Persian? Or Farsi?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/05/16 12:01 -07:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/05/16/599204.aspx

You may have thought it was over. I mean, at some point there was a break after there was We're drowning in LIPs!, Microsoft, you giving us some LIP?, Let there be LIPs, Oops, we did it again, Oh Kannada... (ಕನ್ನಡ), and 'c' is for click sounds, and they're good enough for me.

But how long could that really last? :-)

Yes, now released is the Persian Language Interface Pack!

Here is some background info about Persian....

Number of speakers: ~70 million native speakers, ~40 second language speakers.

Name in the language itself:  فارسی (transliterated as “Farsi”)

Persian, dating back in its development to the great Persian Empire of the 6th century BC, is the most important Indo-European language in Southwestern Asia. It has several dialects; three of them are spoken by the majority of Persian speakers: 40 million people speak Western Persian, also known as Farsi, the national language of Iran, 15 million Tajik, national language of Tajikistan, and 15 million use Eastern Persian or Dari, which is one of the national languages of Afghanistan. Additionally Persian is spoken by around 40 to 50 million speakers as a second language.

The language name has become a confusing issue: Not only are Dari and Tadjik often considered to be different languages by many non-linguists because of their names, but also is the native name “Farsi” now increasingly used for “Persian”. This is like calling Spanish “Español” in English, though.

Fun facts:

• There are several Persian loanwords in English, like caravan, caviar, divan, jackal, magic, musk, tulip and turban (which both stem from the same Persian word). The word chess is derived from the Persian word for king, shah, while the chess term checkmate comes from “shâh mât” (="the king is left helpless / the King cannot escape", not, as often said, “the king is dead”).
• Persian was widely used in India as an administrative language until it was replaced by English with the British colonial rule.
• The most important work of Persian literature, the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) was written by the poet Abû l-Qâsem-e Ferdousî a.k.a. Ferdowsi around the year 1000 AD and is a true epic: It is seven times as long as Homer’s Iliad.

Classification

Persian is an Indo-European language and belongs to the Indo-Iranian languages.

Script

With the exception of Tajik, which is written in Cyrillic, all Persian dialects are using the Arabic script, with four additional letters (پ, چ, ژ, گ), two modified letters (ک, ی) and a few variations on spelling. This Persian alphabet is itself further extended when being used for languages like Urdu or Pashto.

Enjoy!

This post brought to you by "ف" (U+0641, a.k.a. ARABIC LETTER FEH)

# Marc Brooks on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 5:19 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 6:30 PM:

# Gabe on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 7:59 PM:

# Oliver Lippold on Wednesday, May 17, 2006 6:34 AM:

# Roozbeh Pournader on Thursday, May 18, 2006 8:01 AM:

# Gene Cash on Friday, May 19, 2006 6:39 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on Friday, May 19, 2006 8:02 PM:

# Gabe on Sunday, May 21, 2006 1:54 AM:

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