Thanks, Vafa, for the link to Suren-Pahlav's very informative and interesting article.
I was struck by the quote in it from Frances Pritchett that the use of the word "Farsi" was further promoted by Urdu-speakers. I wonder whether she is referring to her conversations with her Urdu-speaking colleagues in Urdu or in English. I, an Urdu speaker by birth, learned in childhood that the same language is called "Persian" in English and "Farsi" in Urdu (sometimes "Parsi", specially in poetry.) For example, that's how the Persian language class was listed differently in school schedules depending on whether the schedule was posted in Urdu or English. Different English and Urdu names also applied to many other languages, countries, and people. Urdu books often refer to English, French, Spanish, and Dutch languages, respectively, as "Angrezi", "Faransesi", "Hispanvi", and "Volandezi". This is consistent with different names used in different languages to refer to the same language. What is called "Deutsch" in its own language is called "German" in English, "Allemagne" in French, "Tedesco" in Italian, etc. The word "Farsi" seems to have been used in Arabic for a long time to refer to Persian, even by writers of Persian origin. For example, in the Introduction of the Arabic version of the famous book on complete quadrilaterals by the great 13th century Persian scientist Tusi, I see the statement that the author originally wrote the book in "Farsi" but then translated it into "Arabi" on the request of some of his scholarly friends. There doesn't seem much to worry about Persian (or any other language) being called differently in different languages. The cause for alarm is if a particular language is suddenly and deliberately renamed by some group. In English the subject language has been called "Persian" for centuries. So it should be of concern that the Foreign Language School administered by the US State Department calls it "Farsi"! Kamal Abdali ============= On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 08:48, Vafa Khalighi <vafa...@gmail.com> wrote: > A while ago, I insisted on using the word "Persian" instead "Farsi". My > friend, Shapour * *Suren-Pahlav from the circle of ancient Iranian studies > has written an article about this. You can see his article here: > http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Languages/persian_not_farsi.htm* > * > > > > -------------------------------------------------- > Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.: > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex > >
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