PERSIAN LANGUGE

Language Power And Society

PERSIAN LANGUGE

PARSI

HISTORY

Persian is an Iranian tongue belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The oldest records in Old Persian date back to the great Persian Empire of the 6th century BC

Persian is spoken today primarily in Iran and Afghanistan, but was historically a more widely understood language in an area ranging from the Middle East to India. Significant populations of speakers in other Persian Gulf countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as large communities in the USA.

Main Languages spoken in Iran:

• Farsi = Parsi ( Persian )

• Kurdish

• Luri

• Turkish ( Azari )

• Georgian

• Armenian

• Balochi, Dari, Pashtu, Urdo

• Arabic

• Etc….

Indo-European languages:
the most widely spoken family of languages in the world

Hellenic

Italic

Germanic

Slavic

Indo-Iranian:( Split up around early 2nd millenium BC )

Dardic and Nuristani languages

Indian (Indo-Aryan)

Iranian: (Main distinction: Eastern group and Western group)

Persian (around 70 million speakers)

Kurdish (ca. 25 million speakers)

Pashto (ca. 25 million speakers)

Balochi (ca. 7 million speakers)

Persian! Arabic ? Persian = Arabic?

Indo-European Languages =>Indo-Iranian Languages=>Iranian Languages=>Persian

Afro-asiatic Languages=>Semitic Languages=>Arabic

a glimpse of Persian language history

Official name: Farsi (یسراف )

Persian (ENGLISH) Persianus (LATIN)

Language spoken in

Persia (LATIN) Πέρσις - Pérsis (GREEK) Parsa (OLD PERSIAN)

Present name: Fars (ARABIC)

a glimpse of Persian language history

Proto-Iranian language

Appeared in the Iranian plateau ca. 1500 BC

From which Persian descended…

… and evolved through three stages of development

Old Persian

ca. 525 BC – 300 BC

Middle Persian

ca. 300 BC – 800 AD

Modern Persian

from 800 AD

• It’s clear that Persian belongs to the Indo-European family

• … but why we still have an Arabic echo when we listen to it?

Let’s have a look at his history.

a glimpse of Persian language history

Old Persian

ca. 525 BC – 300 BC

Originated in the Parsa (Fars) province

First written evidence with the rise of Achaemenid empire

Was spoken throughout the vaste Persian Empire and used as “lingua franca”

for over 200 years

Received influence from…

Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic, Greek…

…and gave influence to

Hebrew

a glimpse of Persian language history

Old Persian

ca. 525 BC – 300 BC

It was written in an adapted cuneiform alphabet (known as Mikhi)

It declined with the fall of Achaemenid dinasty (300 BC)

Old Persian must not be confused with Avestan(Aramaic)

Written from left to right

a glimpse of Persian language history

Middle Persian

ca. 300 BC – 800 AD

Pahlavi was written in an alphabet of the same name, an Aramaic-derived script

Middle Persian is a period, more than a single language

Parthian, a language

Middle Persian influenced

Arabic, Latin; Hindi, Armenian, Georgian

After the rise of the

Middle Persian period ended after the Arab conquest

Written from right to left

a glimpse of Persian language history

Modern Persian

from 800 AD

Modern Persian began after the Arab conquest

The process of transformation lasted around 200 years

and consisted of:

- Import of new Arabic words which changed the vocabulary

(but NOT the structure of the language)

- Use of Arabic script instead of the previous Pahlavi alphabet

Transition from Middle Persian to Modern Persian lasted till 10th century AD

Since then the language is known as Classical Persian

… having its Golden Age during the 13th and 14th century AD

• Modern Persian reached its maturity long ago

• This means that…

• …in 1000 years the language has remained stable in terms of grammar rules and large part of vocabulary

Evolution of Persian language

First 1500 of history: modification in the transition from Old Persian to Modern Persian

Abolition of

GENDER

Abolition of

CONJUGATIVE SUFFIXES

Simplification in the formation of

PLURAL OF FOREIGN WORDS

As a whole the structure of the language…

…became simplified

characteristics

Persian is very powerful in wordbuilding and versatile in ways a word can be built from combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives

Just by combining roots with affixes, Persian vocabulary could reach the number…

…of 226 million words!

Characteristics

For example:

From the root dân

present stem of the verb dânestan (to know)

we can obtain

Persian word	Components	English translation
dâneš	dân + -eš	knowledge
dânešmand	dân + -eš + -mand	Scientist
dânešgâh	dân + -eš + -gâh	university
dânešgâhi	dân + -eš + -gâh + -i	pertaining to university
hamdânešgâhi	ham- + dân + -eš + -gâh + -i	university-mate
dâneškade	dân + -eš + -kade	faculty
dânâ	dân + -â	wise, learned
dânâyi	dân + -â + -i	wisdom
nâdân	nâ- + dân	ignorant; foolish
nâdâni	nâ- + dân + -i	ignorance; foolishness
dânande	dân + -ande	one who knows
dânandegi	dân + -ande + -i	knowing

characteristics

Persian uses a large quantity of compound verbs

i.e. verbs consisting of an element (noun, adjective, preposition), followed

by a light verb (“do”, “give”, “hit”) which loses its original meaning

Examples:

FEKR :thought

Kardan :to do

Fekr kardan = “to think”

GUSH :ear

dadan: to give

Gush dadan: To listen

Very similar to the old English give an ear

Here are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic, but also from English, French, German, and the Turkic languages.

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Indo-Iranian languages like Hindi and Urdu, Turkic languages like Turkish and Uzbek, and Arabic.[25] Several languages of southwest Asia have also been influenced, including Armenian and Georgian. Persian has even influenced the Malay spoken in Malaysia. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.