Hello and welcome to read this paper on the correct use of Farsi or Persian, when referring to the language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
I have added hereafter four addendums to this paper, that first pop-out on Google;
- The first one is from Mr./s. Kamali,
- the second one from Pejman Akbarzadeh,
- the third one from Shapour Souren-Pahlv and
- finally, the fourth one from Kamran Talattof.
Before reading this article, please study those articles and then get back to continue. (Recommended)
The very first thing, I would like to discuss about in this paper, to shed more light to the usage of these two words would be, the meanings of Exonym and Endonym, which are discussed about in none of these articles.
Exonym vs. Endonym
According to Wikipedia:
An exonym or xenonym is an external name for a geographical place, group of people, or language/dialect: a common name used only outside the place, group or linguistic community in question, usually for historical reasons.
An endonym or autonym, on the other hand, from the Greek root words ἔνδον, éndon, “within” or αὐτο-, auto-, “self” and ὄνομα, ónoma, “name”, is given by members of a particular ethnolinguistic group to the group itself, its language or dialect, or its homeland or a specific place within it.
So if Americans, Britons and many other English speaking nations would like to use and an endonym, they might. It is nobody’s fault and more than OK, if they use “Tagalog” instead of the standardized register “Filipino”, as far as everyone understands, what the whole text or discussion is all about. We cannot set limits to the usage of the words and vocabularies used.
The second thing, I would like to discuss here, is the structure of these two words, namely Farsi & Persian. Let’s have a closer look, how these words are created:
- Persian is made of Perse+ian. Better to say the Latinized root of a geographical name, or an ethnicity, which was originally Parse and a completely European suffix at the end of the word.
- Farsi is combined of these two words: Fars+i . The first part is the Arabicized of the term “Pars”, which is definitely, a geographical name. But the last portion is definitely a hundred percent, Iranian suffix, that we still use in our contemporary Persian / Farsi. And this suffix will show the relation of something to another thing, like an ethnicity or a vernacular language and etc. So, it has more Farsi / Persian elements in it. But just to mention it here, I am not against using any of the two terms.
The third thing here I would like to discuss about, and I would recommend you to study the third article written by Shapour Sourn-Pahlav is that when we are saying:
- Persian Cat,
- Persian Food
- or Persian Rug or whatever else
They are NOT definitely combinations of:
- a language + Cat
- a language + Food
- or a language + Rug or whatsoever
that you can switch it with the endonym of that language and make comparisons. They are either showing the relationship of that object with an ethnicity or a local/geographical name.
That is what raises from poor judgement.
About the four Articles:
- The one from Kamran Talattof, -if you read through the whole materials from Shapour Souren-Pahlav-, has nothing in it. It is a shortened copy of the third addendum.
- The very first article from Mr./s. Kamali does not include any grounds and reasons and he has come up with the idea of, creating a middle ground and this type of article has no scientific values.
- The article that is very worked on is the 3rd one from Shapour Souren-Pahav and this could be obviously said from the number of pages and sources mentioned in bibliography.
Conclusion: The main role of a language is to understand and make yourself understandable. If the group of people you are talking to/discussing with/ writing to, can understand you, it is definitely OK to use it. It is not an INSULT, as mentioned in the third article.
Written by: Firoozeh Bazadeh 05/24/2016