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It's "Bay-Jing", not "Bay-zhing"
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Anonymous
I've been told by Persians that the language is called Farsi. |
Anonymous
No. Tell me about it. Did she write The Accidental Tourist? I loved the bit about the mother saying her kid was a little Da Vinci, and the protagonist getting pissed off because she should have said he's a little Leonardo. I admit to some pet peeves like that! |
Anonymous
Yes, it is. If you're speaking Persian, you refer to the language you're speaking as Farsi. Just like when you're speaking French, you say, "je parle francais". You do not, however, say "I speak francais". Unless you want to sound like a tool. Want to know why? The original inhabitants of Iran are Pars. The P sound got dropped from some parts of the spoken language as Arabic influence grew. (You know arabic doesn't have a P sound, right? They drink Bebsi, instead of Pepsi. Really.) So the language of that main ethnic group, which used to be called Parsi, got converted to Farsi. |
Anonymous
My grandmother was from The Ukraine and my mother is from The Bronx. I can't imagine my mother saying "I grew up in Bronx." I am from The Island (which is of course, Long Island). |
Anonymous
Yes, she did. Digging to America is about the experience of international adoption from the point of view of the grandmother, who emigrated from Iran during the political upheaval some decades ago. Much of the book has to do with the protagonist's cultural "otherness" despite her decades of life in the U.S. I really enjoyed the book and read it twice. Tyler's late husband was Iranian. Anyway, I just thought you might enjoy it. |
Anonymous
| well doesn't this just leave us between iraq and a hard place... |
Anonymous
This is good to know. I was under the impression that people who used the term Persian to refer to the language or themselves were just trying to keep dumb fear-struck Americans from guessing that they were from Iran. (Certainly understandable, if you ask me, given the general ignorance in this country about the Middle East.) This impression is incorrect, I take it? |
Anonymous
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There's an Iranian comedian who says that his people favor "Persian" over "Iranian" because it sounds nice and non-threatening, like a kitty. So yes, that's definitely part of it!
But also, not all Iranians are Persians. The majority are, but there are also Iranian Jews, Arabs, etc. And, Persians aren't confined to Iran. Lots of Persians in Turkey, Azerbijan, and some in Afghanistan. Religious distinctions are no good, either: Persians can be Muslim, Christian, B'hai, and there are even still some Zororastrians. Anyway, "Iranian" is a geo-political term. "Persian" is an ethno-cultural term. Now you know more than you ever wanted to on the subject! 
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Anonymous
| Very interesting! Thanks for passing that on. I didn't know that! |
Anonymous
I guess my Iranian husband and his friends are all "tools"  They call their language Farsi, even when speaking English!
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Anonymous
| I thought Persia did not exist any longer. Isn't saying you are Persian the same as saying you are from Prussia? |
Anonymous
| yeah, the state dept. doesn't offer classes to Foreign Service Officers in Persian, it's Farsi. That's like saying someone from Thailand is Siamese. |
Anonymous
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Are we supposed to get the intonation right too every time we say "Bejing"? Chinese is a tonal language. If you have a rising or falling inflection on some syllables, even within the syllable, it means a different thing. There's some sentence like "Ma ma ma ma ma" in Chinese that means "I lead my horse to a fountain to drink" or something, and depending on the tone of the word "ma" it means a different thing.
All I'm saying is, we pronounce it Bay ZHING for the most part in English, for better or for worse. Who cares? That does not make us a bunch of ignoramuses. |
Anonymous
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Middle East Institute teaches Persian: http://www.mideasti.org/learn/schedule/11/PERS
State Department (CLS) teaches Persian: http://www.clscholarship.org/prev07_programs.php The Persian Empire was where the Persians lived. The Persians still exist, even though their empire was incorporated into modern Iran. Saying that there are no more Persians is like saying their are no more Navajos. They're still Navajo, their land is just called America now, ok? Yeesh. |
Anonymous
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From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsi In English this language is historically known as "Persian". Many Persian-speakers migrating to the West (particularly to the USA) continued to use 'Farsi' to identify their language in English. The word became commonplace in English-speaking countries."[10] "Farsi" is encountered frequently in the linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors,[11] and is preferred by some.[12] However, The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has declared in an official pronouncement[13] that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Obviously there is some debate. There's no need to get offended if someone uses the term Farsi instead of Persian, though. |