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Learning to Write in Persik.
Lesson 06
Lesson 07
Lesson 08
Lesson 09
Lesson 10
Introduction:
Persik a certain way (a certain set of regulations) to write Persian (or Farsi) in Latin set of alphabet.
For the last 30 years, the vast immigration of Iranians to other parts of the world has generated a major communication problem. Being scattered all over the world, hey had to find means of communicating amongst each-other and with those they had left behind in Iran. The available means of communication were using telephones, sending telegraphs and writing letters. The latter was the cheapest one, though the postal service of Iran had not yet recovered from the chaos that was created after the revolution of 1978. Soon, Iranians in different parts of the world were able to create their publishing houses and bookshops, printing books and magazines and importing printed materials from Iran. They could speak, read and write Farsi the same way they could do in their countries.
Nevertheless, in a decade or so, a new aspect of this problem emerged. A new generation of Iranians was born outside of Iran. Soon, it was clear that the new generation did not have access to learning read and write Farsi due to the lack of learning centers despite the fact that they had learnt to speak Farsi in their homes. Many Iranian parents tried their best to teach their offspring how to write and read Farsi. But, this proved to be very difficult due to several reasons. Let me explain this difficulty by giving you some background information.
First of all, Iranians use Arabic alphabet for writing Farsi. This is not, of course, the only way that Farsi has been written. For example, we have the case of Tajikistan whose population speaks Farsi but, by the advent of the Soviet Union, they changed their writings to Cyrillic. Another example is the case of Iranian Jews. For many years they have used Hebrew alphabet to write Farsi. Thus, despite the natural psychological fact that Iranians do identify their language with the way they write it in Arabic alphabet, there is no relationship between the two and their complementary roles are purely out of historical and political reasons. One alphabet can be used for writing different languages. The Latin alphabet is the best example. Many languages are writing by the same set of alphabets: English, French, German, Swedish, Italian, and Spanish are just a few of them. Nevertheless, the first generation of Iranian immigrants could not its language from the Arabic set of alphabet that was imposed on the Iranians by the Moslem-Arab invasion of Iran many centuries ago.
Writing in Arabic set of alphabets is a difficult job. It is a write-to-left script that each letter could take at least three forms in writing: A form if it appears at the beginning of a word, another one when it is located in the middle of it and a third one for cases in which it appears at the end of the word. Nevertheless, the major difficulty arises from the fact that three short vowels of “a”, “e” and “o” are not written as independent letters and are shown as signs on top or at the bottom of the other letters. In the majority of cases, and after a preliminary teaching process, they are omitted all together. Thus, only the consonants are clearly written and the vowels are to be guessed by the reader. Let me give you an example. You may come across a world like this: MLK. It takes many meaning according what vowels you use to read it. It could MOLK that means a domain or country. It could be read as MELK that means property. It may be MALAK that means an angle. Or it could be MALEK that means a king. So, the written words are not transparent and for reading them you have to be able to read the whole sentence or paragraph and then guess the proper pronunciation from the context. In other word, the text itself is not very helpful.
Another source of difficulty is the use of several signs for the same sound. For example, there are three different signs for the single sound of “S”, two sings for “T” and two signs for “Z”. The reason for this strange phenomenon is that Arabs have actually three ways of pronouncing “S” but they have lost their differences in pronunciation in Persian over many centuries. The content is gone but the form has been preserved intact.
Inside Iran, students should spend many years to learn how to read and write their language in Arabic set of alphabets. All through the elementary, middle and high school years, that is for 12 long years, students should attend classes that are called “dictation.” But, this has proved almost impossible for the Iranian parents who raise their children outside of Iran.
Thinking of writing Farsi in another set of alphabets that is more transparent and efficient is not something new and, at least, for the lost 100 years many people have proposed to adopt Latin alphabet for writing Farsi. This has actually happened in the case of the Turkish language spoken in Turkey. Their, the new government that substituted for the Ottoman Sultanate changed the alphabet from Arabic to Latin and now there are very few people who can read Turkish text written in Arabic alphabet. Their many social and political resistance against this change even in the Turkey of today. In the case of Iran the main opposition towards this change has come from the religious clergy that sees the change as a sign of moving away from Islam (an Arabic religion in their mind) towards Christianity (a Latin phenomenon).
I came across this problem when I had to raise my two sons outside of Iran. We used to live in London, UK, and my second son actually was born their. My attempts to teach them writing Persian language in Arabic alphabet soon proved to be futile. Nevertheless, I did not comprehend the depth of the problem while the boys were around me. It was in 1988 when I took my elder son, Ali, to the United States so that he could begin his university years there. Once back in London, I realized that my communication with him in Farsi is delimited to telephone conversation. All written correspondence was to be in English. That was there and then that I discovered the magic of writing Farsi with the help of Latin alphabet. I suggested that to Ali and he found no difficulty in doing so. We had opened a gate that separated us in our own language.
Then I became aware of the case of many family members who were scattered in different countries of the words with their children having adopted the “local” languages of their places of residence. The new generation of Iranians had adopted several first languages with Farsi as a second language spoken in Iranian circles. An Iranian boy who had English as his first language could not write letters, in English, to his nice who was growing up in France and her language was French. At the same time, they both could talk to each other on the phone in Farsi but they could not write to each other in the same language due to the difficulties described above. I realized that writing Farsi in Latin (a set of alphabet that they both knew) would solve the problem.
A few strange incidents proved the practicality of this approach. Our children, now in mid teens, had set up several football (soccer) teams and were competing with each other during their weekend gatherings. An Iranian publisher had decided to publish a weekly sport magazine in Farsi and had dedicated a few pages for reporting these football matches. I then ran a printing house in London and the publisher was one of my clients. I soon discovered the enthusiasm of the Iranian young football players to buy the magazine and look at the pages relevant to their games. But, they could not read the reports and had to take the magazines to their elders so that they could read the Arabic written lines to them. They could understand the language but were unable to read the text. I talked to the publisher about my idea of writing Farsi in Latin and persuaded him to dedicate a few pages to the same reports written in the Latin set. He finally accepted and I began my work.
I had observed that Latin alphabet was been adopted for each European language in a different way and soon realized that we too should have a set of rules for such an endeavor. I hurriedly put together a preliminary set of rules and called my adaptation of Latin alphabet as “Persik”. I made of this word upon the rules of word-making in Farsi that will be discussed later in these lessons.
It was in mid 90s that a new technological innovation opened a new opportunity that created its own momentum in this process. It was the advent of Internet and E-mail. Iranians began to use e-mails as their prime means of communication. For many years there was no facility for them to write Farsi in Arabic alphabet and, thus, they automatically turned to use Latin alphabet for writing Farsi. A major technological advance had created a natural way of adopting this course. Nowadays, millions of e-mails are being exchanged between Iranians over the Internet, all written in Latin.
The unregulated use of Latin alphabet has had its own backlashes. The same Farsi sentences are written in different adaptations. Different equivalents are used for the same vowels. Many grammatical points are being ignored due to the lack of knowledge. Many regulations for writing in Arabic alphabet that are not observed in spoken Farsi have found their way into our Latin adaptations.
Learning Persik now seems to me a must if we are supposed to continue using Latin alphabet for writing Farsi. I have explained the Persik set of regulations in a few simple lessons that will follow.
Esmail Nooriala
Lesson 06
Lesson 07
Lesson 08
Lesson 09
Lesson 10