The Iranian Language

farohar

I voted yes but I felt that I had to explain why, by voting yes I don't mean that Persian language is a dieing language (that would be ridicules) Imagine a language as a snowball rolling down a mountain, as it rolls it gets bigger and swallows everything on its way, by the time it stops it may be one gigantic hill which may not have the pure content, shape or size of its origin but it is in fact, the same snowball but with richer content, languages borrow words and that is how they develop. For a language to get to a richer level there are three choices:

1- Borrow foreign words: I have nothing against borrowing words but I feel they should be reduced to 10-15% per language, meaning if you have 10000 words borrowed from Arabic language it should be reduced to 1000-1500. We have to remember that many of the words that most think are Arabic, are in fact Persian words, so I would be careful calling every word Arabic, For example many would say that the word "sad" (hundred - 100 - written with 's�t') is a Arabic word while it is actually a miswritten Persian word. "Sadeh festival"

or the word "d�var" (referee) used today, was used 15 centuries ago as d�dvar (judge) but, then again 15 centuries ago Iranians didn't play football, so today we say d�dras/q�zi (judge).

2- Combine words: Best way but, one should be careful not to get too many long words that are hard to use.

3- Make artificial words: you have to start somewhere, I don't think the caveman really thought of this when he was saying "me hunt you cook". There are about 21952 combinations of 3 letter words (as a root word) you can make with Persian alphabet, however only 2904 of these are easy to pronounce and most of them are already in use. This number for pronounceable words in 4 letter words is 17424 and for five letter words 383328) so there are allot of possibilities here.

All this said, in the end people will decide what words to use.

Sabzevarian

UniPers is a great idea for a secondary language but on the other hand most Iranians know this alphabet already. I prefer reconstructing the existing alphabet because it's do-able, easy to adjust, fast to learn, keeps us close to our history and it does not damage Persian calligraphy. here is an idea:

Zagros

I don't mean to change the subject here but yes many words in the Qur'an are indeed of Iranian origin, like the word "din/deen" (religion) used in Qur'an Al-Baqara[2:256] Al-Imran[3:19], [3-24], [3-73], [3-83] and [3-85].

"Din/deen"(religion) is driven form the word "daena"

GOOD CONSCIENCE

Turning to the Zarathushtrian religion, the conscientious term, most probably coined and used first by the founder, Zarathushtra, is "Da�n�". It is derived from the Avestan root "di" or "dai" (Sanskrit "dhyai"), meaning to "see, view, perceive, contemplate, ponder, mediate" with a participle suffix "na". Da�n� means "conscience, discernment, insight", and of course, "religion". It is according to Zarathushtra, one's discerning insight that forms one's religion, in fact, conviction. The Indian term "dhy�na", focusing of thoughts to comprehend a fact, meditation, is a cognate.

But while the Indian dhyana helps an individual to concentrate to promote his or her own individual mental faculty, the Zarathushtrian Daena unites all those who think, discern, and choose alike in one great fellowship of conviction -- the religion of Good Conscience, Da�n� Vanguhi-- founded, preached and promoted by Zarathushtra. Zarathushtra uses the term Daena for a total of 26 times in his sublime songs, the Divine Gathas.

Zoroastrianism

Ahura Mazda is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything which can and cannot be seen, the Eternal, the Pure and the only Truth. Zoroastrian morality is summed up in the simple phrase, "Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds". Daena (din in modern Persian) is the eternal Law, whose order was revealed to humanity through the Mathra-Spenta "Holy Words". Daena has been used to mean religion, faith, law, even as a translation for the Buddhist and Hindu term Dharma: it is the correct order of the universe, which humanity naturally must follow through the Kusti "Holy Path" in order to be a Behdini "Follower of the Proper/Good Religion".

Ops yes i was wrong Ferdos was actully mentioned in the Quran.

about "Din" actully in Arabic it has different root and meaning than the Persian one, so it didnt come from Persian language.

I think you are refering to the word "wuzu", correct me if I am wrong.

No abdest/�bdast(�b+dast = water+hand) is not used in Qur'an. 

You mean the word ����?

I see, although I have many questions about this but I think It'll be way out of topic so maybe some other time, thanks Azimuth

I was glancing through the topics since I'm no longer an addicted user anymore   that I saw this thread and couldn't resist not replying to it. As azimuth said M. Persian has a lot of Arabic words, true. But saying that the language would be incapable of meaning without its Arabic words is not acceptable. Since for a long time Arabic was the official language of Iran, (nowadays) we see the Arabic words used in the "Formal" conversations, letters and books. But, as many Iranians who read (lol) would know, between the Ghajar era and the Pahlavi's many foreign words were dismissed and replaced by their Persian equaltions. Now if we take a book -- let's take a novel for example -- from Pahlavi era and compare it to a newly published novel (any) we would clearly be able to distinguish the diverse level of literature, I mean when I was reading the "Animal Farm" (translated in 1976~79) a few weeks ago for the second time, I didn't understand a number of words. As for the slang Persian, we use Arabic words as well, but if we want to, we can easily replace them with Persian. It's just the matter of popularity and habit.

to answer one of the earlier posts regarding the roots of Din, I, again, as many times before have to say that the root is Daen� which comes from Avestan. We don't have any evidence of the existance of this word in any Semetic languages dating back to the 1st mil. bc or earlier.

yes but not all, and iam not saying that they all sounded like Arabic, someone posted that he is learning Farsi and tell whoever who teachs him not to teach him any Arabic words in Farsi, its like he want to learn Pure Farsi, i told him that he as a new learner wont understand what many iranins would say if he didnt learn at least some Arabic words which are used more in the Daily life.