[Kde-i18n-fa] Re: [Sysadmin] KDE Translators Center : FARSI vs. PERSIAN

[Aryan Ameri]

On Wednesday 07 January 2004 01:38, Waldo Bastian wrote:
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> On Tue January 06 2004 22:47, Arash Zeini wrote:
> > Please note that the list given as ISO 639 is no authority with
> > regard to languages in general.
>
> It is authoritative when it comes to language codes.
>
> > All major English dictionaries have an entry for
> > Farsi as the modern name of Iran's official language in English,
> > which makes it correct to use it.
>
> Webster lists Persian, not Farsi.
> http://www.m-w.com/mw/table/indoeuro.htm
> and
> http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=persian+
> "the modern language of Iran and western Afghanistan"
>
> Likewise, the CIA world fact book mentions "Persian" and not "Farsi".
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html
>
> Also http://www.iranembassy-sa.org.za/English/Language.htm states
> "The official language of Iran is Persian (the Persian term for which
> is Farsi)."
>
> And http://www.iranemb.warsaw.pl/languages.htm
> "Persian (Farsi) is a member of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the
> Indo-European languages, and the official language of the government
> and public instruction and is the mother tongue on more than half of
> the population."
> and
> "Persian (locally called Farsi) is the most important of a group of
> several related languages that linguists classify as Indo-Iranian."
>
> So I think the correct english (US) name for "fa" is "Persian".
>
> Anyway, I understand that this is all part of some political game so
> maybe we can find a compromise in calling it "Persian (Farsi)".
>
> Cheers,
> Waldo


Waldo, if you really find time to take side in every little discussion 
topic which happens in KDE-i18n mailing lists, then I wonder how you 
manage to find time for your other activitis. 

I really find it interesting that a major KDE developer has taken side, 
on an issue which we Iranians (or shall I call persians?) debate among 
ourselves, while clearly we know about our own language more than 
anybody else.

It is called FarsiKDE, because the members of this group all think the 
correct name of this language, in English, is Farsi. It is our own 
project for god's sake, and I really don't know why we can't call it 
what we like.

Unlike Pejman, when I first found farsikde.org I didn't think "why they 
are calling it Farsi instead of Persian". I thought, oh, what a cool 
thing, our language is also present in KDE. I got so excited that I 
joined the team. And I am getting sick of all these people who come on 
our mailing list, or in other places, and instead of thinking about the 
real issues, complain about why we use the term "Farsi".

Grow up, the name of our country has (rightfuly) changed. While I 
disagree with Arash Zeini in that I myself also am not proud of the 
influence that Arabs have had on our language, and also I don't think 
of myself as anti-monarchy, still I get on with the facts that our 
country is now called Iran (and not Persia) and our language name 
should also therefore change, to accomodate this change in our 
country's name.

About standards, it should be noted that ISO-639 recognizes the name of 
this language as both, Persian, and Farsi. While the Unicode standard 
only calls this language "Farsi" and there is no mention of the word 
"Persian" there.
http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/languages.html

And now that I am writing this from the library, I took the opportunity 
and looked at most of the major dictionaroes I could get my hands on. 
Webster, Oxford, The BBC English Dictionary, and all others that I 
checked, list the word "Farsi" in their dictionaries.

I even looked at an Oxford dictionary published in 1968, and it also 
lists the word Farsi, and calls it "The modern language of Iran, and 
parts of Afghanestan". So even those that think that the word Farsi 
found it's way in to the English language around 1979 are wrong, I have 
a version of oxford here published in 68, which has the word Farsi in 
it.

And there are much more important issues in the world, and much more 
interesting problems are there to be solved, that I just don't think 
it's worth wasting so much time on "Farsi Vs. Perian".

Cheers

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Aryan Ameri