[XeTeX] Persian verus Farsi

[Tobias Schoel]

This whole discussion is like the search for the aether as the absolute, 
unmoving and therefore prime coordinate system.

Contemporary anguages are continua: Every persons speaks its own 
"language"(idiolect) that has certain properties (grammar, vocabulary, 
…). And now one can only compare two idiolects and group all idiolects 
which are extremely similar to each other in contrast to other 
idiolects. This grouping is based on valued criteria by the person who 
groups. So there are dialects, idioms, languages, language families and 
so on as different groupings describing different degrees of 
similiarity. So it's utter nonsense to speak of an a priori "English" 
language and let "American" differ from it. One can compare the 
idiolects spoken by people living in England / Great Britain / UK to the 
idiolects spoken in the USA. Following that, one _might_ come to the 
conclusion that each differ among themselves a lot less than to each 
other and that they differ from each other as much as they do from other 
countries idiolects. (You see, this is very complicated.) But all of 
this depends on valued criteria, so an Englishman might see huge 
differences, but a native from Madagascar might see none.

The grouping into languages is in itself subjective. Linguistic 
academics might have a common view to this which has proven successful 
for further research.

Naming these languages isn't linguistic at all. It might have a lot of 
different reasons, some of which might be politics, propaganda and 
indoctrination.


So what can we do? All one can do is show respect to the native speakers 
and name the language in a way that is tolerable to them and oneself.

As for me: Vafa want's it to be called Persion, so I'll do it. If some 
other native speaker asks me to call it Farsi, I'll do and ask him, why 
not Persian.

bye

Toscho

Am 10.06.2011 20:18, schrieb 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
>>>
>