I speak Irani
The case for a supra-national lingual identity
In the Indo-European Family of Languages, the Indian branch evolved into Sanskrit, then into Middle Indian and from it derived the sub-branch that included Bengali and other tongues, while another sub-branch became Hindustani. The Iranian branch produced Avestan and then Old Persian and from Old Persian derived Middle Persian, the written form of which was called Pahlavi in Sasanid times. The Persian of today called by some as New Persian (and Modern Persian) is what most Iranians recognize among themselves as Farsi. Farsi (also referred to by a minority as Parsi) is the language of the Samanids, of Rudaki, of Ferdowsi and of Iran for over a thousand years.
When an Iranian speaks of his language to another Iranian they refer to it as Farsi. The term Parsi is hardly used by the majority of the people unless they try to get across to the listener or reader a cultural, ethnic or political point of view, often laced with nostalgia, nationalism or ethnic purity. There is very little linguistic logic to its persistence.
When an Iranian speaks of her language to a foreigner or in a non-Iranian medium, she uses the term Persian, Farsi or Irani(an). All three are correct and each has its own nuance. I do not see a substantive difference between saying Persian and Farsi. This is so because of two reasons: First, the term Farsi or Parsi is the Iranian’s way of saying Persian. Second, the term Farsi is not in my opinion an Arabicized form of the term “Parsi.” The Persian language did not have to wait for Arabic in order to turn “parsi” into “Farsi,” substituting the Arab “f” sound for the Persian “p.” The fact is that Persian too has had the sound “f”. I think the Persian “p” succumbed to the Persian “f” when the Persain script became Arabic in which initially the letter “p” was lacking.
In a recent article ["For the love of P"] I took the view that the word “Farsi” is Persian and that the occurrence of the sound “f” in the word “Farsi” came about as the result of the Persian language’s own survival mechanism – its own rules of sound substitution -- and, therefore, Farsi is not Arabic or Arabicized form of Parsi. A few passages from that essay is worth repeating here:
At the time of Darius the Great the language of the Achaemenians was what we call now Old Persian, as represented in cuneiform (600-300 BC). In the cuneiform alphabet the sounds “f,” “p,” “b, and “v” existed, as they did in the version of Persian in Parthian and Sasanian times. When the Arabic script became the national script in Iran, the Persians found themselves in a situation where the sound “p” found no symbol in the Arabic alphabets. So in many instances the Persian scribes chose the phonetically akin “f” sound for “p” to express their Persian words. Therefore, the substitution of the sound “f” for “p” was a necessary device by which the people who wrote Persian in the Arabic script sought to preserve the Persian vocabulary. So they said “Farsi” to mean “Parsi,” instead of losing the word to something like ajam. Later the scribes invented the symbols within the Arabic script in order to give expression to the sounds of their native Persian tongue – so Farsi has the additional symbols of “p”, “ch” “g” and “j” that Arabic script did not have.
Not all the “p” sounds turned into “f.” Some “p” sounds were preserved by the use of the substitute sound “b.” Consider the etymology of the Farsi word barf (snow). The ancient Iranians referred to snow as “par,” which is the present-day-word for “feather.” The evidence is in the form of two passages about the climate of Sakam (Scythia), inhabited by the Saka (Scythians), an Iranian-speaking people. Herodotus wrote: “Above, to the northward of the furthest dwellers in Scythia, the country is said to be concealed from sight and made impassable by reason of the feathers which are shed abroad abundantly. The earth and air are alike full of them, and this is which prevents the eye from obtaining any view of the region.” “Now snow when it falls looks like feathers,” he further wrote, “and the Scythians, with their neighbours, call the snow-flakes feathers because, I think, of the likeness which they bear to them.”
The pre-Original Teutonic root of the English word “feather” was the word petra, which in Greek evolved into the word petro (wing), which had its roots farther in Sanskrit’s pat, meaning to “fly.” This is according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Persian par (feather), par-zadan (to wing, fly), and parvaz (flight) obviously share an undeniable kinship with the European derivations. The word parvaz consist of par (feather) and vaz (open) – a description of the sate of flight by a bird that spreads or opens (vaz) its feathers. I believe, for now, that the Persian (proto-) word parva that means “fear,” but which Iranians use in the form of biparva (fear-less) may well have originated with the image of a bird diving with its feathers (wings) closed. In time the word bi-par-va (without open feathers/wing) became synonymous with fearless, courageous.
The present-day Farsi word for snow is barf. In view of Herodotus’ description of snow among the Saka as “feather,” the Iranian word for snow would have been “par.” If the sound “p” became “b” in Arab occupation times (perhaps with the addition of f at the end) it was for the purpose of Persian preserving the word in a script system that did not have the symbol for “p” as yet.
Within the Indo-Aryan (Indo-Iranian-European) language system, the substitution of the sound “f” for “p” is as common as the substitution of “t” is for “d” sounds. A chief example of this is the Sanskrit word pramana (measure, authority) that became in Old Persian (yes, Old Persian) the word framana (with an f) – long before Arabic came into play. That word means “command” and survives in Persian as farman. Already in the days of Darius therefore f was a substitute sound for p in Old Persian proper.
This transformation of sound from p to f is so natural to the Persian phonetics that many examples can be offered of it. One good one is the word espand (wild rue) that became esfand and when Ferdowsi wrote of the Iranian hero he wrote of Esfandiar, not Espandiar. Iranians still use sepid as they do sefid for the color white, while less use the word pil for fil (elephant). Then there is the word for water in Persian: In Avestan it was ap, in Pahlavi/Middle Persian it became av, it is now ab, all transformations within the Iranian language system, without Arab influence (otherwise ab would have become aw).
Then there is the Persian word for horse asb, which derived from the earlier asp and in some dialects in Iran comes out as asf.
To further illustrate the point about the natural occurring substitution from p to f in Indo-Iranian-European languages -- consider the English word “father.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in Original Teutonic the word was both fader and fater. In Greek it was patr, in Latin it was pater, in Sanskrit it was pitr and in Old Aryan it was pater. In Persian it was probably padar and later pedar. This example demonstrates how the word pater (Aryan) or pedar (Persian) lost the p sound to f – all within one language system and with no influence from Arabic! It is worth the time to consider how in Farsi we have come to use the term baba to say “dad”. Is this a Persianized form of the European papa, or that papa would have occurred naturally in Persian and other Indo-Iranian-European languages as a matter of repetition by a baby of the first syllable of the word for father (padar, for example), just like mama for mother (madar)?
The folk who insist on dismissing the term “Farsi” as Arabic (because of the f) need to explain away Arabic’s tendency to substitute the letter “b” for “p” in in-bound words -- such as betrol for petrol.
The insistence that the term Farsi is Arabic or Arabicized need to explain away the Arabic language’s natural inclination to substitute the sound “b” sound for “p” in in-bound – thus betrol refers to petrol, borteghal to Portugal orange, Balastine to Palestine, and beez to peace.
It has proven next to impossible to convince many of the Iranians to use the term “Persian” instead of “Farsi” when speaking or writing about their national language in a non-Iranian medium. There are very good reasons for this. First, when an Iranian says Farsi she means Persian in Persian, so there is no rapture or falsehood there.
Second, to most Iranians the concept of “Persian” is alien in that the term is another’s way of saying Parsi or Farsi and there is no legitimate reason to describe one’s language in another’s term for it. Iranians of today grow up with Farsi as they have for centuries and when they travel abroad or address foreigners they express themselves as they are. There is no shame to be associated with Iran or Farsi.
Third, there is a political dimension to the use of Persian over Farsi, too. At one level, it is the high-handed approach of some advocates that impinges on one’s freedom of expression. At another level, the debate is often coached in terms of what is “correct” and what is “incorrect.” At a third level, the insistence on Persian rubs many Iranians the wrong way because it is ethnically insensitive and smacks of ideological superiority or nationalistic purity.
Not all Iranians are ethnically Persian or even speak Persian, Parsi or Farsi. The weightlifting champion of the world is from Iran, but until very recently at the last summer Olympics he spoke only Torki Azari. When asked what language he speaks, should he say “Persian,” “Torki,” “Torki Azari,” “Azari,” or “Iranian Turkish?”
In the Indo-European Family of Languages, the Indian branch evolved into Sanskrit, then into Middle Indian and from it derived the sub-branch that included Bengali and other tongues, while another sub-branch became Hindustani. The Iranian branch produced Avestan and then Old Persian and from Old Persian derived Middle Persian, the written form of which was called Pahlavi in Sasanid times. The Persian of today called by some as New Persian (and Modern Persian) is what most Iranians recognize among themselves as Farsi. Farsi (also referred to by a minority as Parsi) is the language of the Samanids, of Rudaki, of Ferdowsi and of Iran for over a thousand years.
When an Iranian speaks of his language to another Iranian they refer to it as Farsi. The term Parsi is hardly used by the majority of the people unless they try to get across to the listener or reader a cultural, ethnic or political point of view, often laced with nostalgia, nationalism or ethnic purity. There is very little linguistic logic to its persistence.
When an Iranian speaks of her language to a foreigner or in a non-Iranian medium, she uses the term Persian, Farsi or Irani(an). All three are correct and each has its own nuance. I do not see a substantive difference between saying Persian and Farsi. This is so because of two reasons: First, the term Farsi or Parsi is the Iranian’s way of saying Persian. Second, the term Farsi is not in my opinion an Arabicized form of the term “Parsi.” The Persian language did not have to wait for Arabic in order to turn “parsi” into “Farsi,” substituting the Arab “f” sound for the Persian “p.” The fact is that Persian too has had the sound “f”. I think the Persian “p” succumbed to the Persian “f” when the Persain script became Arabic in which initially the letter “p” was lacking.
In a recent article ["For the love of P"] I took the view that the word “Farsi” is Persian and that the occurrence of the sound “f” in the word “Farsi” came about as the result of the Persian language’s own survival mechanism – its own rules of sound substitution -- and, therefore, Farsi is not Arabic or Arabicized form of Parsi. A few passages from that essay is worth repeating here:
At the time of Darius the Great the language of the Achaemenians was what we call now Old Persian, as represented in cuneiform (600-300 BC). In the cuneiform alphabet the sounds “f,” “p,” “b, and “v” existed, as they did in the version of Persian in Parthian and Sasanian times. When the Arabic script became the national script in Iran, the Persians found themselves in a situation where the sound “p” found no symbol in the Arabic alphabets. So in many instances the Persian scribes chose the phonetically akin “f” sound for “p” to express their Persian words. Therefore, the substitution of the sound “f” for “p” was a necessary device by which the people who wrote Persian in the Arabic script sought to preserve the Persian vocabulary. So they said “Farsi” to mean “Parsi,” instead of losing the word to something like ajam. Later the scribes invented the symbols within the Arabic script in order to give expression to the sounds of their native Persian tongue – so Farsi has the additional symbols of “p”, “ch” “g” and “j” that Arabic script did not have.
Not all the “p” sounds turned into “f.” Some “p” sounds were preserved by the use of the substitute sound “b.” Consider the etymology of the Farsi word barf (snow). The ancient Iranians referred to snow as “par,” which is the present-day-word for “feather.” The evidence is in the form of two passages about the climate of Sakam (Scythia), inhabited by the Saka (Scythians), an Iranian-speaking people. Herodotus wrote: “Above, to the northward of the furthest dwellers in Scythia, the country is said to be concealed from sight and made impassable by reason of the feathers which are shed abroad abundantly. The earth and air are alike full of them, and this is which prevents the eye from obtaining any view of the region.” “Now snow when it falls looks like feathers,” he further wrote, “and the Scythians, with their neighbours, call the snow-flakes feathers because, I think, of the likeness which they bear to them.”
The pre-Original Teutonic root of the English word “feather” was the word petra, which in Greek evolved into the word petro (wing), which had its roots farther in Sanskrit’s pat, meaning to “fly.” This is according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Persian par (feather), par-zadan (to wing, fly), and parvaz (flight) obviously share an undeniable kinship with the European derivations. The word parvaz consist of par (feather) and vaz (open) – a description of the sate of flight by a bird that spreads or opens (vaz) its feathers. I believe, for now, that the Persian (proto-) word parva that means “fear,” but which Iranians use in the form of biparva (fear-less) may well have originated with the image of a bird diving with its feathers (wings) closed. In time the word bi-par-va (without open feathers/wing) became synonymous with fearless, courageous.
The present-day Farsi word for snow is barf. In view of Herodotus’ description of snow among the Saka as “feather,” the Iranian word for snow would have been “par.” If the sound “p” became “b” in Arab occupation times (perhaps with the addition of f at the end) it was for the purpose of Persian preserving the word in a script system that did not have the symbol for “p” as yet.
Within the Indo-Aryan (Indo-Iranian-European) language system, the substitution of the sound “f” for “p” is as common as the substitution of “t” is for “d” sounds. A chief example of this is the Sanskrit word pramana (measure, authority) that became in Old Persian (yes, Old Persian) the word framana (with an f) – long before Arabic came into play. That word means “command” and survives in Persian as farman. Already in the days of Darius therefore f was a substitute sound for p in Old Persian proper.
This transformation of sound from p to f is so natural to the Persian phonetics that many examples can be offered of it. One good one is the word espand (wild rue) that became esfand and when Ferdowsi wrote of the Iranian hero he wrote of Esfandiar, not Espandiar. Iranians still use sepid as they do sefid for the color white, while less use the word pil for fil (elephant). Then there is the word for water in Persian: In Avestan it was ap, in Pahlavi/Middle Persian it became av, it is now ab, all transformations within the Iranian language system, without Arab influence (otherwise ab would have become aw).
Then there is the Persian word for horse asb, which derived from the earlier asp and in some dialects in Iran comes out as asf.
To further illustrate the point about the natural occurring substitution from p to f in Indo-Iranian-European languages -- consider the English word “father.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in Original Teutonic the word was both fader and fater. In Greek it was patr, in Latin it was pater, in Sanskrit it was pitr and in Old Aryan it was pater. In Persian it was probably padar and later pedar. This example demonstrates how the word pater (Aryan) or pedar (Persian) lost the p sound to f – all within one language system and with no influence from Arabic! It is worth the time to consider how in Farsi we have come to use the term baba to say “dad”. Is this a Persianized form of the European papa, or that papa would have occurred naturally in Persian and other Indo-Iranian-European languages as a matter of repetition by a baby of the first syllable of the word for father (padar, for example), just like mama for mother (madar)?
The folk who insist on dismissing the term “Farsi” as Arabic (because of the f) need to explain away Arabic’s tendency to substitute the letter “b” for “p” in in-bound words -- such as betrol for petrol.
The insistence that the term Farsi is Arabic or Arabicized need to explain away the Arabic language’s natural inclination to substitute the sound “b” sound for “p” in in-bound – thus betrol refers to petrol, borteghal to Portugal orange, Balastine to Palestine, and beez to peace.
It has proven next to impossible to convince many of the Iranians to use the term “Persian” instead of “Farsi” when speaking or writing about their national language in a non-Iranian medium. There are very good reasons for this. First, when an Iranian says Farsi she means Persian in Persian, so there is no rapture or falsehood there.
Second, to most Iranians the concept of “Persian” is alien in that the term is another’s way of saying Parsi or Farsi and there is no legitimate reason to describe one’s language in another’s term for it. Iranians of today grow up with Farsi as they have for centuries and when they travel abroad or address foreigners they express themselves as they are. There is no shame to be associated with Iran or Farsi.
Third, there is a political dimension to the use of Persian over Farsi, too. At one level, it is the high-handed approach of some advocates that impinges on one’s freedom of expression. At another level, the debate is often coached in terms of what is “correct” and what is “incorrect.” At a third level, the insistence on Persian rubs many Iranians the wrong way because it is ethnically insensitive and smacks of ideological superiority or nationalistic purity.
Not all Iranians are ethnically Persian or even speak Persian, Parsi or Farsi. The weightlifting champion of the world is from Iran, but until very recently at the last summer Olympics he spoke only Torki Azari. When asked what language he speaks, should he say “Persian,” “Torki,” “Torki Azari,” “Azari,” or “Iranian Turkish?”
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