Friday
May 26, 2000
Pinglish
Before I go into the pros and cons of EuroFarsi,
I would like to mention that I had given this topic some thought in the
past and also done some research on the matter ["Eenjoori
beneveeseem?"]. I would also like to point out that I was born
in London, I am fluent in Persian/Farsi but I can read and write to a
very basic level and this I learnt mostly at home as a child.
Recently I visited Iran after four years. On my return to the UK, I
kept in touch with my cousins through email. My cousins can read/write
and speak basic English from what they learn at their private lessons although
it would be difficult and time consuming for them to write in English everytime.
We adopted our own method of writing to each other which we call 'Pinglish'!
(Persian English). I say 'our own method' because everyone spells words
in different ways (e.g. Sima, Seema) and there is no official way of representing
sounds such as the 'kh' sound, with the added confusion of writing in Farsi
'ketabi' or not (e.g. khooneh, khaneh). This would probably call for a
dictionary in EuroFarsi.
After reading your comments, I have found all of your views on this
topic most interesting. There are points that some of you have made that
I agree with and others that I don't. However I also felt that as the discussion
continued, the main theme of the topic was being side-lined by arguments
about religion and Persian/Arab issues.
We cannot change and should not change what has evolved through years
and years of history. We cannot adopt IPA for several reasons. The main
one is that it would be difficult to begin re-educating the entire population
of Iran, then again if Turkey did it, we surely can too, anyway most children
now learn English at school.
Someone made the point that altering our alphabet would mean we would
have to re-write historical books such as Shahnameh. My suggestion
is that we do not take radical steps to re-address the nation with a new
alphabet, but to standardise a secondary sub-language (i.e. EuroFarsi)
-- the key word being standardise. In this way we can keep our heritage
but at the same time expand the opportunities for people like me. 'By doing
so, our children, and subsequently their children would be able to communicate
with one another in Persian, and thus be able to uphold and promote our
beautiful language.' (Khashayar
Behbahani).
Those living abroad or born abroad will be able to communicate with
other persians there and in Iran. Recently I had difficulty applying for
an Iranian passport as the Iranian Embassy in London required me to fill
out the application forms in Farsi. If we adopt this phonetic alphabet,
then people like me will no longer have these problems.
I would love to read poems by Hafez or Ferdowsi, but unless we adopt
this secondary form of language, I probably will never be able to fully
appreciate the beauty of it. Also this phonetic style would prevent confusions
that arise out of the Arabic influence on our written script i.e. the number
of the letter Z's that we have in our vocabulary.
I would love to hear your views on my suggestion.
Sima Elli
Links
