[XeTeX] Persian verus Farsi

[Alan Munn]

On Jun 10, 2011, at 1:56 PM, Keith J. Schultz wrote:

> Hi Phil,
> 
> I can not much about Persian, Farsi, but
> the Americans use to speak acedenmically
> "American English", which in colloquial American
> was referred to as English. Today, American is the widespread
> term in Acedemica. Québécois is definitely is not French.

This really isn't the place for this kind of discussion, but as a linguist I really can't let comments like this go past without saying something.

Language naming is a political act. It is not a linguistic act. For languages that are definitely related to one another in recent history (as in American English and British English or Parisian French and Québec French) there are no reliable *linguistic* criteria by which one can say that one language is English (or French) and the other is not. This is exactly the point made by the article that Vafa refers to.

Furthermore, at least in the linguistics academic field, "American" is absolutely not used as the name of the English spoken in the U.S.  But since language naming is a political act, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some academic circles that have decided otherwise.

But I reiterate, this list is *not* the place for this discussion.

Alan

P.S. What language were you replying in?

> 
> regards
> 	Keith.
> 
> Am 10.06.2011 um 15:43 schrieb Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd):
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Vafa Khalighi 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
>> 
>> Well, yes : but is it any worse than the Americans describing
>> their language as "English" ?!  At least the French-speaking
>> residents of Québec have the decency to call their language 
>> "Québécois" and not try to pass it off as French :-)
>> 
>> Philip Taylor
>> 

-- 
Alan Munn
amunn at gmx.com