Letters
Misconceptions about "PERSIAN"In response to Azam Nemati's "I'll show you Persian!": A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to one of iranian.com's contributers (in private) and asked her in view of several historical and cultural reasons do not use the word "Farsi" instead of "Persian" as English name of our official language. She wrote me that she has BA in this field so there is no need that I teach her what she has to use (!). She also wrote an article on this matter which is now online in iranian.com: The subject is very simple and up to now many people (including many scholars and linguists) have written about it. However it seems there are still some people who have not got the points. Therefore again I write the story in brief : According to all historical documents the English name of our language has always been "Persian" ("Persane" in French, "Persischen" in German, etc.). After 1979 revolution that many people from our country immigrated to the West (esp. USA) some of them did not know that this language is called "Persian" in English. They started to say "Farsi Language" instead of "Persian Language" and this new word in English became a few common. FARSI (which is originally PARSI) is the native name of our language. A word that we use it in our own language. "Persian" is its English/International equivalent; as the native name of German language is 'Deutsch', but we never use 'Deutsch' in place of 'German' in English; or native term of Greek Language is "Ellinika" and always in English we say 'Greek' language, not 'Ellinika' language. If you notice the title of dictionaries that have been written by several great Persian scholars (eg. Prof. Moein, Prof. Aryanpour, Prof. Baateni, etc.) The title of all of them is "English-Persian Dictionary" not "English-Farsi Dictionary": In English when we say "Persian" people can connect it with several aspects of our history and culture such as Persian poetry (esp. poems of Rumi and Khayyam), Persian Gulf, Persian carpet, Persian food, etc. but "Farsi" (which some people are insist to use it in English) is just clear for a few nations in the Middle East. The interesting point is that "Farsi" even is not Persian name of our language; it's Arabized name of our language which its correct name is "Parsi". The Academy of Persian Language and Literature, in Tehran (Farhangestan) gives us more details on the subject: 1- PERSIAN has been used in a variety of publications including cultural, scientific and diplomatic documents for centuries and, therefore, it connotes a very significant historical and cultural meaning. Hence, changing PERSIAN to FARSI is to negate this established important precedence. 2- Changing PERSIAN to FARSI may give the impression that it is a new language, and this may well be the intention of some Farsi users. 3- It may also give the impression that FARSI is a dialect of some parts of Iran and not the predominant (official) language of this country. 4- Fortunately, FARSI has never been used in any research paper or university document in any Western language and the proposal of its usage will create doubt and ambiguity about the name of the official language of our country. (Published in the Persian Academy Quarterly, Vol.1, No.1, Spring 1995) The use of "Farsi Language" is as strange as call Persian Gulf "Farsi Gulf" ! Fortunately since some years ago many editors, webmasters, journalists, etc and even official organizations (eg. VOA) changed "Farsi" into its proper English name "Persian" in their texts and documents. Same to use of "Persia" and "Persian" for our nationality in English. As these terms have special historical meaning in the West many people prefer to use them in place of Iran and Iranian. "Persia" is not a racial term. It's simply Western name of Iran. The word "Iran" is OK but in Persian language. In the Western languages it's very similar to the name of Arab state of Iraq and many people confuse Iran with this country. Also "Iran" has not any background in the Western history. When we want to use a name in a language we have to notice to its impact in that language/culture. The native name of most of historical countries such as Greece, Egypt, China, etc. are different from their English name. Same for us ! Pejman
Akbarzadeh
>>> All past letters |