What Is the English Name of Iran's Language?

Payvand ^ | 12/13/03 | Pejman Akbarzadeh

[ccmay]

We still honor this accomplishment by calling the empty space between opposing lanes of divided highways Median strips

I don't believe this. I think 'median' comes from the Latin root that also gave us 'middle'.

-ccm

[Allegra]

No mention of Parsi. Because Arabs can't say "P"?

Well, they can, but they have to face east when they do it.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

I assume for a government agency?

[OK]

I think this is an attempt to distance Iran from Arabs.

I have read that it has become quite popular to wear the symbol of Zoroaster under the burka.

There is quite a backlash against Islam and Arabs brewing under the surface in "Persia".

[Billthedrill]

Well, Pars is only a small district in Iran, and its language, although it did evolve into a sort of lingua franca (which is a terribly ironic term but I can't think of a better one at the moment) in that country. As the author states, we call it "Farsi" because the Arabs did; to the credit of the latter its speakers did adopt a form of Arabic written script.

But they don't really call the country "Persia" at all, they call it "Iran" after the old name for its people. I propose, therefore, that the proper name for the language ought to be "Aryan." It is technically correct...but there might be some kind of unpleasant historical associations stemming from the expropriation of that term by a bunch of goofy Germans not too long ago...

[Cultural Jihad]

I was once asked to learn Farsi, ....

[Useless, undocumented fact]: I heard that Farsi is a language that no matter how much you study it and practice, a native speaker will always be able to tell it was not your first language.

[Verginius Rufus]

I was just kidding about Median strips. "Median" as a common adjective comes from Latin medius. English "middle" goes back to an Anglo-Saxon word, one which goes back to the same Indo-European root as the Latin word. Greek mesos as in Mesozoic also goes back to the same root.

[cake_crumb]

"They rightfully consider themselves a much older and more accomplished culture, and hold the tribal camel herders and ignorant wild-eyed jihadis of the Arab world in contempt."

They have it exactly right and I agree with them.

[Blackyce]

The Medes were initially an Indo-European people, that was later absorbed into the Persian empire. So their name probably had the same roots.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Medes seem to have been pretty similar in language and customs to the Persians ("one man's Mede is another man's Persian"). Both are first mentioned in Assyrian records of the 9th century B.C. (the Medes as "Mada"). One portion of ancient Media was known later as Media Atropatene, which is now called Azerbaijan. The Medes were the dominant group until Cyrus the Great conquered them and put the Persians in charge.

[jimtorr]

I did serve some years with a certain DOD agency. When I enlisted, linguists were the highest priority, and Farsi and Chinese were the highest priority languages.

[jimtorr]

Well, that's pretty much true of any language. It is extremely difficult to shake the accent of ones mother tongue.

The students of Farsi, or Parsi, that I knew had a very rough time with the language.

I found spoken Chinese-Mandarin, on the other hand, to be very easy. Nearly all the sounds are near native to english speakers, and the verbs virtually never vary. The verbs are always present tense, neutral gender, for instance. Of course, I only learned formal, military-type Chinese.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

When did you enlist? I thought that we didn't have many people who could speak Farsi?