Talk:Persian language

No information on writing system?

This article seems to include no basic information on writing system! I've heard that Persian is written from right to left, although Persian people write mathematics from left to right. I've also heard that negativity of a number is also shown by a minus sign to the left, although the number is still written in Eastern Arabic numerals.

But how true are these? Any citations? Fleet Command (talk) 01:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

This article includes a whole section labeled Orthography, which links to Perso-Arabic script if you want even more details.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Clear as mud. Fleet Command (talk) 14:08, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Special status, really?

The article as it is has the following

The fact that almost all current native speakers of the language do understand ancient texts of the Persian language and the grammatical differences of the ancient language are acquainted by today's speakers simply by reading and memorising those ancient texts gives a special status to the Persian language as a whole.

This is quite simply absurd. There are plenty of languages where modern speakers can understand ancient texts relatively easily, depending on what you mean by "ancient." But since New Persian cannot with any reason be said to date more than a century or two earlier than the turn of the 1st millennium, you could just as easily replace the word "persian" in the above sentence with Arabic, Hebrew, Koine Greek or Icelandic- with Spanish, Italian, Dutch and several other languages no more than a century or so behind.

It's true that Persian speakers tend to stress the mutual intelligibility of Classical and Modern persian more so than most others. But, really, who cares? There are a great many sources, particularly for Arabic, Icelandic and Hebrew, which discuss the mutual intelligibility of the modern standard languages and the "classical" predecessors. Hell, even the Wiki articles on these languages say as much. So I'm deleting it. Szfski (talk) 11:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess, using your word, it "is quite simply absurd" to dispute the source provided. Please read wp:point before trying to give us lecture about Hebrew language. Your example are unrelated. Arabic is itself a new language and had no "stages of change" and therefore your example is not good one. Xashaiar (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The earliest texts in Classical Arabic date from the 6th century. The earliest texts in New Persian are hundreds of years afterward. Arabic has undergone several stages of change comparable to those of Early to Late New Persian. I do not know what you mean when you describe Arabic as a "new" language. In any event, the source used mentioned the ostensible special status of Persian mainly in passing while focusing on the intelligibility of Classical texts to modern speakers. It is, however, not an authoritative source if you're using it to make a case that the source itself was not attempting to prove. It is an EOI entry on the diachronic stages of persian, not the relative cross-linguistic uniqueness of diachronic intelligibility in Modern Persian. But then, since you mistook my mentioning Hebrew in passing for an attempt to "give a lecture," I can see how you probably did mistake Jeremias' passing mention of special status for a weighty statement on the subject. Szfski (talk) 12:48, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

You are wrong on your attempt to make a point on Arabic and Persian: the sentence "Arabic has undergone several stages of change comparable to those of Early to Late New Persian" is wrong. At least if you accept that one example of early Arabic is Koran (with unknown date of writing) and one example of early New Persian is Rudaki/and or Ferdowsi. The latter was connected to previous stage of a spoken/written language and the former was not (This is important because the sentence you changed used the word "ancient" which, obviously but not explicitly, tried to indicate a connection between NP and MP. If this is not what the article in EI is supposed to mean and which you are seemingly trying to say, then I will agree that addition of the sentence on "special status" does not help much). The point is that you can not remove a source just because you dislike it. If there are "authoritative sources" that disprove the statement which was explicitly taken from the source EI then we can discuss removal of the sentence. Xashaiar (talk) 14:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

If you don't mind adding a correction, Quran's dates of writing is exactly known. Its transcription was started exactly 1402 years ago. It was eventually published in its wholesome form 1374 years ago. (When I say a year, I mean a standard year, that 365 days, not that Arabic year.) From that date forward, it was never altered. Fleet Command (talk) 14:21, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Persian in the blogsphere

"Persian is the second-most used language in the blogosphere." I find that claim highly doubtful. Even the source cited doesn't say exactly who calculated this number. I'm not sure which language is first, but I'd say English is one of the most used languages, definitely larger than Persian. If you now look at China, where QQ/Qzone (Chinese chat/blogging service) have hundreds of millions of users, this alone surpasses the number of speakers of Persian. I will remove the statement until a more reliable source is found. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.25.94.97 (talk) 09:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Alright, some script reverted my edit and called it vandalism. No offence, folks, but I'm not sure that's the right way to motivate occasional users to contribute :-) Since I'm not a registered user, I'll leave it to someone more savvy to make the change.--178.25.94.97 (talk) 09:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Honestly folks, that statement is utter nonsense. Could someone please remove it? I'm really just trying to improve the article.--79.244.108.32 (talk) 09:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Can you provide a citation? Sure, chat services have billions of users, but they're aren't part of the blogosphere. Show us a reliable source giving a breakdown of the blogosphere by language, then I'm sure it will be discussed.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:16, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

According to http://www.blogherald.com/2010/09/20/state-of-the-blogosphere-in-2010/ , Persian/Farsi is ranked about 11th. I'll take it out of the article. Paxsimius (talk) 15:20, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Do any Farsi speakers, anywhere in the world, still actually refer to their language as "Parsi"?

To me this is largely unheard of inside and outside Iran. Most Persian-speakers of Iran aren't even aware of the fact that the original ethnonymic name for their language was actually "Parsi"/"Parsee". Tajiks for the most part either refer to it as Tajiki ("Tojiki" as transliterated from Cyrillic) or "Tojiki Farsee". Afghans refer to it under a multitude names depending on the geographic region, i.e. Dari, Harzagi, Herati, Aimaq, Darwazi, etc... "Farsi" in Afghanistan is used to specifically in reference to the dialectally-differing version spoken in Iran.

I think it's important to make a distinction between current usage and proper usage. The historic and undoubtedly correct term for the language is "Parsi" (derived from the Sassanid-era term "Parsik" or "Parsig", which morphed into "Parsi" after the Arab conquests for a brief period of time before the Arabs adopted a stricter policy of Islamization; also sometimes erroneously referred to as "Pahlavi", which is not appropriate for the spoken language but rather the writing system).

However, the majority of speakers, official governing bodies and institutions all rule that "Farsi" is the modern, self-designative name for the language (the majority also support "Persian" being used abroad).

I think this should be stressed much more heavily, as it is very confusing for such a prestigious and widely spoken language to be referred to under two names within the opening sentence, particularly when the Persian vs. Farsi debate is invoked instantaneously when discussing the correct nomenclature for the language, which only further mystifies the average reader. Farsi, Parsi, Persian, Dari, Tajik, etc... the list of sobriquets goes on and on.

It should simply be stated in the introduction that "Parsi" is the ancient, historical term for Middle & New Persian, that was in wide usage prior to the Arab Conquests, but which has now largely fallen out of use and the Arabic-derived "Farsi" is the predominant self-designative name. Gamer112(Aus) (talk) 15:36, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Persian language is the result of creolisation between Dari and Arabic

According to Bo Utas and Lars Johanson Modern Persian is not the continuation of Middle Persian and is very distinct from it (loss of declensions and cases...) and is the result of the symbiosis between Arab and Iranians in Khorassan and especially the Balkh (area to an extent that it's said that Balkh is the motherland of the modern Persian language) resulting in a new language with most of its vocabulary Arabic, vernacular Arabic and other Semitic as well as Morphologic,Literary and Grammatical influences from Arabic besides Persian became being written in the Nabatean script of the Arabic alphabet (before that middle Persian too was written in the Arabic alphabet but in its Arabaic/Aramaic version)

Please include this to the article and thanks for your works

Humanbyrace (talk) 19:46, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Script is irrelevant; some Turkic languages went through Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts in the 20th century. Your first sentence does not follow; Modern Persian is certainly the continuation of Middle Persian, and many languages have lost declensions and cases without creolization. What influence Arabic had on Persian, and how that should be portrayed in the article, is up for question, but it's hard to judge your claim without a URL or a exact citation; Bo Utas and Lars Johanson seem to have wrote a lot, and finding what you're referring to is impossible.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:01, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd be somewhat surprised to hear Johanson actually using the term creolisation to refer to what happened to Persian under contact with Arabic. Stretching the definition of "creolizsation" to such wide limits has been rather out of fashion in the relevant literature for quite a while. BTW, the description of the writing systems above ("Nabatean script of the Arabic alphabet", "Arabaic/Aramaic version" of the "Arabic alphabet") seem to be rather confused. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:40, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

http://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.turkiclanguages.com%2Fwww%2FJohanson2006.pdf&ei=zCv2TMHFL4aWhQfBufDPBQ&usg=AFQjCNGd0gHOfE_vum-kie-59-8xDri6hQ

Last page Bo Utas "a multiethnic origin of new Persian"

Humanbyrace (talk) 11:39, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The article properly sources the undisputed fact that OP and MP are the parent and grand parent of NP. The sources are arguably the best sources available. If you need more sources please ask for it, I will provide as many as you want. Xashaiar (talk) 13:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Not true! An Arab can understand 90% of ancient Arabic (Ugaritic) of 2000 bc and around 75-80% of proto Arabic (Akkadian...) of 6000 bc but a Persian can not understand much of Dari let alone middle Persian let alone Old Persian!!!

Humanbyrace (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)