Persian language
Persian is an Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is the official language in Iran and Tajikistan, one of the two official languages in Afghanistan, as well being spoken by significant populations in Uzbekistan. New Persian, which the Iranians call Farsi or Parsi, Afghans call Dari (Dari Persian) or Parsi-ye-Dari, and Tajiks know as Tajiki, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids.[1] Persian is a pluricentric language and its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages.[2] The Persian language has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the eastern half of the Muslim world.
Origin
Persian has had a considerable influence on neighboring languages, particularly the Turkic languages in Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia, neighboring Iranian languages, as well as Armenian and other languages. It has also exerted a strong influence on South Asian languages, especially Urdu, as well as Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Saraiki.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Linguists agree, through comparative linguistic analysis, that all idioms now included in the Indo-European branch, from Persian to Hindi, Spanish, English, German, Russian, etc., can be traced back to a "Proto-Indo-European" language. Some examples of this common ancestry are the terms: Vater (German); padre (Italian and Spanish); pater (Latin); patér (ancient Greek, modern: patír); father (English); ; padar (Persian); pita (Hindi); Mutter (German); madre (Italian and Spanish); mater (Latin); metér (ancient Greek, modern: mitéra); mother (English); ; madar (Persian); maata (Sanskrit). Another assonance (among many) is: daughter (English) with Tochter (German), thygatér (ancient Greek), dochtar (Persian).
Aryan
The original name for Iran was "Iran", the Persian word for "Aryan". The ancient Greeks believed that Perseus, the son of Zeus, married Cassiopeia, the daughter of Andromeda, and their children are the Persians. "Iran" is a cognate term, i.e. it has the same root as "Aryan", which refers to the "land of the Aryans". Interestingly, the root is the same as that of "Ireland" (or "Eire", in Gaelic).
See also
External links
Encyclopedias
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Professor. Gilbert Lazard, : The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Dari or Parsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike the other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan, Parthian, Soghdian, Kurdish, Balochi, Pashto, etc., Middle and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars (the true Persian country from the historical point of view) and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran in (Lazard, Gilbert 1975, “The Rise of the New Persian Language” in Frye, R. N., The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, pp. 595–632, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Richard Davis, “Persian” in Josef W. Meri, Jere L. Bacharach, “Medieval Islamic Civilization”, Taylor & Francis, 2006. Ppg 602-603. “The grammar of New Persian is similar to many contemporary European languages.” “Persian has in general confined its borrowing from Arabic to lexical items, and its morphology is relatively unaffected by the influence of Arabic, being confined to a few conventions such as (usually original) use of Arabic plurals for Arabic-derived words (as in English speaker may use Latin plurals for Latin loan words, in English). Similarly, the core vocabulary of Persian continued to be derived from Pahlavi, but Arabic lexical items predominate for more abstract or abstruse subjects and often replaced their Persian equivalents in polite discourse.
- ↑ Lazard, Gilbert, "Pahlavi, Pârsi, dari: Les langues d'Iran d'apès Ibn al-Muqaffa" in R.N. Frye, "Iran and Islam. In Memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky", Edinburgh University Press, 1971.
- ↑ Nushin Namazi (2008-11-24). Persian Loan Words in Arabic. Retrieved on 2009-06-01.
- ↑ Classe, Olive (2000). Encyclopedia of literary translation into English. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1884964362, ISBN 9781884964367. “Since the Arab conquest of the country in 7th century AD, many loan words have entered the language (which from this time has been written with a slightly modified version of the Arabic script) and the literature has been heavily influenced by the conventions of Arabic literature.”
- ↑ Ann K. S. Lambton, "Persian grammar", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge University Press 1953. Excerpt: "The Arabic words incorporated into the Persian language have become Persianized".
