I would say the situation is always fluid in the nomenclature employed for
foreign names, languages, and places - in English, at any rate. I'm sure the
inhabitants of Livorno would be a little upset if English-speakers still
referred to it as Leghorn (likewise Braunschweig/Brunswick, and innumerable
others). As a matter of politeness, if those speaking the language say that
they would be happier to hear English-speakers use the word 'Persian', I'm sure
most English-speakers would go along with that. They probably only started to
say 'Farsi' because they thought that's what the speakers of the language would
rather hear them use.
Interestingly, it doesn't seem to work quite like this in languages other than
English. I don't think the French could be easily persuaded to refer to the
British capital as London rather than Londres, nor do the British (as far as I
know) have any desire to impose 'London' on those foreign languages that use
their own form. But English seems in general willing to adapt to the form that
speakers of foreign languages would prefer English-speakers to use.
It certainly isn't up to the speakers of one language to tell the speakers of
another language which form they _must_ use - but it ought to be enough to
express a preference, and then I think the deprecated form will naturally fade
out of use, in the interests of harmonious human relations, which seem to be in
pretty short supply (even at times on this list).
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Vafa Khalighi
To: Unicode-based TeX for Mac OS X and other platforms
Sent: 11 June 2011 10:09
Subject: Re: [XeTeX] [Off-topic] Persian versus Farsi
OK, understood, but I also feel that it rather begs the question (the English
name, that is, not your answer). Because if the received wisdom were that
the
preferred English name for the language was Farsi and not Persian, then
the English name of the Academy would surely be the the “Academy of Farsi
Language and Literature”, would it not ? So it is a sort of
self-fulfilling prophesy :
What is the historical name of the language of Persian nation in the west? is
it Farsi or Persian? Was it Persian empire or Farsian Empire?
the Academy of Persian Language and Literature "clearly advocates the use
of
the word 'Persian' not 'Farsi'", because if it did not, it would call
itself (in English)
the "Academy of Farsi Language and Literature" !
But if the Persian name for the Persian language is, in transliteration,
Fārsī,
is it really logical for the Persian nation (or should I here be writing
"Iranian" ?
This is quite a linguistic minefield) to seek to tell the West that while
it
is perfectly normal for a Persian (Iranian) to call his language Fārsī, we
in the
west must call it Persian ?!
Why not?
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