From: farhad@cwi.nl (Farhad Arbab)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian
Subject: Re: Why Tashdid?
Date: 22 Jan 93 11:26:05 GMT
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Cc: farhad

Hi folks,  I am back after five weeks of business and vacation.
I'm sure I have missed quite a few interesting items during my
absence.  I have a few small points to make on this thread.  I
also have a few things to say on the present calendar thread, but
for now, I will pass on that one.

In article <1993Jan21.110131.19156@netcom.com>, bavafa@netcom.com (Hooshyar Naraghi) writes:
|> Mack jAn wrote:
|> >I believe the correct words for second and third in Farsi are "doyom"
|> >and "seyom". I may be wrong however.
|> 
|> I also thought "doyom" and "seyom" were mostly used in poetry and some-
|> times used in slang.  I am next in line when it comes to being possibly
|> wrong!

Yes, some dialects use "doyom" and "seyom" and they are correct.
But, in the modern Persian spoken by the majority of Iranians,
these forms are considered "unacceptable slang" and unless you
are from a community where these forms are native to your
dialect, they should be avoided.

|> 
|> >>dast garmi Exercise:  What is the Persian word for aval?
|> >
|> >yekom?

I am afraid not!  The correct Persian equivalent for "first" is
"nokhost" which is also pronounced "nakhost" these days.  (There
are still people who insist "nakhost" is wrong and "nokhost" is
correct.)  By the way, someone else mentioned "nakhostin" in this
thread.  This is wrong too: "nokhostin" is NOT the equivalent of
"first" but rather the equivalent of "prime" (as in "first in
time") in English.

The story of "yekom" is rather interesting.  It is in fact a
recent invention that defies the semantics of Persian.  The
credit or the blame for "yekom" goes to the modern military
establishment of the Pahlavis.

At least in the languages that I know of, there are two types of
numbers: cardinal numbers (one, two, three, four, etc.) and ordinal
numbers (first, second, third, fourth, etc.).  There is always a
simple rule (i.e., adding a suffix) for deriving ordinal numbers
from their corresponding cardinal numbers.  As far as I know,
the first ordinal number is always an exception to this rule (e.g.,
you don't have "oneth" in English).  In my younger days, I read
somewhere a reasoning for this, but I'm afraid I cannot remember
it now.  In Persian, this first ordinal number is "nokhost" and
NOT "yekom", as I mentioned above.

|> 
|> Good answer!  So it looks like the Persian grammer rule is to add a mim
|> (sounds like 'om') pasvand - English suffix - to the numbers as yekom,
|> dovom, sevom, chAhArom, panjom, .  .  .  It is interesting that aval,
|> which is Arabic, is used more frequently than yekom in Persian language
|> (both written and spoken) but the practice just ends there and we switch
|> back to Persian dovom, sevom yet we continue to 'moshadad' (we add tashdid)
|> Persian words dovom and sevom.  My question still remains as the rule to
|> tashdid a word is not a Persian language grammer rule:  Why do we apply a
|> rule specific to Arabic language to words known to be Persian?

Let's be careful here: "tashdid" and its rule are NOT part of the
grammar of Arabic or Persian; they are part of the alphabet and the
writing system presently used to record them on paper!
Persian (or any other language for that matter) is independent of
the symbols used to write it down on paper.  Grammar is the set
of rules that tell you how to form correct and acceptable
sentences in a language.  It is independent of what symbols you
use to write those sentences.  It is the same language and the
same grammar whether you write your sentences using the original
Persian alphabet, the modified Arabic alphabet we use today, or
the English alphabet, as many of us do, e.g., in our posts on SCI.

As a side note, within the Persian Empire, it was not uncommon
for merchants to write Persian using the Hebrew alphabet.  Some
such ancient business correspondence still remains today.  I
suppose integration of the Jews in the Iranian society, necessity
for written documents and means of communication to conduct
business within a vast empire, and the fact that literacy (at
least in Persian) was the exclusive right of the clergy and the
nobles, are among the reasons for this phenomenon.

So, back to your comment, tashdid is not a rule exclusive to the
Arabic language; it comes packaged with the Arabic alphabet,
together with tanvin, etc.  The use of these devices in Persian
are exactly as legitimate as using the (extended) Arabic alphabet
to write Persian in the first place.  As for tanvin, it turns out
that there in no Persian word that ever needs such a device, but
this is just a coincidence.  Furthermore, the number of words
borrowed from Arabic that use tanvin are extremely low, and they
happen to be almost exclusively of the "an" type (as opposed to
"en" and "on").

Now for "dovvom" and "sevvom".  Let's start from the beginning:
"do"+"om" and "se"+"om".  What is special about these, you ask?
It just happens that "do" and "se" are the only two cardinal
numbers that (when pronounced) end in a vowel.  Therefore, when
you add the "om" suffix, the vowels contract.  There are many
other examples of similar vowel contraction too, but I cannot
remember any now! (Help, somebody :-)
The end result is then: "dov"+"vom" and "sev"+"vom", and hence
the tashdid.

Satisfied?

|> 
|> And it looks like it happens only to these words.  I personally don't
|> know of any other Persian word - besides the two cited above - that takes
|> tashdid.

I doubt if these are the only two cases.  I cannot think of any
now, but that is no proof of anything once you know me!

|> 
|> >Saturday through thursday have Farsi names, where as Friday uses an
|> >Arabic word. Its Farsi equivalent is "Adineh". Why is Adineh not used?
|> 
|> You got me Mack jAn!  I had forgotten about Adineh; it sure sounds nice.
|> So are you going to play soccer this coming Adineh?

I suppose the reason here is the special status of "jom'eh" in
the Islamic culture, e.g., the Friday prayer (namAz-e jom'eh).

|> 
|> Regards,
|> Hooshyar F. Naraghi
|> bavafa@netcom.com
|> (415) 322-8056

Cheers,

Farhad Arbab
Interactive Systems
Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science
Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Email: farhad@cwi.nl                    Fax:   +31 20 592-4199
Phone: +31 20 592-4056                  Telex: 12571 mactr nl
Newsgroups: soc.culture.iranian