Questions tagged [persian]
Persian is an Indo-European, Western-Iranian language spoken mostly in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. "Persian" is used synonymously to "Farsi".
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Distinction between Chemistry and Alchemy in Arabic and Farsi languages
According to Wikipedia, in Europe the semantic distinction between the rational science of chimia and the occult alchimia arose in the early 18th century. So it seems like there was a need to separate ...
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3answers
987 views
What is the name of this sound change, and do we have it in English?
I'm a Persian, I'm from Iran, and I speak Farsi.
Here, we have a very strange rule that we turn آ into و in informal conversations.
For example:
خانه = house (formal) /kh a ne/
خونه = house (informal) ...
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1answer
161 views
Is the Turkish word for brother(kardeş) of Indo-Iranian origin?
I looked up the word for "brother" in other Turkish languages. In Ubzek it is aka. And in Volga Tatar the corresponding word is abi. The word "kardesh" sounds suspiciously similar ...
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3answers
200 views
How to Romanize “شایق” in order to be easiest to an English speaker?
Question
How to Romanize "شایق" in order to be easiest to an English speaker?
Description
I am Iranian; my last name is شایق (Persian). To get a passport, it is needed to submit your full ...
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1answer
53 views
A possible diacritic for a silent و in Persian? [closed]
In modern Persian the و of "خوا" in many words is silent.
خواب xāb
‘sleep, asleep; dream; the nap (of a cloth)’
خوابیدن xābidan
infinitive: ‘to sleep, lie down’
Examples from the link ...
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4answers
214 views
Does [s] before [b] always become [z]?
There is a Persian word اسبابكشی asbābkeši and it is quite difficult to stick strictly to the transcription saying there is [s] before [b]. The assimilation of [s] to [z] before a voiced stop is ...
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1answer
60 views
How to interpret the only available Middle Persian dictionary?
I am looking at this:
I think this is a verb (some others are even less clear). What does besaz(en)- mean? The parentheses and the hyphen. The M is for Middle Persian, but there is no indication that ...
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/o/ -> /u/ change in Persian xānum خانم ‘mistress’
Is it correct to describe /o/ -> /u/ change in خانم xānum as nasalisation under the influence of the following /m/? What does general phonetics say about it? One Persian teacher said /m/ has nothing ...
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1answer
695 views
How different is Old Persian / Avestan / Farsi from each other?
I am looking at dictionaries of the avesta and old persian of which there isn't much, and would like to collect words in the old persian cuneiform and avestan script. First part of the question is, ...
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1answer
145 views
What is a good etymological dictionary for the Persian language?
There are dozens of etymological dictionaries for Persian, has somebody compared them, and if yes could you recommend me a good one?
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2answers
568 views
Did modern Farsi lose its casual word for yes?
Hobby linguistic learner here.
Farsi naturally shares a lot of simple words with other Indo-European languages:
German for [daughter]: "Tochter" / "doxtar" (دختر)
English for [bad]: "bad"/"bad" (بد)
...
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2answers
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If I learn Persian/Farsi, could I be able to understand Uighur language?
Ok, someone once told me that Uighur is a Turkic langugage. But just wondering, for Persian and Uighur, the two, Are they similar in any way? or just helps a little bit? Could one understand another?
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1answer
969 views
Did Persian ever have a hard or soft “th” sound?
Farsi does not distinguish between ث (soft 'th' in Arabic, like "think") and ذ (hard 'th' in Arabic, like "that"). A native Farsi speaker pronounces ث like the 's' in "sing" and ذ like the 'z' in "zoo"...
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2answers
723 views
Persian text on carpet [closed]
I would be happy if someone could translate the text which is written on the carpet shown on the photo:
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1answer
243 views
How is it possible to use a single Latin alphabet for Persian which will represent ALL three standards?
How can there be a SINGLE standard Latin script (mainly for International purposes) which properly represent standard Iranian Persian, Afghan Persian and Tajik Persian.
Especially the different ...
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1answer
188 views
Is “Qadaqan” Mongolian or Turkish? [closed]
In Persian, the word Qadaqan (q is an uvular stop consonant, i.e. having the same place of articulation as the French r) means "emphasis" and "illegal", in some Persian dictionaries it is mentioned as ...
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1answer
903 views
meaning of yek in Persian or Farsi [closed]
I know that in Persian "Man yek sag daraam" means "I have a dog", where:
Man = I, sag = dog, daraam = have. What is the purpose of yek? Is it a/an, the indefinite article?
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1answer
288 views
In Arabic loanwords, why does Persian change the short vowels with different vowels instead of matching them with long counterparts?
Classical Arabic (4th-9th century) short vowels are /a/, /u/, and /i/, and long vowels are /a:/, /u:/, and /i:/.
New Persian (1000-1200 years old) short vowels are /æ/, /o/, and /e/, and long vowels ...
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3answers
379 views
Etymology of Ancient Greek interrogative particle ἆρα
The Ancient Greek interrogative ἆρα is strikingly similar to modern Persian āyā.
Both words exclusively signal yes/no questions, and almost always begin the sentence. There is an accent on the first ...
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2answers
145 views
What is the difference between “میگفت” and “میگفت”?
I read in WP's entry on Persian alphabet that the "ye" final form is 'ﯽ', and its medial form is 'ﯿ'.
Logically, when typing "میگفت", most software automagically write "میگفت".
However, the ...
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2answers
345 views
Do Urdu Numerals belong to the Persian Script?
Do Urdu Numerals belong to the Persian Script and does Urdu use the same Unicode characters as Persian Language apart from Western Arabic numerals?
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2answers
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L2 acquisition as a factor in loss of “complex” grammatical features
Recently I came across a short text on Language Log briefly discussing a phenomenon which seems to affect certain languages. The author noticed that loss or heavy weakening of inflection during ...
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1answer
36 views
Program or website for transcribing Old and Middle Persian
Is there any program or website that is able to transcribe Old and Middle Persian text (or transliteration of them) to an orthographic or phonetic transcription?
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2answers
352 views
Musical notation in languages with right-to-left writing
How does musical notation in languages that use right-to-left writing direction (such as Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, Yiddish) look like? Is it right-to-left too? If not (i.e. if they use the same ...
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1answer
506 views
Order of components within measurement units in RTL languages
This question is about measurement units in languages written in right-to-left (RTL) scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Malay, Farsi, etc. and their country-specific variants (for example, Arabic ...
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2answers
2k views
Are Tajik and Persian mutually intelligible?
I know that the Persian language family has three branches: Persian, Dari and Tajik-Persian.
Is the Persian of Iran mutually intelligible with Tajik?
And how does the Tajik Cyrillic alphabet differ ...
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3answers
697 views
Is this letter ق pronounced almost same in Arabic and Persian?
In Persian langauge there are two letters which have same pronounciation when spelled with vowels, they are غ andق, in Arabic there is aslo a 'ق', i want to know do the two 'ق' have the same or ...
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2answers
450 views
Can Dari be understood by everyone in Afghanistan?
I was told that in Afghanistan there are two major languages Pashto and Dari, and when you live in Afghanistan you will find that almost all the Afghanistanis could speak Dari and fewer people could ...
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1answer
306 views
Relation of Persian “Ke” and English “That” [closed]
First I should say I am not a linguist, but try to understand it to help my English.
In my native language, Persian, we do much use "Ke" (که) which almost corresponds to "which, who, that" in ...
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2answers
501 views
How can I check whether 'question' in English, and 'xahesh' in Persian are cognates?
It seems plausible to me, and I would like to know how to verify it.
Why I think xahesh might be cognate with question:
xahesh (IPA: /xɑːheʃ/) in Modern Persian is a noun meaning "request, plea". ...
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1answer
915 views
What is the origin of the Persian word شكر meaning Sugar?
Google says the word Sugar originates from سكر in Arabic. Yet the classic dictionary القاموس المحيط says the word comes from شكر in Persian. Any help with the etymology of the Persian word شكر?
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1answer
134 views
Farsi Alphabet Tips [closed]
I do not understand how I can learn the Farsi (Persian) alphabet. I try to look at it in order and memorize but it just doesn't stick. Are there any websites that anybody knows about that can help, or ...
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1answer
155 views
Do Persian Jews voice Hebrew ק?
I recently saw the Hebrew name יעקב transliterated into (American) English by Persian Jews as Yaghob. I find this curious (because the ע isn't transliterated, but that's a question for another time, ...
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2answers
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Do Persian Adjectives have Masc. Fem. and Neuter forms
For adjectives in Farsi (Persian), do they have Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter.
For Example:
The adjective خوب (Khoob, meaning good), does it have different forms, like in French or Russian?
...
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6answers
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Is “Kent” in Tashkent of Turkic origin or Indo-European?
In Turkish there is this word Kent which means city. Some Turkic city names have this as a suffix, like Başkent and Tashkent. In Azerbaijani the same word, with the spelling of Kənd (Kand) means ...
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2answers
805 views
Arabic and Persian loans in Turkish
Both Persian and Turkish - as have other "islamic" languages - have a great deal of Arabic vocabulary. Due to an (initially) favourable vowel inventory (and maybe due to the same script being used) ...
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1answer
262 views
Etymology of persian دریا
In a poem of Hafez I found a pun based on the double meaning of دریاب, at once the present (or aorist) stem of دریافتن, and another word for دریا, meaning "the sea". Now it would be great to know, ...
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1answer
180 views
Use of Arabic script for Farsi
Some of the letters of the Arabic script do not represent any native Persian sounds and thus are used only for Arabic loans. Therefore, e.g., there are four "z"-sounds in the Farsi script, ز ض ظ ذ.
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2answers
135 views
Do written languages evolve along the lines of the script?
The medieval sound changes of New Persian are suggestive of tracing back ultimately to the script, so as if to normalize the writting by adjusting the underlying spoken language.
Thus the majhul and ...
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3answers
817 views
Some common features of unrelated languages: Turkish and Persian
This is somehow related to the question Are some languages known to have taken grammatical features etc rather than just lexicon from their substrate languages?
In the area of today's Turkey, Iran ...
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1answer
613 views
Turkish loanwords in persian or the other way round?
It is quite obvious that there are a lot of Persian loanwords in Turkish. Some words, though, I cannot easily figure out which way they travelled.
Take for example trk. küçük, frs. kucak. I have ...
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3answers
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Is دشمن (“enemy” in Persian) borrowed from δυσμενής (“hostile” in ancient Greek)?
A couple of years ago I encountered the world δυσμενής, meaning hostile, in an ancient Greek text I translated. If I recall correctly, this can be pronounced as "dusmenè". This always intrigued me, ...
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3answers
742 views
Etymology “Hasty” : Does it have Arabic or Farsi roots?
Do the words "AA-Hista" in Arabic Farsi which means slow (or not fast) and "hasty" in English have the same roots?
It appears to me that a prefix of negation "a" has been used in front of hasty to ...
