[XeTeX] arabxetex vs. xepersian

Paul Isambert zappathustra at free.fr
Sun Oct 3 14:09:10 CEST 2010


  Le 03/10/2010 13:51, Vafa Khalighi a écrit :
>
> We say Parsi, the international community says Persian. History says 
> Persian, where does Farsi come from? As I said before, you should read 
> some history before commenting unwisely?
It's not a matter of history, it's a matter of phonetics. "Farsi" comes 
from "Parsi" in some phonetic system. It is not fake, it's just the 
transliteration of a pronunciation. I'm sorry to tell you there's no 
real name for your language, since there's no real name for anything. In 
French we say "Persan", with no semi-vowel "i" as in "Persian" (and a 
nasalized "a", despite the spelling, not to mention the pronunciation of 
"r"). Would you say it's fake? Or would you say that the English 
pronunciation is fake just because in English you don't use nasalized 
vowels? That's the same thing with p/f, except it looks more dramatic, 
because of the spelling. But I'm sorry to say that "Farsi" is closer to 
"Parsi" than "Persian" is, if you count differences.

And anyway: the name of your language depends on the language in which 
you say it. And no language is better than any other to represent things 
-- even itself.


> at least you know that arabs have tried their best to change the name 
> of "Persian gulf" into Arabian gulf but they always have failed to do so.
That's not phonetics, that's politics. Nothing to do with Persian/Farsi.

Paul


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