On Sat, 24 May 2003, Rick Cameron wrote: > When I was looking at the President's site, I tried to find a link to > something like the Academy, without success - thanks for providing it. One > problem: the home page of the site is all in Persian! (See how I've > assimilated? ;^) I visited a few other pages, and they're all in Persian, > too. (Unfortunately, Persian is not among the small set of languages I can > read - a sad fact I hope to rectify once my ship comes in...)
Well, same was with me and the French Academy when I was trying to find it. I had problems googling it even. (I guess that was about two years ago, so don't try to shame me by telling how easy it is now ;)) > So I took out my trusty Google & searched the site for 'Farsi' (hope you'll > forgive the impertinence ;^) - and found on the page > http://persianacademy.ir/NaamehF/naameh01.htm this text: Unfortunately that is not available now, so I can't check. The whole Persian Academy website looks to be down now. > متن اعلام نظر شوراي فرهنگستان زبان و ادب فارسي > دربارۀ كاربرد Farsi به جاي > Persian در مكاتبات وزارت امور خارجه > > It's a link, but unfortunately a broken one. Would someone care to translate > this? Google failed me there. That translates to something like: The text of the opinion announcement of the Council of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature about the usage of 'Farsi' instead of 'Persian' in correspondings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Of course they are asking the Ministry to use 'Persian' instead. > As for Roozbeh's assertion that it is politically incorrect to use the term > 'Farsi'- like Karl Pentzlin I'd love an explanation. If anything I thought > that its use was politically correct - that the current regime in Iran might > prefer it, because the word Persian might have associations with the regime > of the Shah, or with colonialism. I mentioned that some Iranian-Americans are finding it offensive. Of course many language experts are also considering it alwrong... As for 'Persian' and a relation to the 'Shah's (there were many in Iran for about 2500 years, from Cyrus to Mohammad Reza), well, it's the first time I'm hearing the idea. Who knows? May be some hardliners do feel so, but I guess they are either very few, or very silent, or I would have heard some voices from that front. roozbeh
