in the Persian language article. I think it would be a good idea to have a section on language contact. --User:Maziart 07:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree. It was a good idea to get rid of the information there, since it had more to do with the development of Urdu than with Persian. In the future tho, when making edits like that, consider that the information you're deleting might somehow be ''related'' to the article, and if it needs its own article, create it, or in this case, since it already ''has'' its own article, be sure to add a link to the relevant article in the "See also" or "Related articles" sections. (I did it this time.:-p) :-) User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 08:17, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC) ==Phonology Section== I just added a more detailed description of the vowel inventory, but the consonant inventory needs to be worked on. --User:Maziart 09:39, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) ====Vowels==== Thanks to IceKarma for the pretty vowel chart. An alternative vowel chart for Persian can be found [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/farsiipa.html here]. Discussion concerning the merits of both charts (specifically about the two low vowels) are still up in the air. I'm curious what others have to say about this. --User:Jonsafari 12:09, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I'm glad you like the vowel chart. User:Karmosin put me up to it and supplied the source information. The chart at the above URL looks to be more or less equivalent, except the vowels are indicated in the "reference" positions instead of taking account of Farsi-specific pronounciation. User:IceKarmaUser talk:IceKarma#new 16:54, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC) == Skip the Nationalism == Just wanted to add, skip the nationalism on "Persian pride" and only say relevant stuff. There is no hidden agenda. The Persian empire got conquered, and the conquerers influenced the Persian culture. It's pretty much a natural thing. People influence people. The language and culture changed and are changing, get over it. And btw, yes there is "Farsi music". - Arjan == Parsi/Farsi/Persian controversy == Hello all I am new to this, so please forgive me if I post this incorrectly both place-wise and code-wise. In any case, in terms of "Persian", "Farsi", etc. as an Iranian and Persian I refer to myself in English as both Iranian and Persian interchangably, much as a Greek in English would refer to himself as Greek, rather than "Hellenes". I do the same for the language. However, to assume that all Iranians use "Farsi" simply because that word exists is completely farcical. I am proud to use Parsi and include the /p/ phenome, because that is the true name of the language. The last I checked, there was no "Farsi" gulf, and no "Farsi" music, but I am well aware of the Persian/Parsi equivalents. Those who force "Farsi" down both Iranian and non-Iranian throats, in my opinion, have an agenda. - user:Javan-e-Irooni The proper name and most common name is Farsi. Brittanica refers to "Farsi", not Persian. Lonely Planet and Collins Gem publish "Farsi" phrase books. Oxford publishes an English-"Farsi" dictionary. The International Bible Society publishes a "Farsi" bible. "FarsiNet" is a major Iranian website. Even the damn Scientologists have "farsi.dianetics.org". I think that's pretty conclusive. - User:MMGB Just a side note: the ISO language code listing lists it under "Persian (Farsi)", but the code itself is "FA". :So what? The ISO language code for German is "DE" and for Spanish is "ES". What's your point? --user:k1 == "Near the Fountainhead ? == QUOTE Farsi is an old language that has roots from over a thousand years ago. /QUOTE Non-information? Do you know any natural language that does not have roots from over a thousand years ago? -- user:Vassili Nikolaev I don't know where that quote comes from but to me it seems you misunderstand the quote (perhaps because the quote is scanty). As a Persian speaker who also knows a few other languages, I can tell you that when it comes to etymology of Indo-European roots, in the Persian language you are definitely drinking from the fountainhead or very near to it, whereas in most other languages the meanings are blurry and fuzzy or just invisible. Example: did you ever notice how the spelling of 'daughter' in English is a little strange? Why? Because it comes from German 'Tochter'. So we go to German. But can we really 'see' the word Tochter in German? Not really. But the same word in Persian is Dokhtar, and even an uneducated Persian speaker can see "Dokht + ar" ... and in Persian you have both parts in numerous other constructs .... for instance: Shahdokht = shah + dokht = princess. This is just one small example. I think the quote meant that the roots in Persian even to this day are, for lack of a better word, "original" or preserved. -- user:k1 Many people say things like this about their own languages. I personally believe that "daughter" is a very bad example because the Indo-European root is nearly identical (it is *dhughəter), and it means "daughter-in-law". Also, very little English vocabulary comes from German; this is a common misconception. A great deal of English words have a common source with German, but not more than a few come from it. For example, "daughter" does NOT originate from German "Tochter" but rather from Middle English "doughter" which in turn comes from Old English "dohtor" from Proto-Germanic (NOT German) *dohtēr. *''dohtēr'' almost immediately turns into an English form and a German form (at least after the split between East, West, and North Germanic). Also, given the wealth of mostly unnessecary vocabulary English has, there are many words (such as "equine") that preserve directly the Indo-European root where other words do not (or at least not nearly as apparently; ie "horse"). Examples: equine + hippopotamus both from *ekʷo, hound + cynic + kennel + corgi all from *kʷon (also believed by many to be the ultimate origin of *ekʷo), goose + smorgåsbord both from *ghans, etc. --User:Node ue 00:58, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) ------------------------------- == Again Fars/Persian/Parsi controversy == Likewise, one can offer numerous examples where "Persian" is used and not "Farsi". The fact is that the usage of term "Farsi" instead of "Persian" in the English language is fairly recent. The language itself however, is anything but recent. What is stated in the article is correct, the difference between "Persian" and "Farsi" in English language, is the same as "Spanish" and "Español". I just checked with three of my English dictionaries, and all three contain "Persian", referring to the Languag among other things (such as the Persian culture). So if we start calling the Persian language (in English) "Farsi", should we also do the same thing for the Persian culture? Calling it "Farsi culture"? Or should we only (for some strange reason) insist on calling the language "Farsi", but continue to call the culture "Persian"? What about "Persian literature"? The Persian language has been called "Persian" in English for centuries. Also, why not do the same thing with other languages? How about "Magyar" for "Hungarian" or "Deutsch" for "German" for starters? -- user:k1 : Well, the powers that be would stop us from using English language names for anything over the ''correct'', ''indigenous people'' names, lest saying otherwise not be ''political correctness''. I am certain that should Iran/Persia not be an Islamic country, that there would not be any qualms of social-sensitivity with refering to the language as Persian and Farsi interchangeably. I think your "Iran/Persia" gives me a clue as to the root of this confusion. Let me try to clarify. I am an Iranian. Ethnically, I am a Persian (on both sides of my parents). When people in English ask me where I am from or what my nationality is, the answer is "Iranian" (and not Persian). When they ask me what my language is, the answe is "Persian" (not Farsi). Now, I have noticed that many Iranians and even non-Iranians of the region, refer to themselves as "Persian". There are a number of reasons, I suppose, for this, which I won't get into in this talk -- it would go beyond the scope of this discussion. But one thing I have noticed is that the majority of Persian people themselves, refer to themselves as Iranians and not Persian. Iranian people themselves have always refered to Iran as "Iran" and not "Persia"; as evidenced by our long and rich literature and even pre-Islamic books. The name "Persia" is a Greek construct made up of "Pers + ia" ('ia' = suffix of location, as in Italia, Romania, etc) because the capital province of Iran during the old Persian Empire was the province of Pars (or Pers, as the Greeks must have pronounced it). The Pars province to this day is one of the provinces in Iran. Just as the Greek language has 'ia' as suffix of location, Persian has 'an' as suffix of location, thus, so many (hundreds) of place names in Iran ending with 'an', such as Iran, Tehran, Isafhan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Khorasan, etc ... Persian has other suffixes of location as well, a famous one is 'istan' as in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc ... and that one comes from a Persian verb, but the 'an' suffix is special. The name "Iran" is made up of "Ir (ayr) + an" which literally and etymologically means "Land of the Aryans" (not to be confused with the Nazi notion of the word "Aryan"). In the 1930's, Iran officially asked the world to refer to Iran as "Iran" instead of "Persia" -- a good idea in my opinion. However, this does not mean that now we should refuse to acknowledge that there is indeed a Persian culture, a Persian language, a Persian literature, Persian epics and other cultural elements that are "Persian". Afterall, there are few people on earth with as much legitimate claim to having a cultural identidy as the Persians. There is even a Persian calendar that is a solar calendar that is to this day, the main, and official calendar of Iran. The Persian language, regardless of what it is called, is the language that has produced one of the most wonderful literatures of all of humanity. It has seen many regimes come and go, and likely, it will see many more. I think you are mixing some different conepts, perhaps along with some errornous conclusions based on certain assumptions. The country is Iran, the main language of Iran is Persian (or Farsi, if you like), the largest ethnic group in Iran are the Persians, etc... Finally, I should like to add, that even those Iranians who are indeed Persian and prefer to refer to themselves as Persians, they have every right to do so, just as an Armenian from Iran has the right to be proud of his or her specific cultural identity, or a Kurd or any other ethnic group. -- user:k1 : I would agree with k1 wrt to preference of Persian for Farsi as the main term in English, were it not for the fact that most English speakers I have met so far will get glassy eyes when I say that I speak Persian, but understand immediately when I say I speak Farsi. But maybe this is a regional matter. It certainly is a rather anecdotal as an argument. User:Refdoc 23:17, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---------------------- == Dialect vs Language (Dari/Tajik/Farsi) == For the person who made the comment "Dari-speakers must be laughing" You only show your, pardon me for the accuracy of my word here, ignorance. There is no language called "Dari", Dari is just Persian with the old Khorasani accent (or Afghani accent of Persian today). The only reason you hear of a languae called 'Dari' today, is because Afghans do not like to call it Persian or Farsi. They even took the word Dari right out of Persian literature. I challenge you to find me one academic work older than 70 years, that makes a distinction between Persian and Dari. Or better yet, ask a so-called "Dari-speaker" to name a few of the great poets and writers of this "Dari" lanuges -- they will give you the names of Persian poets of the Khorasan terriroty, without even realizing that at that time there was not even a country called Afghanistan. : I knew that, I was making a pun In fact, the funniest thing was when an Afghan 'scholar' was referring to Ferdowsi as the great "Dari" poet. In case you don't know, Ferdowsi is the greatest poet of Persian epics, comparable to Homer for the Classical Greek. But if you study the work of Ferdowsi, it is all about "Iran", and he does not even refer to the language as "Dari" once. You would be hard pressed to go through two or three pages of his 55,000+ epic, the Shahnameh, and not encounter the word "Iran" a few times. The word "dari" comes from Persian "darbar" meaning "court" (dari means darbari, which means "pertaining to the court" or "belonging to the court"), and that refers to the court of the Sassanids who where the last Persian empire before they fell to the Arabs. Their court was just outside of Baghdad in Iraq today. The Persian language used for official communication (as opposed to the common or colloquial Persian language) was sometimes referred to as "Dari" or the "language of the Darbar (court)" ... and subsequently in some instances, some Persian poets (from all over the place and not just the Khorasan territory) have refered to the Persian language as "Dari" when appropriate. Examples include the great Persian poets Sa'di and Hafiz from Shiraz who have at times referred to Persian as Dari -- so does this mean that the language of Shiraz (capital of Pars province of Iran) is also Dari and not Persian?! :-) Only recently, some (perhaps most) Afghans from the country Afghanistan have insisted on referring to their language as "Dari" just to avoid calling their language Persian or Farsi. But how old is the country Afghanistan?! This would be tantamount to Austria digging deep into old German literature and finding an obscure word which means "German" but it's not "Deutsch" and start calling their language that name just to avoid using "German" (Deutsch) as the name of their language. But this "Dari language" is not even a dialect, it is just Persian with the Afghani accent (or I should say with the old Khorasani accent). Again, ask a so-called "Dari-speaking person" to name some of the great works and names of the "Dari language" literature for you and let me know who they are. -- user:k1 He's right! Dari is an accent. I would clearly understand what a Afghan is saying, if he were only to pronounce it properly. Secondly, there are many diverse Iranian ethnic groups: Balochis, Armenians, Azeris (Turkic), Turkmen, Gilakis etc... And only half of the countries population consists of Persians or Fars. user:Alireza Hashemi :Perhaps this is just your perception? First of all, you seem to have the mistaken notion that Dari is the only language of Afghanistan. Pashto definitely serves a more nationalistic purpose, since Dari is basically a dialect of Farsi, while Pashto is for-sure a unique language. :Second of all, just an accent? Do you really expect us to believe that? Dari and Tajik are unique dialects of Farsi, though they may be mutually intelligible (this is one hallmark of dialects by many definitions). :Third of all, who is to say that ''their'' pronunciation is "improper"? That is very POV, one could jst as easily say that yours is incorrect and ''theirs'' is proper. Veeeeeeeeeeery ethnocentric. Just a friendly warning: such "facts" shouldn't be expressed in Wikipedia articles (Talk: pages are OK). If you think some people would disagree vehemently with what you have said, ask a 3rd party (ie, in this case somebody that isn't Persian, Tajik, or Dari) Tajik is also an accent, I've listened to Tajik BBC and I understood everything which was said. :Again... an "accent"? --User:Node ue 01:11, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) No Node, it is not very POV and "Veeeeeeeeeeery ethnocentric" as you say. Accents are not "wrong" of course, but when someone totally messes up a word in a manner that clearly shows that that person doesn't even understand how the word is constructed, that is where I draw the line between correct and incorrect -- and that is the difference between having an accent (which is perfectly OK) and mispronounication (which is not OK). User:K1 15:55, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC) :Look a bit harder at this page and you will see that Alireza Hashemi said something along the lines of "I'd be able to understand an Afghanistan, if he were to only pronounce things correctly". :In addition, "accent" itself is Wikipedia:Inherent POV - an Ireland person believes they have no accent but that the United States of America has an American accent, while the American believes they have no accent and that the Irish person is the one "ignorance". The simple truth is that it's all a matter of perception. :Whether or not regionalisms show a disregard for etymology should be of no concern: as long as people understand what a word means, it works fine. They don't have to understand how it was formed. When you get irritated by things like that, you're inflating your ego. Just because you have an education and you speak Farsi as it is spoken by university professors does not make you better than anybody else, nor does it make you "right". In addition, it does not mean you don't have an accent. The simple truth is that ''everybody'' has an accent. There is no "neutral" accent. :As for the distinction between Dari, Farsi, Parsi (cf Ethnologue), Tajik, and perhaps Ossetic: to say they are just accents or just dialects is indeed POV. If you tell a Dari speaker that their language is really only an accent of Farsi, they will probably get upset. The same goes for Tajik and Ossetic (I think Parsi speakers themselves say Parsi is an accent or a dialect, so in that case it IS politically correct to characterize it that way in an encyclopedia). :One way to tell is this: If you go up to a random Moldavian and tell them (in English) that they speak Romanian language, they will agree, for Moldavian language and Romanian are for the most part identical (though a Moldavian-Romanian dictionary was published recently). However, if you go up to a Tajik and tell them (in English) that they speak Farsi, they will be offended or annoyed. ::But what if you ask the same Tajik, "Do you speak ''Persian''?". In my view, Farsi (Parsi) is the Iranian dialect of the Persian language. Dari, Farsi, and Tajik are the three major mutually intelligible dialects, along with Farsi, of Persian. User:Poccil_(User_Talk:Poccil)">User:Poccil|User:Poccil (User Talk:Poccil) 04:32, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)
:One last thing: in linguistics, there is no agreed-upon boundary between language, dialect, and sub-dialect. Some people will give you a percentage of cognation (percentage of words that have common roots), but it will differ from person to person and many people will even tell you that the words mean nothing in comparison; for example, in the case of the Sinitic languages, the term "dialect" is often used because it is a literal translation of the Mandarin (linguistics) "fangyan" (literally "regional speech"). However, to a China person, the boundaries between "fangyan" and "yuyan" (language) are different than the boundaries for a Brit are between "dialect" and "language". This is probably because the first usage of the term "fangyan" occured over two millennium ago, when what are now "languages" (in English terminology) had only slight differences. However, even as these dialects diverged to become separate languages, people still called them "fangyan". So basically, any language spoken within the Han (Chinese) ethnic group is "hanyu fangyan" (a Chinese dialect), while anything spoken outside is probably split according to the English division.
THis debate above is indeed highly POV and probably simply so as the majority of the participanst are Iranians instead of other speakers of the Persian language group.
A few remarks
* WRT to mispronounciation - how exactly ? How do you know how a word must be pronounced ? Why is one pronounciation 'right' and another 'wrong' ? The difference between Farsi an Dari pronounciation is often only vowels 'e' becomes 'a' in Dari. On other occasions Iranians will swallow large parts of the word as it is written while Afghans will pronounce it in the totality (mikhaam vs mikhaaham e.g.)
:::hehehe that is really so funny. when in Iran we say "mikhaam" instead of "mikhaaham", that is only conversational and informal language. what you are saying is like saying americans say "wanna" instead of "want to"!
That is exactly my point - Dari speakers use the "proper" pronounciation on many occasions where the common use within Iran is flattened and "dialect". User:Refdoc 23:37, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
*'Fountainhead' How exactly ? Iranians say "Merci"(French), Afghans "Tashakor"(Arabic derrived) while Kurds say "Sepos" (original and proper Persian) Can I now say the Kurds are closer to the fountain head of true Indoeuropean language ??? Hardly I would think. Just an accident of language development, I would say.
:::merci is recent and it is definitely not the only world for thank you. besides, not everybody uses it. i myself say "sepas". tashakkor is not "arabic derived", it is fully arabic.
No it is not the only word - you are obviously right, but it is the most common used - in daily language. The point I try to make is that it is silly to see Iranian Persian as the "proper" language and the central bit of the wheel, while Tajik and Dari are "aberrations" - they are not, they are equally valid developments from a common root. User:Refdoc 23:37, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
*Dari/Afghan is no culture as "previously not mentioned" ?? Why this? Have the Austrians no culture worth its name simply because they were considered Germans until mid 20th century ? People and languages develop, split and merge. What we are debating here is such a split, which might resolve or might develop into two/three very different languages in a few centuries time. Why is one side to be taken as the original while the other side of such a language split is seen as divergent ? User:Refdoc 22:43, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
:::can you tell me how this "Dari" language is different from Persian other than the accent and a few usages of words? when i listen to afghan politicians, or radio or tv or read their papers, i fully understand it, almost 100%. when iranian politicians visit afghanistan they speak the same language over there that they speak at home, not a "sepcial edition" version. did you know that it was only recently that by an act of parliament in afghanistan they decided to change the official name of the language from "Persian to "Dari"? it is strictly for political or artifical reasons. in fact, if you pay attention to the "Dari" of afghanistan media (and weblogs) you will see that they are increasingly using Iranian Persian. what does that mean? it means, they are using words, constructs and expressions that iranians use and afghans never used them before until just very recently (internet/iformation age). also plagiarism from iranian sources is incredibly rampant among afghan media! if "Dari" is a different language, how come pliagiarism from Persian sources is so rampant among afghan media and webloggers? the only difference between Iran's Persian language and afghanistan's "Dari" language, is that they (afghans) use significantly higher percentage of arabic words, they speak with a different accent and their vocabulary range is significantly lower than the persian used in Iran. none of those makes the two languages "different languages" or even one a dialog of the other. User:Amir1
Amir, you are seriously misunderstanding a lot of what is said above. And the supposedly increased use of Arabic within Dari - I am perfectly unclear what you base this upon - Dari speakers will often use Arabic words where Iranians will not, but also vice versa. As an Iranian teh Arabic words within Dari will jarr in your ear, so you might get this impressiuon, but do find some evidence for it please. But again, I am not fightimng to make Dair and tajik separate languages, I try to shift the Iran centric approach this article has/had towards recognising that other forms are equivalent and not simply lower forms and "dialect"User:Refdoc 23:37, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
== Uncommented reverts ==
There is a bit of a revert toing and fro-ing going on between various users. I think it would be better if this could be discussed here. I would agree that Uzbekistan is worth mentioning as large parts are indeed Tajik speaking. But I would like to have some confirmation for the numbers 49 or 75 million is a bit of a difference and should be clarifiable. I guess though that the 75 million is based on the erroneous assumptions that all Iranians are Farsi speakers as first language. Clarification ? User:Refdoc 22:48, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Well there are some panturkists that are wandering through internet and try to
advertise for thier political ambitions and unfortunately they try to impose thier political ambition on Historical discussions and created many havocs in Historical articles in this encyclopedia.moreever they are always anonymos and never discuss their edits.I think if anonymos users don't have the right to edit articles ,this will help to reduce these attacks. Jamshid
:There have been many good contributions from anonymous users on Wikipedia. As for the Pan-Turkist editors, there have been lots of good information in articles from them. Yes, some of the contributions are lies, propaganda, and vandalism, but I would love to be able to convert them to the Wikipedia policy and see them work together with us on the articles. Their opinion is important. They believe there was never any Old Persian language? Fine! We will write that in the article and then specify why we believe that is wrong. It's called WP:NPOV. User:Roozbeh 00:54, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
== Crappy article ==
I nominate this for crappiest language article. It has none of the zest and flair necessary to describe the history and/or signifigance of the language, nor does it have the technical content required to describe it linguistically. Half of the stuff seems made up. Someone fix it, as I don't know enough about Farsi to attempt to do it better. -IR
First off, when signing your name, you can type (not the quotations) "User:LordSuryaofShropshire 14:51, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)" and your name,date, time will appear after saving the edit. Anyway, thanks for the input. But unfortunately, while I agree I would prefer a slightly different style, bombasting with insults doesn't do the trick. Sometimes, when people who enjoy knowledge feel so strongly about, say, an article that doesn't meet their standards, they research it a bit and change the page accordingly. Maybe you can try something proactive instead of yelling insults at the people who are actually working on this from afar. Remember, most people here are, funnily enough, perenially doing research projects. They don't just know everything, even about subjects they love or are involved in. --User:LordSuryaofShropshire 14:51, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
:Well, the current version of the article is indeed crappy, since it is being vandalized by anonymous users who don't care to talk about the matter, and I can't revert because of the three revertions policy. If you care, please revert to the latest version by Poccil. User:Roozbeh 16:21, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)
:Did that myself. User:Roozbeh 00:45, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry for my rather blatant (and hastily written) remark. I have indeed been doing some research (not much, I must admit, as my resources are quite limited at the moment) but I think I have some good "pieces" to add (not much more than that, I'm afraid). What I intended to get across (and I obviously did not) is that to me, and I believe to many others, (at least parts of) this article are unaccepetable and embarassing, especially when compared to other, more comprehensive language articles. I don't mean to demean or trivialize other people's contributions, which I completely appreciate, but rather to suggest that this article has not come close to reaching its full potential. That said, I'd like to suggest a wholesale revision of the whole of the article so that it may be restructured. I will begin to insert different parts that I believe to be worthy, but again, as a whole, I am quite inexperienced, especially with an article of this scope and ambition. I hope this explains a bit more what I "should have said". See ya.
User:IRelayer
==History==
I deleted a paragraph on alleged dispute of the existence of Old Persian; to the extent that it made any sense at all, it appeared to rest on a confusion of Old Persian with the completely different language Elamite. Old Persian is well-attested, and was in fact the first cuneiform script to be deciphered. - User:Mustafaa 19:07, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
:I reintroduced the removed paragraph. Please note that it's Wikipedia's policy to include the other point of view. Please read WP:NPOV. There are people who hold that opinion, or they would not have come and written it here. Instead of removing the point of view, please add to it, telling why it doesn't make sense. User:Roozbeh 21:05, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
: NPOV doesn't mean reporting every individual person's view (are we to report that some people believe in Santa Claus as if it were possibly true? or that some people, out of complete ignorance, think Sikhs are Arabs because they both supposedly wear turbans?); it means reporting informed views. Denying the existence of Old Persian is like denying the existence of English; for full documentation, see [http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/ARI/ARI.html University of Chicago]. - User:Mustafaa 21:26, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
: Let me expand on that: if someone puts together a theory that, say, aliens built the Easter Island statues (Erich von Daniken), that may just possibly merit a very brief mention somewhere in Easter Island, and a fuller discussion in its own article. If some individual imagines that New York is in Australia, or that Persian and Arabic are the same language, that's not a theory we have to take any notice of: it's an error, or at best "original research". This falls into the latter category. - User:Mustafaa 21:26, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Exact details:
: "Some people believe that there is no written evidence of Old Persian or Middle Persian,"
If so, they're quite simply wrong: there is written evidence of both. See above. If such a claim is even to be mentioned here, it should be phrased as something like "Some people are ignorant of the copious written attestation of Old and Middle Persian."
: "and the theory is used for nationalistic purposes,"
Possibly true, but irrelevant to this article.
: "and that most of the documents and tablets from pre-Islamic Persia are in the Elamite language, which they consider a Ural-Altaic languages language."
True, and completely irrelevant.
:"But some people respond that by popular belief of the scholars, that there are no remains of the Elamite language after the Achaemenids, "
True, but irrelevant.
:"and that the existence of a Ural-Altaic language group is highly debated, let alone the membership of Elamite to that group."
True, and even less relevant.
: "They also mention that the international standard ISO 639-2 has attributed a code to Old Persian, which would have been impossible by ISO 639 procedures if there was no written evidence of such a language."
Truly bizarre. When you could link to the original inscriptions themselves, or read the original scholars, why on earth would you resort to arguing from, of all things, ISO? - User:Mustafaa 22:21, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
::Well, I honestly don't care about the paragraph but its removal may ignite the anonymous vandals again. Go and remove it and we'll see if there's anybody against it. My personal opinion is that the theory is ridiculous, of course. User:Roozbeh 22:24, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)
OK. I've added it to my watchlist, so you won't be alone in arguing against it. :) - User:Mustafaa 22:37, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
==Population==
Can we have some sourcing for the population figures? Adding up the Ethnologue figures[http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1000] yields no more than 35 million or so, even if you include Tajik language. Where are the other figures coming from? - User:Mustafaa 03:11, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Actually, to summarize the Ethnologue figures (which, incidentally, look distinctly fishy to me - they rate their own accuracy for Iran at "B, C"):
*31.2 million for "Western Farsi" + "Eastern Farsi" alone;
*35.7 million for those + Tajik;
*38.3 million for all "Persian" languages (including Hazaragi, Aimaq, etc.);
*42.8 million for all "Southwestern" languages (basically adding Luri)
I'm not willing to take the calculations beyond that, even with a spreadsheet - the next level up includes languages like Baluchi and Kurmanji which most would not consider Persian, despite also including controversial cases like Gilaki. - User:Mustafaa 03:29, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:I don't consider Ethnologue a good source of statistical information at all, specially after some research in Afghanistan based on the information. But if you want to base your numbers on Ethnologue, the best estimate for ISO Persian would be the "Persian" language group of Ethnologue minus Tajik. User:Roozbeh 14:36, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)
::Neither do I (their figures for Algeria and Morocco don't even add up!), but the figures have to come from somewhere... Can you think of any alternative sources for number of speakers? - User:Mustafaa 19:39, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Never forget what ethnologue is - it is meant primarily as a help to Bible translators to gauge the need for a translation of the Holy Bible. This need will define the methods used, rather than any other considerations. And the numbers often do not add up as there is often a double accounting of people who consider themselves in two spheres - a particularly common phenomen in Iran with its many ethnic minorities but its strong united national identity - resulting in increasing mixing of different backgrounds and subsequent "double accounting" User:Refdoc 23:42, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
:::...so, 2 and a half months later, nobody's got any suggestions? Would anyone mind reducing the figure given in the article in light of the evidence presented here on Talk, at least until whoever contributed the apparently much-conflated figures steps forward with a source? User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 08:58, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
== Bahrain ==
Majority of people in Bahrain has Iranian root and lots of them are Iranian and ofcourse it was Iranian island util they independence. Most of people in Bahrain speak Persian very well and those are more than Persian speaker in Uzbekistan. Shall we add Bahrain in the article?--User:Sina 20:05, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Persian_language:
Persian_Language
Persian_language
Persian_language
Persian Language
#REDIRECT Persian language
Persian language
Persian (فارسی), (local name in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan: ''Fârsi''), Pârsi (older local name, but still used by some speakers), Tajik language (a Central Asian dialect) or Dari (Afghanistan) (Another local name in Tajikistan, Afghanistan), is a language spoken in Iran,Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Bahrain. Persian has official-language status in some of those countries. There are over 75 million native speakers [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=1000]. It belongs to the Indo-European languages language family. It is of the Subject Object Verb type. ==History== Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages, and within that family it belongs to the Indo-Iranian languages (Aryan) branch. Scholars believe the Iranian subbranch consists of the following chronological linguistic path: Old Persian (Avestan and Achaemenids Persian) → Middle Persian (Pahlavi, Parthian, and Sassanids Persian) → Modern Persian (Dari, c. 900 to present Persian). Old Persian, the main language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, should not be confused with the non-Indo-European Elamite language (see Behistun inscription). Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified from the complex conjugation and declension system of Old Persian to the almost completely regularized morphology and rigid syntax of Modern Persian, in a manner often described as paralleling the development of English language. Additionally, many words were introduced from neighboring languages, including Aramaic language and Greek language in earlier times, and later Arabic language and to a lesser extent Turkish language. In more recent times, some Western European words have entered the language (notably from French language and English language). The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments, new words and idioms are created and enter into Persian like any other language. In Iran the Academy of Persian Language and Literature is a center that evaluates the new words in order to initiate and advise its Persian equivalent. In Afghanistan, the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan does the same for Afghan Persian (among other languages). ==Nomenclature== ''Persian'', the more widely used and official name of the language in English language, is the Hellenized form of the native term ''Parsi''. ''Farsi'' is the Arabicized form of Parsi due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Its use in the English language is very recent. Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fârsi" in modern usage. ISO, the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, and many other sources call the language Persian. The government of Afghanistan uses both "Dari" and "Persian" in English communications. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature as well as most linguists and lexicographers believe that "Farsi" is not the appropriate term used for the Persian language in English. In the ISO 639-1, the local names form the basis for the language codes and for this reason "fa" is the designation for the Persian language in that system. ==Dialects and close languages== Communication is generally mutually intelligible between Iranians, Tajiks, and Persian-speaking Afghans; however, by popular definition: *Dari (Afghanistan) is the local name for the eastern dialect of Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, including Hazaragi — spoken by the Hazara people of central Afghanistan. *Tajik language could also be considered an eastern dialect of Persian, but, contrary to Iranian and Afghan Persian, it is written in the Cyrillic script. The following are some of the closely related languages of various Iranian peoples within modern Iran proper: * Guilaki, or Gilaki — spoken in northern Iran, mainly in the province of Guilan. * Talysh, or Talishi — spoken in northern Iran and southern parts of the Republic of Azerbaijan. * Luri, or Lori — spoken mainly in the southwestern Iranian province of Lorestan. * Tat (''a.k.a.'' Tati, or Eshtehardi) — spoken in parts of the Iranian provinces of East Azarbaijan, Zanjan Province and Qazvin Province. * Dari (Zoroastrian) or Gabri — spoken originally in Yazd and Kerman by the Zoroastrians of Iran. Also called Yazdi by some. *Dzhidi language or Judæo-Persian — a collection of languages or dialects spoken by the many varied and ancient Jewish communities throughout the former greatest extent of the Persian Empire, one of the many Jewish languages. ==Orthography and vocabulary== Modern Persian uses a modified version of the Arabic alphabet (see below). After the conversion of Persia to Islam, it took approximately one hundred fifty years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, the Persian language (Middle Persian or Pahlavi at that time) used two different alphabets: a modified version of the Aramaic alphabet, and a native Iranian alphabet called ''Dîndapirak'' (literally: religion script). Despite their shared alphabet, however, Persian and Arabic are entirely different languages, from different linguistic families and with different phonology and grammar. Persian adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet for its use, due to the fact that four sounds that exist in Persian do not exist in Arabic. Additionally, it changes the shape of another two. Some people call this modified alphabet the Perso-Arabic alphabet. The additional four letters are: {| border="1" align="center" style="text-align: center" | sound | shape | Unicode name |- | [p] |style="font-size: larger"| پ | Peh |- | (ch) |style="font-size: larger"| چ | Tcheh |- | (zh) |style="font-size: larger"| ژ | Jeh |- | [g] |style="font-size: larger"| گ | Gaf |} The letters different in shape are: {| border="1" align="center" style="text-align: center" | sound | original Arabic letter | modified Persian letter | name |- | [k] |style="font-size: larger"| ك |style="font-size: larger"| ک | Kaf |- | [j] and [i:], or rarely [a:] |style="font-size: larger"| ي or ى |style="font-size: larger"| ی | Yeh |} The diacritical marks used in the Arabic script, a.k.a. ''harakat'', are also used in Persian, although some of them have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic ''Damma'' is pronounced as /u/, while in Persian it is pronounced as /o/. Persian also adds the notion of a pseudo-space to the Arabic script, called a Zero Width Non-Joiner (ZWNJ) by the Unicode Standard. It acts like a space in disconnecting two otherwise-joining adjacent letters, but does not have a visual width. It should also be noted that many Persian words with an Arabic root are spelled differently from the original Arabic word. ''Alef with hamza below'' ( إ ) always changes to ''alef'' ( ا ); ''teh marbuta'' ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to ''teh'' ( ت ) or ''heh'' ( ه ); and words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول). Other languages, such as Pashto or Urdu, have taken those notions and have sometimes extended them with new letters or punctuation. There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from the Arabic language, English language, French language, and Turkic languages. Also, the words that have originated in the languages spoken in the region before the Arab invasion are usually changed in the pronunciation. Pinglish is the name given to texts written in Persian using the English language alphabet. It is common for writing emails, posting to forums, and chatting. ==Phonology== Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels , , ) with the short vowels (, , ). In Modern Persian, this distinction of quantity is neutralized in most environments; short vowels lengthen in closed syllables. Because the neutralization is not complete and other processes, including a number of vowel quality alternations, depend on this distinction of length, it is not possible to analyze the underlying vowel inventory of Modern Persian without length. On the other hand, for reasons of concreteness, it is not desirable to analyze the short and long vowels as identical in quality (with their respective differences being derived by rule.) Thus, the most concrete and adequate representation of the vowel inventory is that given below. Also note that and are affricates, not stops.
''labial'' |
''alveolars'' |
''palatals'' |
''velars'' |
''glottals'' |
|
| '' voiceless stops'' | |
| |
| |
| '' voiced stops'' | |
| |
| |
| '' voiceless fricatives '' | |
| | ||
| ''voiced fricatives'' | |
|
|
| |
| ''nasals'' | |
| |||
| ''liquids'' | , |
||||
| ''glides'' |
Persian language
== Urdu and Persian == Hey all... I am a big fan of the Persian language, primarily since as an Indian I've come into a vast inheritance known as Urdu, which is essentially a mix of Sanskrit, Prakrit (proto-Indian language), Persian and Arabic, a sister language of Hindi. Urdu, as an Indian language, has a vast literature and some incredible fusions of Persian-Islamic and traditional Indian culture. Much of modern Indian language, especially Hindi/Urdu (which are essentially blended into a mix called Hindustani) has huge amounts of Persian influence. I was wondering if the Persian page might, if only in a small section, include a word on its massive influence on India through Mughal culture and, in particular, Urdu. The ties between high Urdu literature and Persian literature is also of great interest, with understandings of how Sufism altered in crossing to the Indian subcontinent, how the ghazal retained or changed form to adapt to Indian art. Heck, even some Hindu writers have takhallus! So, hope to hear more on this. --User:LordSuryaofShropshire 01:38, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC) Oh, by the way, in India, we mostly refer to Persian as Farsi. I think it's mainly because Zoroastrian Persians, whom we refer to as Parsis, settled in India in the 8th century under the protection of a local Hindu king. Also, I seem to have read somewhere that the original area was called Fars. Beats me. Peace --User:LordSuryaofShropshire 01:40, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC) This needs wikification, fact checking, and removing irrelevant parts (possibly also checking for copyvios). Please add to the main article after that. User:Roozbeh 16:15, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) I would think this is largely true, though a bit gushing. User:Refdoc 22:18, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) I suggest if we want to keep the stuff below, then the solution would be to add a section on Influence of Persian language on other languages. What can be said about Urdu can probably said too (to maybe a lesser degree, but nevertheless) about Turkish. Also there is a fair number of English words coming either straight out of Farsi or via Urdu out of Farsi User:Refdoc 23:24, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) ===Persian and Urdu in the Indian subcontinent=== Among many notable attributes of the Persian language was its great adaptability and influence in India. When the Mughal conquest of India had resulted in a vast Islamic empire, especially in the North and middle areas, a new hybrid language began to form around the 10th and 11th centuries CE, one that would eventually be known as Urdu ("tent" in Turkish in allusion to the army barracks of visiting troops). It grew from the interaction of Muslim soldiers and native Hindu peoples, merging with the local Prakrit and Sanskrit-based Khari boli (standing tongue), a proto-Hindi dialect of the north. Soon, the Persian script and nastaliq form of cursive was adopted, with additional figures added to accommodate the Indian phonic system, and a rich new language based on Indian grammar and a predominantly Persian (and indirectly Arabic) base of words came into being. Urdu soon gained distinction as the most prized of languages in the Persian courts of India and to this day retains a distinctive place in literary and cultural spheres. Many distinctly Persian forms of literature, such as ghazals, and culture, such as Sufism, came to both influence and be affected by Indian culture, producing a distinct melding of Middle and South Eastern heritages. Urdu is known as the "Kohinoor" ("Mountain of Light"), a famed and massive diamond, of Indian languages due to its richness of sound and piquant ability to emote. Persian language and literature has not infrequently been termed an adopted classical language of India beside Sanskrit due to its centrality to Urdu and Indian tradition. I would like to propose that we remove the section on the Persian influence on Urdu. The section, as it is written, places too great an emphasis on this influence, which to my knowledge is confined almost entirely to lexical borrowings. In this, it is no more noteworthy than other cases of the same, e.g. French and English, French and Germanic. It certainly doesnt deserve a section in the *Persian language* article; it should be moved to the Urdu article. --User:Maziart 09:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) : I copied this section to a new article, called Persian and Urdu, a few months ago. While there is useful information in it, I agree that it simply does not belong in the Persian language article. Rather, I've been wanting to create a section called something like ''Language Contact'' on this page. This new section would document both imports and exports, for multiple languages, not just Urdu. Both lexical items and other linguistics elements would be treated. --User:Jonsafari 19:27, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) The old persian is DARI that still use in Afghanistan ( the land of Persia) and because of inviroment it changes to FARSI now it Use in Iran. and Urdu that has lots of Persian words and use in India and Pakistan. : Since the Persian and Urdu section has been copied to a new article, Im going to delete the section in the Persian language article. I think it would be a good idea to have a section on language contact. --User:Maziart 07:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I agree. It was a good idea to get rid of the information there, since it had more to do with the development of Urdu than with Persian. In the future tho, when making edits like that, consider that the information you're deleting might somehow be ''related'' to the article, and if it needs its own article, create it, or in this case, since it already ''has'' its own article, be sure to add a link to the relevant article in the "See also" or "Related articles" sections. (I did it this time.:-p) :-) User:TShilo12 User talk:TShilo12 08:17, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC) ==Phonology Section== I just added a more detailed description of the vowel inventory, but the consonant inventory needs to be worked on. --User:Maziart 09:39, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) ====Vowels==== Thanks to IceKarma for the pretty vowel chart. An alternative vowel chart for Persian can be found [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/farsiipa.html here]. Discussion concerning the merits of both charts (specifically about the two low vowels) are still up in the air. I'm curious what others have to say about this. --User:Jonsafari 12:09, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I'm glad you like the vowel chart. User:Karmosin put me up to it and supplied the source information. The chart at the above URL looks to be more or less equivalent, except the vowels are indicated in the "reference" positions instead of taking account of Farsi-specific pronounciation. User:IceKarmaUser talk:IceKarma#new 16:54, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC) == Skip the Nationalism == Just wanted to add, skip the nationalism on "Persian pride" and only say relevant stuff. There is no hidden agenda. The Persian empire got conquered, and the conquerers influenced the Persian culture. It's pretty much a natural thing. People influence people. The language and culture changed and are changing, get over it. And btw, yes there is "Farsi music". - Arjan == Parsi/Farsi/Persian controversy == Hello all I am new to this, so please forgive me if I post this incorrectly both place-wise and code-wise. In any case, in terms of "Persian", "Farsi", etc. as an Iranian and Persian I refer to myself in English as both Iranian and Persian interchangably, much as a Greek in English would refer to himself as Greek, rather than "Hellenes". I do the same for the language. However, to assume that all Iranians use "Farsi" simply because that word exists is completely farcical. I am proud to use Parsi and include the /p/ phenome, because that is the true name of the language. The last I checked, there was no "Farsi" gulf, and no "Farsi" music, but I am well aware of the Persian/Parsi equivalents. Those who force "Farsi" down both Iranian and non-Iranian throats, in my opinion, have an agenda. - user:Javan-e-Irooni The proper name and most common name is Farsi. Brittanica refers to "Farsi", not Persian. Lonely Planet and Collins Gem publish "Farsi" phrase books. Oxford publishes an English-"Farsi" dictionary. The International Bible Society publishes a "Farsi" bible. "FarsiNet" is a major Iranian website. Even the damn Scientologists have "farsi.dianetics.org". I think that's pretty conclusive. - User:MMGB Just a side note: the ISO language code listing lists it under "Persian (Farsi)", but the code itself is "FA". :So what? The ISO language code for German is "DE" and for Spanish is "ES". What's your point? --user:k1 == "Near the Fountainhead ? == QUOTE Farsi is an old language that has roots from over a thousand years ago. /QUOTE Non-information? Do you know any natural language that does not have roots from over a thousand years ago? -- user:Vassili Nikolaev I don't know where that quote comes from but to me it seems you misunderstand the quote (perhaps because the quote is scanty). As a Persian speaker who also knows a few other languages, I can tell you that when it comes to etymology of Indo-European roots, in the Persian language you are definitely drinking from the fountainhead or very near to it, whereas in most other languages the meanings are blurry and fuzzy or just invisible. Example: did you ever notice how the spelling of 'daughter' in English is a little strange? Why? Because it comes from German 'Tochter'. So we go to German. But can we really 'see' the word Tochter in German? Not really. But the same word in Persian is Dokhtar, and even an uneducated Persian speaker can see "Dokht + ar" ... and in Persian you have both parts in numerous other constructs .... for instance: Shahdokht = shah + dokht = princess. This is just one small example. I think the quote meant that the roots in Persian even to this day are, for lack of a better word, "original" or preserved. -- user:k1 Many people say things like this about their own languages. I personally believe that "daughter" is a very bad example because the Indo-European root is nearly identical (it is *dhughəter), and it means "daughter-in-law". Also, very little English vocabulary comes from German; this is a common misconception. A great deal of English words have a common source with German, but not more than a few come from it. For example, "daughter" does NOT originate from German "Tochter" but rather from Middle English "doughter" which in turn comes from Old English "dohtor" from Proto-Germanic (NOT German) *dohtēr. *''dohtēr'' almost immediately turns into an English form and a German form (at least after the split between East, West, and North Germanic). Also, given the wealth of mostly unnessecary vocabulary English has, there are many words (such as "equine") that preserve directly the Indo-European root where other words do not (or at least not nearly as apparently; ie "horse"). Examples: equine + hippopotamus both from *ekʷo, hound + cynic + kennel + corgi all from *kʷon (also believed by many to be the ultimate origin of *ekʷo), goose + smorgåsbord both from *ghans, etc. --User:Node ue 00:58, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) ------------------------------- == Again Fars/Persian/Parsi controversy == Likewise, one can offer numerous examples where "Persian" is used and not "Farsi". The fact is that the usage of term "Farsi" instead of "Persian" in the English language is fairly recent. The language itself however, is anything but recent. What is stated in the article is correct, the difference between "Persian" and "Farsi" in English language, is the same as "Spanish" and "Español". I just checked with three of my English dictionaries, and all three contain "Persian", referring to the Languag among other things (such as the Persian culture). So if we start calling the Persian language (in English) "Farsi", should we also do the same thing for the Persian culture? Calling it "Farsi culture"? Or should we only (for some strange reason) insist on calling the language "Farsi", but continue to call the culture "Persian"? What about "Persian literature"? The Persian language has been called "Persian" in English for centuries. Also, why not do the same thing with other languages? How about "Magyar" for "Hungarian" or "Deutsch" for "German" for starters? -- user:k1 : Well, the powers that be would stop us from using English language names for anything over the ''correct'', ''indigenous people'' names, lest saying otherwise not be ''political correctness''. I am certain that should Iran/Persia not be an Islamic country, that there would not be any qualms of social-sensitivity with refering to the language as Persian and Farsi interchangeably. I think your "Iran/Persia" gives me a clue as to the root of this confusion. Let me try to clarify. I am an Iranian. Ethnically, I am a Persian (on both sides of my parents). When people in English ask me where I am from or what my nationality is, the answer is "Iranian" (and not Persian). When they ask me what my language is, the answe is "Persian" (not Farsi). Now, I have noticed that many Iranians and even non-Iranians of the region, refer to themselves as "Persian". There are a number of reasons, I suppose, for this, which I won't get into in this talk -- it would go beyond the scope of this discussion. But one thing I have noticed is that the majority of Persian people themselves, refer to themselves as Iranians and not Persian. Iranian people themselves have always refered to Iran as "Iran" and not "Persia"; as evidenced by our long and rich literature and even pre-Islamic books. The name "Persia" is a Greek construct made up of "Pers + ia" ('ia' = suffix of location, as in Italia, Romania, etc) because the capital province of Iran during the old Persian Empire was the province of Pars (or Pers, as the Greeks must have pronounced it). The Pars province to this day is one of the provinces in Iran. Just as the Greek language has 'ia' as suffix of location, Persian has 'an' as suffix of location, thus, so many (hundreds) of place names in Iran ending with 'an', such as Iran, Tehran, Isafhan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Khorasan, etc ... Persian has other suffixes of location as well, a famous one is 'istan' as in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, etc ... and that one comes from a Persian verb, but the 'an' suffix is special. The name "Iran" is made up of "Ir (ayr) + an" which literally and etymologically means "Land of the Aryans" (not to be confused with the Nazi notion of the word "Aryan"). In the 1930's, Iran officially asked the world to refer to Iran as "Iran" instead of "Persia" -- a good idea in my opinion. However, this does not mean that now we should refuse to acknowledge that there is indeed a Persian culture, a Persian language, a Persian literature, Persian epics and other cultural elements that are "Persian". Afterall, there are few people on earth with as much legitimate claim to having a cultural identidy as the Persians. There is even a Persian calendar that is a solar calendar that is to this day, the main, and official calendar of Iran. The Persian language, regardless of what it is called, is the language that has produced one of the most wonderful literatures of all of humanity. It has seen many regimes come and go, and likely, it will see many more. I think you are mixing some different conepts, perhaps along with some errornous conclusions based on certain assumptions. The country is Iran, the main language of Iran is Persian (or Farsi, if you like), the largest ethnic group in Iran are the Persians, etc... Finally, I should like to add, that even those Iranians who are indeed Persian and prefer to refer to themselves as Persians, they have every right to do so, just as an Armenian from Iran has the right to be proud of his or her specific cultural identity, or a Kurd or any other ethnic group. -- user:k1 : I would agree with k1 wrt to preference of Persian for Farsi as the main term in English, were it not for the fact that most English speakers I have met so far will get glassy eyes when I say that I speak Persian, but understand immediately when I say I speak Farsi. But maybe this is a regional matter. It certainly is a rather anecdotal as an argument. User:Refdoc 23:17, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---------------------- == Dialect vs Language (Dari/Tajik/Farsi) == For the person who made the comment "Dari-speakers must be laughing" You only show your, pardon me for the accuracy of my word here, ignorance. There is no language called "Dari", Dari is just Persian with the old Khorasani accent (or Afghani accent of Persian today). The only reason you hear of a languae called 'Dari' today, is because Afghans do not like to call it Persian or Farsi. They even took the word Dari right out of Persian literature. I challenge you to find me one academic work older than 70 years, that makes a distinction between Persian and Dari. Or better yet, ask a so-called "Dari-speaker" to name a few of the great poets and writers of this "Dari" lanuges -- they will give you the names of Persian poets of the Khorasan terriroty, without even realizing that at that time there was not even a country called Afghanistan. : I knew that, I was making a pun In fact, the funniest thing was when an Afghan 'scholar' was referring to Ferdowsi as the great "Dari" poet. In case you don't know, Ferdowsi is the greatest poet of Persian epics, comparable to Homer for the Classical Greek. But if you study the work of Ferdowsi, it is all about "Iran", and he does not even refer to the language as "Dari" once. You would be hard pressed to go through two or three pages of his 55,000+ epic, the Shahnameh, and not encounter the word "Iran" a few times. The word "dari" comes from Persian "darbar" meaning "court" (dari means darbari, which means "pertaining to the court" or "belonging to the court"), and that refers to the court of the Sassanids who where the last Persian empire before they fell to the Arabs. Their court was just outside of Baghdad in Iraq today. The Persian language used for official communication (as opposed to the common or colloquial Persian language) was sometimes referred to as "Dari" or the "language of the Darbar (court)" ... and subsequently in some instances, some Persian poets (from all over the place and not just the Khorasan territory) have refered to the Persian language as "Dari" when appropriate. Examples include the great Persian poets Sa'di and Hafiz from Shiraz who have at times referred to Persian as Dari -- so does this mean that the language of Shiraz (capital of Pars province of Iran) is also Dari and not Persian?! :-) Only recently, some (perhaps most) Afghans from the country Afghanistan have insisted on referring to their language as "Dari" just to avoid calling their language Persian or Farsi. But how old is the country Afghanistan?! This would be tantamount to Austria digging deep into old German literature and finding an obscure word which means "German" but it's not "Deutsch" and start calling their language that name just to avoid using "German" (Deutsch) as the name of their language. But this "Dari language" is not even a dialect, it is just Persian with the Afghani accent (or I should say with the old Khorasani accent). Again, ask a so-called "Dari-speaking person" to name some of the great works and names of the "Dari language" literature for you and let me know who they are. -- user:k1 He's right! Dari is an accent. I would clearly understand what a Afghan is saying, if he were only to pronounce it properly. Secondly, there are many diverse Iranian ethnic groups: Balochis, Armenians, Azeris (Turkic), Turkmen, Gilakis etc... And only half of the countries population consists of Persians or Fars. user:Alireza Hashemi :Perhaps this is just your perception? First of all, you seem to have the mistaken notion that Dari is the only language of Afghanistan. Pashto definitely serves a more nationalistic purpose, since Dari is basically a dialect of Farsi, while Pashto is for-sure a unique language. :Second of all, just an accent? Do you really expect us to believe that? Dari and Tajik are unique dialects of Farsi, though they may be mutually intelligible (this is one hallmark of dialects by many definitions). :Third of all, who is to say that ''their'' pronunciation is "improper"? That is very POV, one could jst as easily say that yours is incorrect and ''theirs'' is proper. Veeeeeeeeeeery ethnocentric. Just a friendly warning: such "facts" shouldn't be expressed in Wikipedia articles (Talk: pages are OK). If you think some people would disagree vehemently with what you have said, ask a 3rd party (ie, in this case somebody that isn't Persian, Tajik, or Dari) Tajik is also an accent, I've listened to Tajik BBC and I understood everything which was said. :Again... an "accent"? --User:Node ue 01:11, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC) No Node, it is not very POV and "Veeeeeeeeeeery ethnocentric" as you say. Accents are not "wrong" of course, but when someone totally messes up a word in a manner that clearly shows that that person doesn't even understand how the word is constructed, that is where I draw the line between correct and incorrect -- and that is the difference between having an accent (which is perfectly OK) and mispronounication (which is not OK). User:K1 15:55, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC) :Look a bit harder at this page and you will see that Alireza Hashemi said something along the lines of "I'd be able to understand an Afghanistan, if he were to only pronounce things correctly". :In addition, "accent" itself is Wikipedia:Inherent POV - an Ireland person believes they have no accent but that the United States of America has an American accent, while the American believes they have no accent and that the Irish person is the one "ignorance". The simple truth is that it's all a matter of perception. :Whether or not regionalisms show a disregard for etymology should be of no concern: as long as people understand what a word means, it works fine. They don't have to understand how it was formed. When you get irritated by things like that, you're inflating your ego. Just because you have an education and you speak Farsi as it is spoken by university professors does not make you better than anybody else, nor does it make you "right". In addition, it does not mean you don't have an accent. The simple truth is that ''everybody'' has an accent. There is no "neutral" accent. :As for the distinction between Dari, Farsi, Parsi (cf Ethnologue), Tajik, and perhaps Ossetic: to say they are just accents or just dialects is indeed POV. If you tell a Dari speaker that their language is really only an accent of Farsi, they will probably get upset. The same goes for Tajik and Ossetic (I think Parsi speakers themselves say Parsi is an accent or a dialect, so in that case it IS politically correct to characterize it that way in an encyclopedia). :One way to tell is this: If you go up to a random Moldavian and tell them (in English) that they speak Romanian language, they will agree, for Moldavian language and Romanian are for the most part identical (though a Moldavian-Romanian dictionary was published recently). However, if you go up to a Tajik and tell them (in English) that they speak Farsi, they will be offended or annoyed. ::But what if you ask the same Tajik, "Do you speak ''Persian''?". In my view, Farsi (Parsi) is the Iranian dialect of the Persian language. Dari, Farsi, and Tajik are the three major mutually intelligible dialects, along with Farsi, of Persian. User:Poccil_(
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
P
PA | PB | PC | PD | PE | PF | PG | PH | PI | PJ | PK | PL | PM | PN | PO | PR | PS | PT | PU | PW | PX | PY | PZ |Words begining with Persian_language:
Persian_Language
Persian_language
Persian_language
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007
