Talk:Persian phonology

message: WikiProject Afghanistan removed, because this article doesn't deal with special phonetics of Dari, but the Iranian Persian, so it is not a part of project Afghanistan. Mubed (talk) 01:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Afghanistan

message: Hopefully the examples will be minimal pairs, and uncontroversial as well.    --jonsafari 19:39, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: All examples should be translated.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 03:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Examples

message: I have two questions about the consonants.  Maybe the article makes it clear but I'm not seeing it.  I noticed the /t/ and /d/ phonemes are described in the chart as alveolars.  Are they apical (as in English) or laminal ("dental") as in Spanish?  The second question is regarding the /p/, /t/, and /k/ phonemes.  Are they aspirated or totally unaspirated or would this difference be allophonic as in English "tough" vs "stuff"?WilliamThweatt 04:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Mahootian (1997, p. 287-8) the alveolar stops are "either apico-alveolar or apico-dental" and "voiceless plosives /p, t, c (ʧ), k/ are aspirated in syllable-initial position and unaspirated at the end of a syllable" (and presumably unaspirated in non-initial onsets).  I suppose I should mention this kind of stuff in the article. Good questions, BTW.  --jonsafari 07:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consonants

message: Any references to instrumental phonetic studies out there? There is only one I know of is Agharasouli et al (date?) Palatographic specification of lingual-palatal consonants in persian language. Audiology, Vol 14, No. 23, Pages 12-22. Available online at [http://diglib.tums.ac.ir/pub/search.asp?kw=palatography (http://diglib.tums.ac.ir/pub/magmng/pdf/2086.pdf).  (posted anonymously by 81.86.104.165)
:I'll check out the ref.  I'm not sure off the top of my head.  BTW, you should consider getting a user account; you seem to have a background in this stuff :-) –jonsafari 06:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Instrumental phonetic studies

message: Tajik      i  e    u  ů   a o  
           ┌↑┐ ↑   ┌↑┐ ↑   ↑ ↑  
 Early NP  i ī ē   u ū ō   a ā  
           ↓ ↓ ↓   ↓ ↓ ↓   ↓ ↓  
 Afghan    e i ē   o u ō   a ā  
           ↓ └↓┘   ↓ └↓┘   ↓ ↓  
 Iranian   e  ī    o  ū    a ā  
Windfuhr, the source quoted here, appears to be rather more familiar with the Tehrani type of Persian. I suggest a revision as follows, and list the reasons.
 Tajik      i  e    u  ů   a o  ai  au
           ┌↑┐ ↑   ┌↑┐ ↑   ↑ ↑  ↑   ↑
 Early NP  i ī ē   u ū ō   a ā  ai  au
           ↓ ↓ ↓   ↓ ↓ ↓   ↓ ↓  ↓   ↓
 Afghan    i ī ē   u ū ō   a ā  ai  au
           ↓ └↓┘   ↓ └↓┘   ↓ ↓
 Iranian   e  ī    o  ū    a ā  ei  ou
The symbols in this chart are phonemic, not phonetic. In terms of the actual phonetic details, the Tajik vowel /ů/ is a central mid rounded vowel (close to [ɵ]?), cf. Baizoyev 2004. The Tajik /o/ is really not that different from the so-called /ā/of Afghan and Tehrani Persian: varying between [ɒ] (British RP "Tom") and [ɔ] (Midwestern American "law"). Afghan /i/ is close to [ɪ] and /u/ is close to [ʊ ], while /ī ē ū ō/ are not necessarily longer, just more [+tense]. I leave any explicit details about Tehrani pronunciation to someone more at home with that type of Persian.
:1. the descriptive detail of the Afghan Persian vowels is based on:
::a) my own experience of having lived in Kabul for 14 months (1970-1971) and having    spoken its dialect of Persian as my daily-use language during that time.
::b) the analysis of that careful phonetician, Georg Morgenstierne, in his paper "Persian Texts from Afgahanistan" (Acta Orientalia 6:309-28 - 1928).
:2. The preservation of the early NP system into Kabuli Farsi is suggested by the fact that it is the most conservative of all the dialects.
:3. Preservation of the length distinctions as symbols, whatever be the details of their actual pronunciation, is recommended because this preserves a unity in Islamic culture: instead of having an Arab word مداخل  transcribed as Arabic mudāxil, "Persian" modāxel, Tajik mudoxil, Urdu mudāxil, they can all be transcribed with the original Arab system as mudāxil, then we see that we are dealing with basically the same system all the way from Arabic in the west to Urdu (and even Bengali) in the east, without having to jump through the hoops of the various local changes, changes which are very slight and need not be reflected in a different transcription ( unless of course Iranians have a very strong need to consider themselves as different from the Arabs as possible, even in such a small thing as how to spell their words in romanisation ).Jakob37 07:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I simply copied this chart from Winfuhr (1987).  I had no other reliable sources available to me at the time to offer differing viewpoints.  However, I agree that a phonetic analysis would be much more useful in this article, especially since the current romanizations can be somewhat ambiguous.  A phonemic transcription is appropriate for other articles discussing Persian, for example Persian grammar, but this specific article should be as precise as possible.  Please use whatever means necessary to make the chart reflect actual phonetic realizations, citing reliable sources.  –jonsafari 19:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  vowels - historical shifts 

message: Quoting the article:
:However, the classic pronunciation difference (for غ and ق) is preserved in the eastern variants of Persian (i.e. Dari and Tajiki), as well as the southern dialects of the modern Iranian variety (e.g. Yazdi and Kermani dialects).
Does anybody have a reliable source for the above statement? Thanks. –jonsafari 04:22, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ref?

message: The references should be cited properly. For example, for the sentence about the short and long vowels, which source is used? Mahootian or Windfuhr? Jahangard 03:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: Better examples should be given. There is no need to focus on short two-letter words. Also, the example for /ou/ (/kou/ کو  weevil) should be replaced by a word which is more frequently used (this word is from local dialects and its standard version is /kæk/). It seems that /ou/ is given as the modern Iranian pronounciation of what was pronounced as /æʊ/ in the classic Persian (for example, "و" in  نوروز and خسرو).   If that's the case, then I wonder why /ou/ is used (the actual pronounciation is closer to /o:/ or /ow/). Windfuhr shows it as "ou" instead of /o:/ or /ow/, simply because he dousn't use IPA symbols (he shows /ɒː/ as "ā", and  as "ei"). We shoud note that Windfuhr doesn't use IPA symbols (for example, he uses "ā" as /ɒː/). Jahangard 04:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The examples are there to demonstrate a minimal pair.  Regarding your other point, IPA is the common currency of phonology descriptions in general.  Using non-IPA letters like "ā" can lead to ambiguity (eg. rounded or non-rounded?).  It's too bad Windfuhr didn't use IPA, but that still doesn't bind us to use his transcription.  Both minimal pairs and IPA usage are pretty basic things in a phonological description of a language.  –jonsafari 01:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chart for vowels

message: I don't know the reference of this example, but for me as a native speaker of Persian it sounds very artificial or maybe like a dialect such as Dari or even like the way a non-native speaker would use the words, so I suggest to change it. I didn't do it myself, because I'm not very familiar with the IPA-codes and also because it was referenced to a book, which may be a standard literature. But if you want to do the IPA part, here is MY version of this example written romanized:
Ruzi/Yek ruz baade shomal va xorshid sare inke ke kodaam yek qavitar ast daêvaa mikardand. ("aayaa kodaam" and "yek ruzi" are absoloutly wrong! "baaham" is colloquial.)
Actually the verb "daêvaa kardan" is colloquial, so I think, when using it, the whole sentence must be changed into colloquial language:
Ye ruz baade shomaal o xorshid baaham daêvaa mikardan ke kudum qavitare.
Mubed (talk) 01:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example on the article page 

message: "ey" is not a diphthong in Persian. It comprises of phonemes "e" and "y". It is easy to prove it: replace the "y" in "mey" (wine) with "s" and you get "mes" (copper), replace it with "h" and you get "meh" (fog). What I said for "ey", also applies to "ây", "uy", and "oy". They are not diphthong. I'll remove the relevant parts saying that "ey" is a diphthong. Alijsh (talk) 09:36, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, isn't it in large part dependent on the viewpoint of native speakers? For example, the "aj" ("ay" for you non-IPA guys) sound in English "I" or "final" is considered by many native speakers of English to be just one sound, simply the "long i", and furthermore it is written (most often) with just one letter. But some foreign listener who knew nothing about English writing or grammar would probably consider it a diphthong. Now, in written Persian , these sounds are written with two components, even if the first(fatha, zamma etc.) may not be clearly indicated, they are still there in the pronunciation. Jakob37 (talk) 04:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Alijsh, good points.  All I'm saying is that some definitions of diphthong would include /ey/ and /ây/ despite the fact that they split across syllable boundaries in morphologically determined ways.  So we should clarify.  Given the evidence you cite, I agree that we should distinguish /ey/ and /ây/ from the phonemic /ou/ diphthong.  If so, we should explain the definition of diphthong used in the article, cite the source that distinguishes them, and explain why the commonly found sequences /ey/, /ây/, etc. don't fit the definition of a single-phoneme diphthong.  I don't have access to the book, but if you're willing to write a few sentences to explain this, I'd be all for it!!  ǝɹʎℲxoɯ (contrib) 23:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Cool, thanks, those are some interesting minimal pairs!  I don't understand Persian well enough to understand the original, I think, but that's interesting stuff.  I think we should note in the article that all of these diphthong sounds occur and also that they typically do not constitute single phonemes. ǝɹʎℲxoɯ (contrib) 06:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Jakob, you've precisely highlighted the ambiguity we're talking about.  I think that for now I'm just going to (a) list the possible phonetic diphthongs in Persian, (b) note that they do not constitute phonemes via the evidence given by Alijsh above, and (c) refer readers to the book he cited.  ǝɹʎℲxoɯ (contrib) 06:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diphthongs 

message: This article is somewhat inconsistent in its discussion of vowel length.  It states, somewhat confusing:
The /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ vowels are marked for length in the vowel chart, but not in the vowel diagram (which is from the IPA Handbook and describes the educated Tehran dialect).  Elsewhere, /-i-/, /-u-/, /-ɒ-/ are unmarked for length in the phonemic transcriptions of example Persian words.
As I understand it, vowel length per se is NOT contrastive in Tehran Persian.  It may be true that, historically, length was actually contrastive, but today there is no minimal pair contrasted solely by vowel length, at least in dialects where /æ/ and /ɒ/ contrast qualitatively.  So I think that the distinction of "long" and "short" vowels is an anachronism, much like in some English dialects.  We should probably stop labeling /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ with the length marker in this article.  Does anyone have any reference that suggests that these vowels are actually lengthened in any context?  If so, perhaps this could be noted under allophonic variants.  ǝɹʎℲxoɯ (contrib) 17:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: See Persian language#Phonology, which treats the quantity contrast problem much better than this article: several analyses are possible (much like in German, I might note). However, unfortunately, it doesn't say anything about phonetic quantity. There is an argument for treating quantity as an active contrast, though: historically short vowels are unstable and are affected by assimilation or (with the exception of /æ/) syncope, while the historically long vowels do not show any such variation. This is pointed out here on p. 13, where it is also observed that there is no discernible phonetic vowel length distinction in contemporary Western Persian (apparently even in Afghan Persian and Tajik, although the Iranica is unclear on this point; it indicates that some Tajik varieties have retained the length distinction in the high vowels, though this may be either by quantity or quality). Their behaviour is the main reason for still treating length as an active feature of the vocalic system. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:44, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel length 

message: Persian has an, so to speak, academic-standard Latin script used in various books and dictionaries (including educational ones). Only the characters of this script should be mentioned in a formal (reference) article like "Persian phonology". Here is not a place to mention the characters found in so-called Fingilish that has no rule and everybody writes it as he wants (randomly). I modified the Romanization column of the consonant section and if everybody agrees, I'll do the same for the vowel section.--Alijsh (talk) 07:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. See Romanization of Persian. — ★Parsa ☞ talk 18:30, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romanization 

message: A sentence should be added such as 'In most dialects of Persian (Isfahani is an exception) a stressed syllable is also always pronounced with raised pitch.' I don't think this is mentioned in Windfuhr or any of the other books, but nonetheless it seems very characteristic of Persian, and it is one of the main differences between between Persian and English pronunciation. (I am not sure if it applies to Afghani Persian.) Does anyone know of any instrumental studies that might confirm this? Andrew Goodson (talk) 08:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a recent experimental study in Lingua which shows that word prominence is realized by F0 movements alone. So, technically, Persian has 'accent', not 'stress'. I will add this to the article. Divaane (talk) 07:53, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persian stress - or pitch 

message: Can someone please confirm where the stress falls in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's name?  Is it , or something else? Lfh (talk) 16:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is correct. But note that any noun when used as a vocative receives stress on the first syllable. Divaane (talk) 07:56, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 

message: In the name of god
Also is said that Persian has 23 consonant, but it's false. When yuo see Moin lexicon (one of the greatest dictionaris in Persian), yuo will see two pronunciation for "ن". 2nd pronunciation is same as english, "ŋ". when "ن" come before "گ" or "ک" and there isn't any vowel between them, Persian allow us to use "ŋ" or "n" for "ن" pronunciation. for example, for "جَنگ", we can say "jæŋg" and "jæng", and both of them are quite common. Of course many people do not pey their attention to their pronounciation of "ن".
--Arfarshchi (talk) 18:44, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  24st consonant in Persian 

message: The character ů is clearly not IPA. Shouldn't we use /ɵ/ or something, like in Tajik language#Vowels? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The central vowel of Tajik 

message: There seem to be at least four different topics that this article attempts to cover:
# The phonology of Persian in general, to the extent that generalizations about this can be made
# The phonology of standard Iranian Persian in particular
# The phonologies of other Persian varieties, such as Dari and Tajik
# The historical relationship of the Persian varieties
This is in principle not impossible, as e.g. English phonology demonstrates. But since we have separate articles for Dari language and Tajik language, perhaps it would be productive to treat Dari phonology and Tajik phonology separately, and leave this article for Farsi. On the other hand, there exist other varieties yet, e.g. the "Dari-like" Aimaq, and it is not clear what their fate should be under this type of a treatment. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid we have a couple of obstacles here. First, I doubt there are enough sources that treat Iranian Farsi and Afghanistani Dari independently. Tajik is better in that respect being much different from the both, though a lot of sources must have been written in Russian not in English. Second, I doubt that there are enough users here with a proper competence in the subject (it can be see by the generally poor state of Persian-related articles). Anyway, I'd be glad if somebody with the competence write three independent articles, but for now it is better to have everything in one place, than to have three (or four) poor written stubs.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:58, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Focus 

message: What accent is it that pronounces long â as a diphthong, pretty much like ou in English "house", maybe more precisely [ɑo̯] or so? I'm not a native speaker of Persian, and I'd never heard it before I heard this song: . It's not as distinct in hâl and mâl probably due to the following L. But when he says bâd, fanâ, dârid, etc., it's definitely a diphthong. Is this just the singer's personal idiosyncrasy or is it an accent? Thanks a lot in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.206.129.98 (talk) 14:09, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long â as a diphthong 

message: Personally I think the addition of Tajik transliterations in addition to IPA makes the article too messy. Tajik is a slightly different language, with a different script and slightly different grammar and phonology to Persian. Shouldn't this article just concentrate on Persian? A separate article could discuss Tajik phonology, inasmuch as it differs from standard Persian as spoken in Iran. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The transliteration should be a romanized one such as DMG. See Romanization of Persian. Tajik phonology should be separate. — ★Parsa ☞ talk 18:25, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That's the reason for the Cyrillic letters? Yeah, it confused me, and it seems unnecessary. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 23:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now removed most of the Cyrillic transcriptions. They are particularly unwanted when the Tajik pronunciation differs from the Iranian, e.g. in mixām 'I want', where Tajik has mē-. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:06, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tajik transliterations 

message: In the "Spelling and examples" table for consonants, for some reason the transcriptions given are in the Eastern dialect, not standard Persian, e.g. /eːˈɾɒːn/ for /iːˈɾɒːn/. Surely either both should be given or just the standard Persian. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:39, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Spelling and examples

message: The voiceless obstruents /p, t, t͡ʃ, k/ are aspirated much like their English counterpart - in fact, /t͡ʃ/ is never aspirated in English (see GIMSON p. 160) https://baselbern.swissbib.ch/Record/284768715) . Ternes/Majidi also don't mention aspiration of Persian /t͡ʃ/ (IPA HANDBOOK, p. 125; https://baselbern.swissbib.ch/Record/258838426)
Wathiik (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not a reliable source, but I think that English  shows the different shades of allophony that stops do, which includes aspiration initially or at the beginning of a stressed syllable and less aspiration in most other positions.  initially sounds more like the aspirated  in the Armenian examples in the article on Aspirated consonant than the unaspirated . But of course, in articles one has to follow the reliable sources if they insist that our fortis affricate isn't ever aspirated. — Eru·tuon 18:07, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  aspiration  

message: The beginning of the Consonants section talks about /ɣ/ and /q/ phonemes, but then in the spelling table they're replaced by /ʁ/ and /ɢ/. So what are they? It's explained how they're pronounced in Iranian Persian, but for Dari and Tajik it's mentioned that "the classic pronunciations of غ‬ and ق‬ are preserved". But what are the classic pronunciations? The text talks about [ɣ] and [q], the table gives examples of [ʁ] and [ɢ].  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.41.16 (talk) 16:08, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of consistency 

message: It would be great if interested editors could comment on the AfD discussion for this article at :Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PCVC Speech Dataset. Thank you. ~Kvng (talk) 14:37, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[PCVC Speech Dataset]] 

message: I asked a native Farsi speaker friend to pronounce some of the words, and I compared with Wikipedia's IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio. It seems that /to/   تو   "you" (singular) has the vowel [o̞], and /tɒː/   تا  "until" has the vowel [ʌ].
~calc_rulz (talk) 3:46, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some of the Vowels Seem Wrong 

message: Are the sounds represented by the letters ع غ ق present in loanwords (from Arabic, Turkish, etc.) only? Or are there any native Persian words that include these sounds? 207.172.134.7 (talk) 23:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Only the غ is inherited (plus from later borrowings). ع comes from Arabic loanwords, while ق is from Arabic and Turkic. See p. 427 of Windfuhr, G. & Perry, J. R (2009). "Persian and Tajik". In G. Windfuhr (ed.), The Iranian Languages. Routledge, pp. 416–544. –Austronesier (talk) 17:27, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which sounds in loanwords only? 

message: I think it should be mentioned that in Tajik persian, the vowels /i/ /u/ and /a/ can be reduced to a schwa sound [ə] in unstressed syllables. 92.184.124.74 (talk) 06:38, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tajik vowel reduction 

message: Someone else put in the intro that Persian has 26 consonants, but the consonant chart in the article lists less than that. Can someone confirm that number with a chart before I change it? Sameerhameedy (talk) 22:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. The number of consonants was changed from 23 to 26 in this edit, and there were 24 in the chart at that time.  and  were split into two phonemes in the table since then, which might be wrong. But regardless the number should agree with the table. — Eru·tuon 23:24, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  26 consonants??