Letters

February 2005
February 8


Strange opinions

I read Ms. Azam Nemati's article "I'll show you Persian!" and Mr. Pejman Akbarzadeh's reply "Misconceptions about PERSIAN".

I live in Switzerland. The main languages are French and German. In German-speaking provinces all people know our language as "Persisch" and in French-speaking provinces all people know it as "Persane". "Farsi" (Arabic version of "Parsi" is unknown).

Also when people wants to speak or write about history, culture and art of our country mostly use "La Perse" (French for "Persia") or "Das Persien" (German equivalent of Persia). Needless to say that most of the people confuse IRAN with IRAQ. It's clear. Because these names are very similar in European languages. Most of them think Iranian people speak in Arabic.

Since some years ago Government of Switzerland print beautiful postal stamps and write on them HELVETIA. (Latin name of Switzerland which used more than 2000 years ago). All NATIONS IN THE WORLD ARE TRYING TO INTRODUCE THEIR OLD HISTORY AND CULTURE EXCEPT FOR US !.... I do not know what is the reason ?!

As you know even Arabs like Moroccan or Egyptian in Western languages never refer to their country as MAGHREB or MESR . All of them unitedly use Egypt and and Morocco .... because MAGHREB and MESR are meaningless names for Western litrature.

The word Egypt is coming from "Ekept" (now a small comunity ,arabs calles them ghebty) but all Egyptian use Egypt pridely regardless of being Arab or Eghebty but some Persians (Iranians) think useing the words Persia/Persians means chauvinist or ignoring other comunity like Azeris or Arabs!!! But in fact in Western culture from the ancient time till last century they had refered to our country and language only as PERSIA and PERSIAN. We are cuting us from our civilization with using "Iran" and "Farsi" in English.

FARSI  is very new word in the West and so meaningless for non moslem . It is regretable that unfurtunatly even Persian diaspora like that lady who claims to be historian becom angry and says : "I was so sad that someone has so much time to go through the wasteful process of quoting all kinds of sources to say so I would use "Persian" instead of Farsi!

Some years ago Prof. Kamran Talattof wrote an informative article on this matter. I ask all iranian.com's reader to read that again. The usage of "Farsi" in English language is very similar that in Persian we say "Baladi GERMAN sohbat koni??!!" ....

"Daaram miram kelaas-e Spanish" !!

Regards,

Shahryar Peyrovani, Geneva

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