From: ghbr@fmg.bt.co.uk (Hossein Bagherzadeh Rafsanjani)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: Why Tashdid?
Date: 25 Jan 93 15:23:34 GMT
Organization: British Telecom

The following was posted eralier, but somehow it didn't make it.  So
here is a re-post.
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From: ghbr@fmg.bt.co.uk (Hossein Bagherzadeh Rafsanjani)
Subject: Re: >Why Tashdid?
Organization: British Telecom
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:14:18 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.060950.3659@cc.uow.edu.au> g9020985@cc.uow.edu.au (Mansour Esmaili) writes:

> In article <1993Jan20.201620.26863@netcom.com> of soc.culture.iranian,
>   bavafa@netcom.com (Hooshyar Naraghi) writes:
>   > Not that we have completely settled the case of 'eesAr' but does any
>   > person know why there is a tashdid in words 'dovom' and 'sevom?'
>   >
>   > Arabic-0A : tashdid is an Arabic language solution to shorten words that
>   > repeat two of the same characters (normally one is with vowel and one w/o).
>   > For example, aval is - which is an Arabic word - really av-val hence written
>   > by one vAv, but a tashdid symbol will be put above the vAv character.
>   >
>   > So the question is why dovom became 'dov-vom' and sevom became 'sev-vom?'

> Hooshyar khAn,

> I guess that is because we are using some of the Arabic rules in our language, Farsi.

The use of tashdeed is not a matter of language but of scripture.  Our
language is Farsi, but we use Arabic script.  In that script, it is
natural to use tashdeed whenever a letter is going to be repeated.  It
may be (I am not sure) that in pre-Islamic time when we used other
scripts, we did write repeated letters as is common in Latin script
etc.  The use of tashdeed in Arabic script is consistent with its
decorative nature of putting dots, madd, zir, zabar, pish etc
over/under the letters.

> What you asked about is not the only case. Some of the others are "dovoman", "sevoman",....
> As you know "an, en, on" which are called "tanvin" are Arabic, but we normaly use them.

The use of these endings, however, is language (not script) related.
As such, these uses are not correct in Farsi words.  So, avvalan, is
okay, but not dovvoman sevvoman etc.  Dovvom, sevvom, etc will do.
(These are both adjectives and adverbs.)

Similar misuses have been seen in telefonan, telgerafan etc.  The
correct terms for these are: telefoni, telgerafi...

> I think the best meaning for "aval", as one of the "ahAli" has said, is "nakhost".

If avval is used as the first number (followed by dovvom etc) then
yekom is the answer.  Nakhost (or nokhost) is when avval is used in
the sense of "prime" - the one before all, the first and foremost.*
Like prime-minister = nakhost-vazir.

-hossein

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Farhad Arbab suggests that "nakhostin" is used for the "prime".  But
it appears that the use of "-in" ending is common in other ordinals
too (dovvomin, sevvomin).  The difference seems to be only in the
words order: dovvomin pelleh = pelleh-ye dovvom.  

Yes!  pelleh, tappeh and bachcheh (auch!) are other exampels of the
use of tashdeed in Farsi - even though some of them may have also been
used without tashdeed (tapeh).

-hossein
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian