Talk:Persian language/Archive 1

message: According to the CIA fact book, at least 24% of the Iran's population are Azeri Turkish speakers. Your map is misleading, since it gives the impression that people in north western Iran are native Persian speakers, while in fact they are Azeri people. For instance consider Tabriz city. Heja Helweda 12:24, 9 Nov 2005
The reason that Azari doesn't appear on that map is because its not a member of the Iranian language family, a genetic grouping, and so doesn't belong there. Now, if it were a map of the languages of Iran that would be a different matter. --Maziart 06:27, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Where is Azeri Turkish in the Language map?

message: QUOTE Farsi is an old language that has roots from over a thousand years ago. /QUOTE Non-information? Do you know any natural language that does not 
have roots from over a thousand years ago? -- user:Vassili Nikolaev
I don't know where that quote comes from but to me it seems you misunderstand the quote (perhaps because the quote is scanty).  As a Persian speaker who also knows a few other languages, I can tell you that when it comes to etymology of Indo-European roots, in the Persian language you are definitely drinking from the fountainhead or very near to it, whereas in most other languages the meanings are blurry and fuzzy or just invisible.  Example:  did you ever notice how the spelling of 'daughter' in English is a little strange?  Why?  Because it comes from German 'Tochter'.  So we go to German.  But can we really 'see' the word Tochter in German?  Not really.  But the same word in Persian is Dokhtar, and even an uneducated Persian speaker can see "Dokht + ar" ... and in Persian you have both parts in numerous other constructs .... for instance: Shahdokht = shah + dokht = princess.  This is just one small example.  I think the quote meant that the roots in Persian even to this day are, for lack of a better word, "original" or preserved.   -- Keyvan Partovi.
Many people say things like this about their own languages. I personally believe that "daughter" is a very bad example because the Indo-European root is nearly identical (it is *dhughəter), and it means "daughter-in-law". Also, very little English vocabulary comes from German; this is a common misconception. A great deal of English words have a common source with German, but not more than a few come from it. For example, "daughter" does NOT originate from German "Tochter" but rather from Middle English  "doughter" which in turn comes from Old English "dohtor" from Proto-Germanic (NOT German) *dohtēr. *dohtēr almost immediately turns into an English form and a German form (at least after the split between East, West, and North Germanic). Also, given the wealth of mostly unnessecary vocabulary English has, there are many words (such as "equine") that preserve directly the Indo-European root where other words do not (or at least not nearly as apparently; ie "horse"). Examples: equine + hippopotamus both from *ekʷo, hound + cynic + kennel + corgi all from *kʷon (also believed by many to be the ultimate origin of *ekʷo), goose + smorgåsbord both from *ghans, etc. --Node 00:58, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Near the Fountainhead ? 

message: Majority of people in Bahrain has Iranian root and lots of them are Iranian and ofcourse it was Iranian island util they independence. Most of people in Bahrain speak Persian very well and those are more than Persian speaker in Uzbekistan. Shall we add Bahrain in the article?--Sina 20:05, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Majority"?  I doubt that.  Do you have any proof to back up your claim?—behdad (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bahrain 

message: Can someone create a table of the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet -- with the different shapes for letters that look different in the beginning, middle, or end of a word, name of each letter, and the sound of each letter?  This is a major deficiency of this article.  [Remember that Farsi has the 28 letters of Arabic plus 4 more letters.]
--66.81.21.224 09:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[32 Letters of the Persian Alphabet]] 

message: Ethnologue reports only 24 million native speakers of Farsi. (plus perhaps 1 million Bakhtiaris, who speak a dialect of Persian). Heja Helweda 22:19, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ethnologue is a great source and an outstanding on-line reference, but it is not the final point of reference! I am not sure why everyone tends to refer to either the Ethnologue or the CIA World Fact Book, but there are other, non-internet, more accurate, and scientific sources around. If you like, the CIA World Fact Book gives the number 51%!  --Khodadad 07:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population numbers are highly inflated.  

message: Total speakers of Persian (native + non-native) should contain 68 million from Iran (which has only one official language), and 7 million from Tajikistan. However, one can not include the whole population of Afghanistan, since it has two official languages: Persian and Pashtu. According to the CIA Factbook, 50% of Afghanistan population are Farsi speakers, so that would be around 15 million. Hence 68 + 7 + 15 = 90 million would be the number of total speakers. Heja Helweda 02:07, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total speakers of Persian 

message: Where's the source for the new language area map? If there's no source, it's original research and not allowed. - Taxman Talk 22:03, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language area map 

message: I am finding out that the "History" section is very inaccurate and sort of unneccessary. Let me start with the former:
"Old Persian, the main language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, should not be confused with the non-Indo-European Elamite language (see Behistun inscription). Over this period, the morphology of the language was simplified from the complex conjugation and declension system of Old Persian to the almost completely regularized morphology and rigid syntax of Modern Persian, in a manner often described as paralleling the development of English. " (emphesis is mine)
Over which "period"? The previous sentence is refering to the Achaemenid times. As far as the evidence of the language goes, the Achaemenid Old Persian was still a very inflected language, with three grammatical genders, eight noun cases, five verb classes, and three conjugations. See R. Kent's "Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon" for this. 
The loss of the gender system and the simplification of the noun declensions to two cases belongs to the next period of the language. Basically, after the fall of the Achaemenids, (Old) Persian in a sense "went underground" and did not re-surface until the Sasanian times (224-650 AD). By the time the first texts in (Middle) Persian appear again (Inscription of Shahpur I in Ka'abe Zartosht, Res Gestae Divi Saporis), the language had morphed into the Middle Persian form, written in its "Pahlavi" (south-western) dialect. The final loss of the inflection system does not occure until Classical New Persian (ca. 900 on) is commited into writing.
Now, for the usefulness of this "History" section. Why do we even need it? A simple mention that New Persian is a descendent of Middle Persian is enough. Anyone interested in the older stages should look at the related articles. Here, we need to discuss the development of New Persian, from its first appearance in the late 9th century to the present, with mentions of literary and linguistic changes. --Khodadad 08:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Development History 

message: What convention is employed in the semantic diagram under Grammar?  A link to an article explaining that convention would be excellent.  Otherwise, the notation should be "unpacked".  
Collingsworth 07:01, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried to follow a convention common in introductory linguistics textbooks and simple phrase structure grammars, as well as Mahootian's (1997) famous grammar of Persian .  So "(S) (PP) (O) V" would mean an optional subject, optional prepositional phrase, optional object, and required verb --- in that order.  I'll see if I can "unpack" that for those unfamiliar with this notation.  --jonsafari 00:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sentence structure 

message: Someone knowledgeable in the Persian language should take a look at Kos (Persian). --Fang Aili  說嗎? 20:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Kos (Persian)]] 

message: The data about the historical development of Modern Persian and Arabic influence was based on the following article Iranian languages from Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is 18 pages and you can find the links for all pages here:
#Page 1/18.
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#Page 7/18.
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#Page 13/18 (about vocabulary ---> 40-50 percent figure is found here).
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#Page 18/18.
Heja Helweda 01:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical Development of Iranian languages and Persian