# Persian: unsuitable scripts?



## PersoLatin

I believe abjad scripts have always been and still are, unsuitable for Iranian languages. This is despite presence of hundreds of Arabic words in contemporary Persian, great many of which are also mispronounced.

Some may believe this has made Persian what it is and see it as a positive effect.

I don't believe that's the case, there are far too many words that are mispronounced, because of it. Persian and abjad languages, are like square pegs & round holes.

This has led to another problem which you can see in the following words:
 gabr گبر - زرتشتی
gavr گَور - زرتشتی
gur گور
qabr قبر


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## colognial

But what is the question here, PersoLatin? I think any native Persian speaker would agree with you about the danger of mispronunciation. As for Arabic words that have entered Persian, the extra risk these pose is that of misspelling. My question is, if we used the latinized script, how would we ensure same-sounding words would be distinguishable?
Examples:
غار ، قار
سد، صد
ضاد، زاد
آذر، آزر


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## Khaanabadosh

I see the point you're trying to make, as we have the same issue in Urdu for variants of 's' and 'z' sounds. But, irrespective of script you start with, you will end up with these issues, because vocabularies aren't fixed and we are constantly borrowing new words from other languages.


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## tarkshya

Scripts generally fit those languages best for which they were originally invented. Therefore Arabic script is best suited for Arabic language, Latin script is best for European languages and Devanagri is best for Hindi, and so on.

The problem you describe is a very common one, and Hindi faced this situation when a suitable script for it was being searched in mid-19th century. One camp was pushing for Arabic, and another for Devanagri. Arabic script was sorely inadequate for Hindi, as almost half of Hindi's consonants are either aspirated or retroflex consonants, for which Arabic script had no native provision. On the other hand, almost half of Arabic script's  letters were useless for Hindi, because Hindi simply lacked these sounds. As a result, Devanagri was adopted as the script for Hindi because it was a native Indian script already being used to write Sanscrit, and it has served well for Hindi. To complete the picture, there did exist a handful of Arabic origin words in Hindi which had distinct Arabic phonemes. To represent these words accurately, a mechanism of subscript dots was devised for about 5 or 6 Devanagri letters, and Hindi had a perfect script ready to meet all its needs.

So I guess this is the route Persian should have taken too. They should have taken Old Persian cuneiform (or any other suitable native Persian script) to write Persian, and extended it to deal with the Arabic origin words. Persian seems to have taken the reverse route, i.e. extending Arabic script to write Persian. This is what is causing difficulties of mispronunciations and misrepresentations.


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## colognial

tarkshya said:


> Scripts generally fit those languages best for which they were originally invented. Therefore Arabic script is best suited for Arabic language, Latin script is best for European languages and Devanagri is best for Hindi, and so on.
> 
> The problem you describe is a very common one, and Hindi faced this situation when a suitable script for it was being searched in mid-19th century. One camp was pushing for Arabic, and another for Devanagri. Arabic script was sorely inadequate for Hindi, as almost half of Hindi's consonants are either aspirated or retroflex consonants, for which Arabic script had no native provision. On the other hand, almost half of Arabic script's  letters were useless for Hindi, because Hindi simply lacked these sounds. As a result, Devanagri was adopted as the script for Hindi because it was a native Indian script already being used to write Sanscrit, and it has served well for Hindi. To complete the picture, there did exist a handful of Arabic origin words in Hindi which had distinct Arabic phonemes. To represent these words accurately, a mechanism of subscript dots was devised for about 5 or 6 Devanagri letters, and Hindi had a perfect script ready to meet all its needs.
> 
> So I guess this is the route Persian should have taken too. They should have taken Old Persian cuneiform (or any other suitable native Persian script) to write Persian, and extended it to deal with the Arabic origin words. Persian seems to have taken the reverse route, i.e. extending Arabic script to write Persian. This is what is causing difficulties of mispronunciations and misrepresentations.



tarkshya, hi. The point is, the Latin alphabet seems to be declaring itself as the solution to the problem of Persian. It is already the device used for transcribing in certain mediums or for clarifying the pronunciation. 

So we do have the solution in our hands, and some of us are ready to modify this alphabet, or have done so already, so sounds not found in, say, English, but found only in Persian, are represented by it. 

However, the official script in Iran is still Arabic and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. This is one thing. 

My question is, why not keep both options open? Is there any reason why we cannot stay with the Arabic alphabet while establishing an adequately-modified latinized Persian which will be embraced by all those who are literate and who find a need for a well-equipped latinized Persian? We are already finding ourselves in this situation anyway, which brings up the second issue: there is not one single latinized Persian script yet that all of us know about and which all of us will readily fall back on; moving away from the Arabic script towards a concocted Latin will be done the more smoothly the better addressed are any new issues this move will create.


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## Treaty

Whenever you think the script is not suitable take a look at Chinese or Japanese scripts. Their script is not even phonetic (except _kana_) but it has been proud and fine for thousands of years. If suitability is defined solely by phonetics, the Roman script should be considered even unsuitable for Latin let alone English. By the way, the reason you think Arabic script is unsuitable for Persian is that we (and Arabs, Urdu speakers, etc) are so confident (or lazy) that _we choose _not to write short vowels. Otherwise, there will be no confusion between the pronunciations of بَرد، بُرد، بُرَد and بَرَد.

In fact when you more distance yourself from phonetics your script becomes more understandable across time and place, especially in a language with so much dialect and accent diversity. Script doesn't represent just the sound but also ideas and heritage. People are also reading the whole word, syntax and context at the same time (except for beginner learners) not just letters. That's why we have a high degree of confidence not to put short vowels.

Finally, if we think the lack of short vowels are problematic, won't adding 3 letters (that already exist!) to Persian be easier than replacing 32/26 letters?


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## colognial

Treaty, hi. I'm in agreement with you on the way you describe the existing situation. But my point is, why not make use of the latinized script as well? If we can actually develop the Latin alphabet to suit our purpose, then, just like the Japanese people who use three different alphabets, we can have two, instead of just the one, script? Do you have anything against this? I don't need to remind you that we already use Latin phonetics or the actual word to show how a foreign word appearing in a Persian text ought to be pronounced. Our books are practically riddled with English or Latin letters of alphabet.


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## Shounak

Hello All,

It is such a nice discussion that I could not stop writing a few lines from my view point. If you consider our language, Bengali, the root i.e Sanskrit is all destroyed in the script. I find youngsters making a lot of spelling errors in Bengali. Why? The root, that is the Sanskrit part, the words are all null. Hence,what tarkashya'ji mentioned is very true. Arabic script is inadequate for Hindi, even the Bengali script is totally different from the root Sanskrit, hence all the problems crop up.

I, as a learner in Urdu consider a bit difficult in making the correct pronunciation of Urdu words as 'zer,zabar,pesh' is not at all present. For Arabic, I find that the diacritic marks are there and hence there is no problem in pronunciation.  For Urdu also, I think the script that is followed, if would have followed the traditional diacritic marks of Arabic, would have been better. What *treat* told of being 'lazy' or confident not to write short vowels, could have been improved as for Urdu, again, the script would have been different.


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## colognial

Hello, Shounak. What do you mean exactly by "_The root, that is the Sanskrit part, the words are all null_"? I'm not at all familiar with Sanskrit or Bengali, so would highly appreciate an explanation of this important point you make about the words being all null. 

Would you advocate a new or in any case different alphabet in which to write in Bengali? Or would you propose modifications to the existing Sanskrit used in Bengal, just as you are proposing that Urdu and Persian could be made clearer if the diacritic marks were not left out at all? Or, as I am suggesting to PersoLatin and Treaty, do you think both of us Persian and Bengali native speakers could have two scripts which would be used as necessary or at will?


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## Shounak

Hello Colognial,

Well, it would require a prolonged discussion and might be out of the scope of this forum. The alphabets, to be precise which are from Sanskrit is no more present in Bengali. Hindi has all of them. What is the dis-advantage in Bengali? The pronunciation of 's' and 'sh' does have a problem. The pronunciation of  'y' and 'j' has no way in identifying. In Bengali, it is all the same, although the alphabets are different. How would a person know which one is 's' and which one 'sh'. Just as in Urdu we have different 's' to identify, one for Arabic word, one for normal (Hindi) words. So "_The root, that is the Sanskrit part, the words are all null" _means it does not have anything based on the root language, Sanskrit.

In Urdu, we have a good news, the script, the words, preserves its heritage, as *Treaty* told, are from Arabic and maintain it's heritage. As *Tarkashya'ji* has replied

_"a mechanism of subscript dots was devised for about 5 or 6 Devanagri letters, and Hindi had a perfect script ready to meet all its needs."
_
This is something which is required currently in Bengali language. We pronounce the first "s" of  "ocean" or "samundar' سمندر the same as "evening" "or "sham" شام, there is no distinction.

I am still a learner and I know I have a long, long way to go in Urdu. I am no one to advocate anything, but I feel that Bengali is suffering from this problem of proper pronunciation. I see my children grow up, making innumerable errors in reading and writing Bengali, forget about the infiltration of foreign words like Persian, Urdu and Arabic; they are huge in number.

I strongly believe what *Treaty *told _"Script doesn't represent just the sound but also ideas and heritage." _This is very true.


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## mundiya

Shounak jii, I think you're confounding language and script. I would elaborate on what I mean, but I don't think that will be appropriate because, as the title suggests, PersoLatin intended this thread for Persian only.


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## Shounak

*Respected Mundiya'ji,*

My point is the pronunciation in Bengali is being distorted due to absence of proper 'alphabets' to distinguish them.


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## CyrusSH

I think the problem is just about Arabic words in Persian, like بعد، رئیس، تأئید, ... these words in the Latin script can be read differently.


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## tarkshya

colognial said:


> tarkshya, hi. The point is, the Latin alphabet seems to be declaring itself as the solution to the problem of Persian. It is already the device used for transcribing in certain mediums or for clarifying the pronunciation.



Turkey took the same route of adopting modified Latin script, and it has worked well for them. And Turkish is not even an IE language! Persian being an IE language like other European languages, the roman script will definitely suit it.

The only stumbling block I see is that, how comfortable with the Iranian state be with this new script? It would appear to them as switching from one "foreign" script to another foreign one. That is why I was suggesting that any native Persian script may be a more palatable to the political establishment.


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## tarkshya

Treaty said:


> Script doesn't represent just the sound but also ideas and heritage. People are also reading the whole word, syntax and context at the same time (except for beginner learners) not just letters.



Very true! But whose heritage? This is the same argument that proponents of Urdu give to stick to Arabic script, and make a mockery of themselves in the process. The vast majority of Urdu speakers can't even hear the difference in pronunciation of ز, ض, ظ or ذ, let alone speak it. And same goes for various letters for 's' type sounds, or 't' type sounds. It is amusing how they routinely mispronounce the words such as رمضان‎ , حديث‎, تہذیب etc which are supposedly tied to their heritage.


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## PersoLatin

hi tarkshya,



tarkshya said:


> They should have taken Old Persian cuneiform (or any other suitable native Persian script) to write Persian,



Cuneiform is/was also an abjad script and the Old Persian version was derived from the existing cuneiform left by the Mesopotamian civilizations (the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians....)

I am afraid, as far as I know, there was never a 'native' Persian script, and all scripts used, throughout the known history of Iran, have been based on Semitic scripts (incl. cuneiform).

Of course, Greek & Latin also took their consonants from Phoenicians (ultimately from Egypt) which is Semitic.


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## CyrusSH

About 1700 years ago, Persians invented the most complete alphabets in the world with 16 vowels which can be even used for transcription: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan_alphabet


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## PersoLatin

The written language should primarily be for effective communication of any type (poetry, plays, history, technical material, jokes, blogs.....)



Treaty said:


> especially in a language with so much dialect and accent diversity.



And why do we have so many accents & dialects? This, I believe, for most part, is the result of our ambiguous script. *دستم* (my hand) is pronounced differently in different regions of Iran, as: dastam dastom and dastem. I know variety is good and makes life interesting, but not when applied to a means of communication. This is a very stretched analogy, but did we allow regional accents in the Morse code, we could have. A vowel based script will help to rationalize the written language, and yes, in time it may reduce the number of accents & diversity, but does that will make it easier for others to learn it, hence spread the culture we are proud of, and rightly so.



Treaty said:


> Script doesn't represent just the sound but also ideas and heritage. People are also reading the whole word,



I understand the heritage value of a script, but I don't think it is important enough to the ordinary woman/man. When we hear recitations of poems from Hâfez, Ferdôsi, Saedi, Xayyâm.... our mood changes, we feel elated, we don't care much about the script. Correctly reciting Persian poetry & some classic prose, requires many years of experience, no one likes to be shown up in front of their peers, so we avoid those situations. I don't believe Hâfez, Ferdôsi, Saedi, Xayyâm... produced their works, for a privilege few, in fact they would turn in the graves, if they knew that's the way it is. Reading poetry should not be a science, but for the ordinary woman/man, it is. And why? Because of our 'not fit for purpose' script. The time spent learning this 'science' could be used to much better effect.



Treaty said:


> the lack of short vowels are problematic, won't adding 3 letters (that already exist!) t



I'm interested to know how, in practice. Luckily Unicode will allow new letters to be added. Without proper analysis, it's hard to say how many, but we'll need more than three:
a, e, o, ow, ساکن and تشدید, etc, and while we are at, we might as well sort out a whole host of other issues.

since dispatching of this post, (post #21) Dib said: "how about taking inspiration from the modern Iraqi Kurdish (Sorani) orthography?"

Maybe you were referring to this approach.



Treaty said:


> the Roman script should be considered even unsuitable for Latin let alone English.



The evolution of a Latin based script for Persian, is happening and is inevitable, it can play a complementary role & doesn't have to replace the current one. But as this process in underway, isn't it better to engage with it and make sure it goes the right way, so we don't end up with problems that English language experienced?


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> About 1700 years ago, Persians invented the most complete alphabets in the world with 16 vowels w



Even a brand new script, can't be called an 'invention'.

The consonants were based on Pahlavi, itself derived from Aramaic. The vowels were 'added', most probably by the Zoroastrian priests. Most of the sixteen vowels were devised so that recitation of gâh's could faithfully mimic the oral (unwritten) versions and therefore not useful for a spoken language.


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## CyrusSH

As you read here: https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/خط_او...B1.D8.B3.DB.8C_.D8.A7.D9.85.D8.B1.D9.88.D8.B2 Professor Ibrahim Pourdavoud also believed that Avestan alphabet is the best replacement for Arabic one, he says Latin alphabet is the worst candidate and I agree with him.


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## Dib

Shounak said:


> If you consider our language, Bengali, the root i.e Sanskrit is all destroyed in the script. I find youngsters making a lot of spelling errors in Bengali.



I actually hold the diametrically opposite point of view. Yes, Bengali spelling system is a horrible mess. But it is not because it "destroys" the Sanskrit elements, it's exactly the opposite - the normative standard overexerts itself to maintain the Sanskrit elements - perfectly parallel to the problems of Urdu/Persian orthography maintaining the Arabic elements. Growing up as a Bengali kid trying to master two equally messy spelling systems (Bengali and English) was indeed a tall order. But ironically, this made learning Sanskrit (and to an extent, Hindi) later on easier for me, because we do write the Sanskrit elements in Bengali the Sanskrit way, even though their Bengali pronunciation may be miles apart.



Shounak said:


> My point is the pronunciation in Bengali is being distorted due to absence of proper 'alphabets' to distinguish them.



As far as I can tell, Bengali standard alphabet lacks individual representation for only one of its sounds, the vowel /æ/ (e.g. bæla = hour/time, bætha = pain, etc.). All other sounds have their representation, but the problem is that they have too many representations because of our love of Sanskritism, like your /s/ example. Spoken Bengali has only one /s/ really, yet we have three letters for it, just because Sanskrit has them... paralleled by the 3 /s/-letters of Urdu/Persian because, in their case, Arabic has them. In some sense, the Bengali scenario may be even worse, because those letters are not limited to Sanskrit loan-words only, they are used to write also native Bengali words (think: sat = 7, saT = 60, ekus = 21 use 3 different s-letters!!).



Treaty said:


> If suitability is defined solely by phonetics, the Roman script should be considered even unsuitable for Latin let alone English.



Interesting. I am curious what exactly you mean by that, i.e. how was Roman script deficient for Latin?

=========

Btw, I don't think we are dealing with a script-problem here - neither in the case of Persian nor Bengali. A script only provides an abstract template. The problem is in how it is applied, i.e. orthography. The same Roman script used for Spanish or Turkish is the paragon of regularity (some minor irregularities notwithstanding), while for English or Irish or French, it looks the opposite. As for the problems of representing vowels in Persian script, how about taking inspiration from the modern Iraqi Kurdish (Sorani) orthography? It's Arabic script alright, but modified in a way that you are forced to write out the vowels.

Also remember, the modern "international" script of choice - the Roman script, is little more than a repurposed abjad, used to write a cousine of Arabic on the coast of Levant 2500-3000 years ago. There's no reason why such repurposing cannot be done with the modern adjads.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> The problem is in how it is applied, i.e. orthography. The same Roman script used for Spanish or Turkish is the paragon of regularity (some minor irregularities notwithstanding), while for English or Irish or French, it looks the opposite.



I quite agree.



tarkshya said:


> Turkey took the same route of adopting modified Latin script, and it has worked well for them. And Turkish is not even an IE language! Persian being an IE language like other European languages, the roman script will definitely suit it.



Another important and mutual benefit arising from adopting a modified Latin, is, for the learners, both Iranians and learner from other Latin based IE languages. There are a number of shared words that, when Latinized, are easily recognizable, some others need a little help. There are also other grammatical concepts too, e.g. how verbs are conjugated. These are currently lost in the mist of the Arabic script.

In fact, learning Persian for an Arabic speaker is harder than it first may appear. For one, the IE roots are alien, but worst of all, is the presence of many hundreds of corrupted Arabic words. These prolong the learning time. The same difficulty applies to French, English or German speakers who wish to learn Turkish, although not to the same extent.



Dib said:


> how about taking inspiration from the modern Iraqi Kurdish (Sorani) orthography?



I think a clean break will be preferable, as this may appear to the future generations, as tinkering with a script that was never 'fit for purpose'.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> I think the problem is just about Arabic words in Persian, like بعد، رئیس، تأئید, ... these words in the Latin script can be read differently.



Hi Cyrus, can you explain what you mean here, please.


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## Treaty

colognial said:


> Treaty, hi. I'm in agreement with you on the way you describe the existing situation. But my point is, why not make use of the latinized script as well?



My post was not in response to your post but to the replacement argument. Sorry, for this misunderstanding. However, I still don't know why we need to use Latinised script apart from for filling the technical gap in the digital world. Because of political issues and our own laziness we have slightly fallen behind regarding digital Persian scripts and so we needed to compensate it with using Finglish.

I don't understand how using Latin script words for clarification in Persian texts relates to this topic. Those are technical or proper terms which need to be clarified in their context because Persian script is not suitable for _those_ languages. You can find Arabic script words in English texts when the context requires. Does it mean they should adopt an Arabic script just in case?

My point is that we don't need an alternative script anymore. Well, of course we can have it if we want.



tarkshya said:


> Very true! But whose heritage?



It's humanity's heritage. I'm not talking (only) about cultural or religious heritage but pure linguistic heritage. The language is changing and script is one of the main materials to understand this change in a non-expert level. There are many languages which have obsolete orthography including even Spanish with its relatively phonetically accurate script. This is nothing to be ashamed of or mocked for. In fact, this shows the language has an ancient history.



PersoLatin said:


> And why do we have so many accents & dialects? This, I believe, for most part, is the result of our ambiguous script.
> ... but I don't think it is important enough to the ordinary woman/man. ... Correctly reciting Persian poetry & some classic prose, requires many years of experience, no one likes to be shown up in front of their peers, so we avoid those situations. ... Because of our 'not fit for purpose' script. The time spent learning this 'science' could be used to much better effect.



I thought I had already demonstrated that our script is fit for the purpose but it is our fault for not using it. If I write گِلِ آدَم بِسِرِشتَند و سَرَش شانه زَدَند people won't need years to master its reading (though they still need some expertise to understand all of its poetic aspects). Well, they may be mad at me for treating them like school kids! In fact, if short vowel confusion is the main issue in question, why do we (and more importantly Arabs) feel we don't need these short vowels?

There was no ambiguity when these dialectal divergence occurred, because there was no or much less literacy. Even in case of an unambiguous script like Spanish and (to a lesser degree) English we can see many post-colonial accents around the world (e.g. what part of [t] is ambiguous that may be pronounced ['] in some modern post-literacy British accents?).

The purpose of writing is not clarity of pronunciation but clarity of idea, unless it is a religious verse. If you can convey your idea without putting vowels, then there is no need for them. Persian doesn't have many vowels and confusing between them has a low chance of changing the meaning. That was why Pahlavi script didn't have extensive vowels as well, but they added them to Avestan.

Another problem is about other languages of Iran and Afghanistan which use the current script. I can understand Dari fully and a lot of Azeri-Turkish and Luri (and even Uyghur!) writings because I can distinguish common words so easily. But what happens when each uses a phonetically accurate script of its own? Won't the mutual written intelligibility be reduced by introducing an phonetically accurate script? Won't be this defeating the very purpose of using that script?


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> Hi Cyrus, can you explain what you mean here, please.



In Persian, Arabic letters ئ and ع are not actually pronounced but they make change in the pronunciation of the words, for example if we write _takid_, it can be read as تکید or تعکید or تأکید, but these words are not pronounced the same in Persian.


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## Treaty

In formal Persian they are pronounced well. hamze are called "glottal stop". They are also represented (phonetically) with either ['] or [ʔ] (though ع may also be transliterated as [ʿ] or [ʕ] or even [3]). In colloquial Persian their function may be limited only to stretching the previous vowel in the end of syllable. For example, we have formal _me'rāj_ but colloquial _mērāj_.


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## PersoLatin

Hi Cyrus,

تأکید should be written as taekid then it wont get mixed up with تکید. And تعکید is not in popular use in Persian but it will still be represented as taekid. The primary focus of such an attempt, is on correct representation of Persian words.

I'm no expert in correct pronunciation of Arabic words (surprise, surprise despite knowing, the meaning & context of use of, thousand of words, I wonder why), but I don't believe تعکید and تأکید are pronounced the same way, if they actually are, then that's an Arabic problem. If by going to a Latin script, a small number Arabic words are not represented correctly, then so be it, we are trying to improve our lot.

So, hopefully, to put your mind at rest, I provide some examples of Arabic words as we Iranian pronounce them:

taekid تأکید taerif تعریف moetarez معترض  taemin تأمین
adl عدل edâlat عدالت ofunat عفونت
azim عظيم esmat عصمت onsor عنصر
asab عصب eŝrat عشرت obur عبور
azm عزم eśq عشق omq عمق
âli عالى moalem معلم moarefi معرفى
âmel عامل moâdel معادل âśeq عاشق
âdel عادل moadel معدل âsi عاصى
maemur مأمور taemin تأمين moemen مؤمن
maenâ معنا raeis رئيس boed بعد

suḙetafâhom    سوء تفاهم
taḙajob    تعجب        
suḙezan    سوء ظن       
mokaḙab    مکعب        
vâqeḙ    واقع        
rafḙ    رفع            
robḙ    ربع            
qatḙ    قطع            
manḙ    منع            
samḙ    شمع            
jamiḙ    جميع        
rojuḙ    رجوع


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## CyrusSH

Ok, by those extra letters this problem seems to be solved but another problem is that many different Arabic words are pronounced exactly the same in Persian and if we don't write them in Arabic script then it will difficult for readers to know their exact meanings, like ثور and سور and صور.


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## PersoLatin

Treaty said:


> I thought I had already demonstrated that our script is fit for the purpose but it is our fault for not using it. If I write گِلِ آدَم بِسِرِشتَند و سَرَش شانه زَدَند


Why do you to need to 'demonstrate' it, why shouldn't it be simply 'shown' in everyday use. Yes of course we (people) are lazy but only because our version of the script doesn't enforce these rule.




Treaty said:


> There was no ambiguity when these dialectal divergence occurred, because there was no or much less literacy. Even in case of an unambiguous script like Spanish and (to a lesser degree) English we can see many post-colonial accents around the world (e.g. what part of [t] is ambiguous that may be pronounced ['] in some modern post-literacy British accents?).



But what you describe can only be true, if the people from those colonies, didn't have a language of their own. Also, and more importantly, which colonial power has ever bothered to educate their own people, let alone people of their colonies, you would need to be able to read, in the first place, before you can mispronounce. So majority learnt English/Spanish second hand and verbally, from their elders, peers, you can clearly hear the influence of the original languages.




Treaty said:


> people won't need years to master its reading (though they still need some expertise to understand all of its poetic aspects).


The point here, is that serious effort in needed to learn it, followed by years of practice, before you can dare to claim you have mastered it. Whereas, from get go, you could spent that effort to 'understand all of its poetic aspects' which we all believe is the real point.



Treaty said:


> The purpose of writing is not clarity of pronunciation but clarity of idea, unless it is a religious verse. If you can convey your idea without putting vowels, then there is no need for them. Persian doesn't have many vowels and confusing between them has a low chance of changing the meaning. That was why Pahlavi script didn't have extensive vowels as well, but they added them to Avestan.



Unclear pronunciations will lead to confusion and doubt which is the whole point of this thread. 'convey your ideas without vowels', that can only be true if someone reads a text to you, I am not clear about the point.
A likely explanation why Pahlavi didn't have vowels, could be, Parthians replaced existing cuneiform text (itself abjad), word for word and added them to the other existing Persian texts which were in Aramaic script. At a future point they named it Pahlavi.



Treaty said:


> Another problem is about other languages of Iran and Afghanistan which use the current script. I can understand Dari fully and a lot of Azeri-Turkish and Luri (and even Uyghur!) writings because I can distinguish common words so easily. But what happens when each uses a phonetically accurate script of its own? Won't the mutual written intelligibility be reduced by introducing an phonetically accurate script? Won't be this defeating the very purpose of using that script?



I do appreciate the points raised here, but what is the solution? The status quo is not good enough. We need to be proactive and engage in the process, otherwise what you described, is inevitable. The same process occurred in Europe & led to emergence of, seemingly, distinct languages. Take Spanish & Italian, they started off as different accents/dialects of the same language, as access to writing became more popular, accent differences, became word differences and now we have two UN recognized languages (& still mutually intelligible). Yes, it is our current script that has stopped that process in Iran, maybe that's a good thing, but I'm not sure.


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## Dib

@PersoLatin:
The major cuneiform scripts are NOT abjads. they were mostly syllabic. Old Persian cuneiform however omitted short a in noninitial position. but always wrote i, u, long a. Vowel length was however not always consistently distinguished.
Btw. what effect did the change of script have on Tajik Persian?


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## fdb

Dib said:


> @PersoLatin:
> Btw. what effect did the change of script have on Tajik Persian?



First they wrote in Arabic script, then in Latin, then in Cyrillic, now they are talking about reverting to Arabic. Every time the script changed the entire population became illiterate and had to learn to read all over again.


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## PersoLatin

Hi Dib, thank you for the clarification, and yes a, i and u are represented in cuneiform but are o and e, I believe are not - In cuneiform vzrg represents the modern Persian for bozorg (great), we don't know how it was pronounced at the time, they didn't use a, so 4 combinations are possible bozerg, bezorg, bezerg and bozorg, I suspect the latter pronunciation was the their way too.

Can the Persian cuneiform be described as partially abjad, and is there a correct term for it?




Dib said:


> Btw. what effect did the change of script have on Tajik Persian?



Their reasons for change to Latin & Cyrillic, were politically motivated (Russian pressure etc), however going back to Arabic will be a mistake, especially as they have so much of their work, already in Cyrillic, and converting those to Latin, will be easy.

A Latin based Persian will work for all flavours of Persian. After all Tajik & Afghan flavours of Persian, are no less Persian than Lori, Tehrani or Mâzandarâni.


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## Treaty

PersoLatin said:


> The point here, is that serious effort in needed to learn it, followed by years of practice, before you can dare to claim you have mastered it. Whereas, from get go, you could spent that effort to 'understand all of its poetic aspects' which we all believe is the real point.



An average Persian speaker needs just a few months to master the full Persian script (with vowels). It is only about 70 signs (English and Spanish are about 60, without considering the accented letters). In other terms, if we were using vowels, 2nd year students would have been able to recite every single poem easily. They wouldn't have understood them because their vocabulary, grammar and literature was not yet developed but they would have been able to read it.

However, we deliberately don't use vowels because we correctly believe they are mostly unnecessary. This is of course true for someone who has already mastered Persian. But I don't see this as a problem. Even if it was the problem, enforcing the existing vowels will solve 99% of it. There wouldn't have been a need for a new script. 

The Japanese students won't master kanji until university. I don't think having a difficult script had put a visible burden on the literacy and progress in their country. The same is true for the Chinese and English students. The claim that the current Persian script is problematic and burdensome is just an excuse to overlook major problems in our education system among others.



PersoLatin said:


> ... however going back to Arabic will be a mistake, especially as they have so much of their work, already in Cyrillic, and converting those to Latin, will be easy.



In fact, this is the argument FOR changing the script back to Persian. They didn't have done (or didn't have time to do) much work compared to Iranians or even Afghans. Therefore the shift to Persian script will give them access to hundreds of times more resources.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> Arabic script then it will difficult for readers to know their exact meanings, like ثور and سور and صور.



I understand the point you are raising and the answer is: From the *Context*

But your examples are not correct, سور is the Persian and will be written as 'sur', صور has many Arabic variants, the one we use often, is 'sovar' and is ثور is equivalent of taur, toro (bull) and not even Arabic and is pronounced 'savar' more likely 'thowar' (Thanks to Dehkhoda and Google translate)

*ارز,‏عرض *and* ارض *(show & width, worth, earth) are better examples for your point, as they are pronounced exactly the same, in Persian, and will be written as arz.

I don't think you'd have difficulty working out which arz, is which, from the context, in the following:
man diruz *arz* xaridam
*arz*e in divâr 35 sânt ast
mofsede fel*arz*

Let's make it harder:

This sentence: _âyâ man bâ arze in nokté, arze ŝomâ râ kam kardam?_
You can still work out the what is meant here, although it's more ususal to use arzeŝ for the second occurrence.

or even an unlikely construct like: *arz o tule in arz râ midani?*
how about *arzeŝ cand bud?* or *arzaŝ cand bud?

*


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## PersoLatin

I am not after changing the script to Latin, just to be hip or current, there is a serious reason behind it. We have talked about the alternative, i.e. the natural gravitation of, mainly young Iranians towards a Latin based script, inside or outside Iran. It looks like, the proponent of Latin script, like myself, should carry on and push for it, hoping this will force the other camp to get off their seats and do something about it.



Treaty said:


> An average Persian speaker needs just a few months to master the full Persian script (with vowels). It is only about 70 signs


Treaty, can you please supply these 70 signs, I don't even know what they are (I thought there were only 3 or 4), or point me to a website. And are you aware of any organisation that's promoting this method, I'd like to know.

I can produce a computer program that will convert some existing Persian text to this new script (Pârsi Bâ Sedâ PBS and its English, Persian With Vowels, just made these up), so it can be used as proof of concept. By introducing both PBS and PL, and making them available to ordinary people and academics, a serious debate will start.


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## CyrusSH

I don't know why but it seems to be easier to read some long Persian words in Arabic than Latin, for example سخت‌گیرانه‌ترین تحریمها and saxtgiranehtarin tahrimha.


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## mundiya

Question: Are "Arabic script" and "Persian script" both acceptable terms for the current script of the Persian language? I've noticed they're being used interchangeably in this thread.


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## tarkshya

mundiya said:


> Question: Are "Arabic script" and "Persian script" both acceptable terms for the current script of the Persian language? I've noticed they're being using interchangeably on this thread.



Persian script = Arabic script + just 4 more letters.چ گ ‌پ ‌ ‌‌‍‌‌zh. ( the fourth letter zh is not present in my android cell phone.)


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## marrish

tarkshya said:


> Treaty said: ↑
> Script doesn't represent just the sound but also ideas and heritage. People are also reading the whole word, syntax and context at the same time (except for beginner learners) not just letters.
> 
> 
> 
> Very true! But whose heritage? This is the same argument that proponents of Urdu give to stick to Arabic script, and make a mockery of themselves in the process. The vast majority of Urdu speakers can't even hear the difference in pronunciation of ز, ض, ظ or ذ, let alone speak it. And same goes for various letters for 's' type sounds, or 't' type sounds. It is amusing how they routinely mispronounce the words such as رمضان‎ , حديث‎, تہذیب etc which are supposedly tied to their heritage.
Click to expand...

Isn't it interesting (and deplorable) how proponents of Hindi and its script do not waste any opportunity to attack Urdu and its script even when the subject under discussion is clearly Persian and its script!

Firstly, I agree whole heartedly with aaqaa-ye-Treaty's response.


tarkshya said:


> Scripts generally fit those languages best for which they were originally invented. Therefore Arabic script is best suited for Arabic language, Latin script is best for European languages and Devanagri is best for Hindi, and so on.
> 
> The problem you describe is a very common one, and Hindi faced this situation when a suitable script for it was being searched in mid-19th century. One camp was pushing for Arabic, and another for Devanagri. Arabic script was sorely inadequate for Hindi, as almost half of Hindi's consonants are either aspirated or retroflex consonants, for which Arabic script had no native provision. On the other hand, almost half of Arabic script's  letters were useless for Hindi, because Hindi simply lacked these sounds. As a result, Devanagri was adopted as the script for Hindi because it was a native Indian script already being used to write Sanscrit, and it has served well for Hindi. To complete the picture, there did exist a handful of Arabic origin words in Hindi which had distinct Arabic phonemes. To represent these words accurately, a mechanism of subscript dots was devised for about 5 or 6 Devanagri letters, and Hindi had a perfect script ready to meet all its needs.
> 
> So I guess this is the route Persian should have taken too. They should have taken Old Persian cuneiform (or any other suitable native Persian script) to write Persian, and extended it to deal with the Arabic origin words. Persian seems to have taken the reverse route, i.e. extending Arabic script to write Persian. This is what is causing difficulties of mispronunciations and misrepresentations.


Secondly, coming to the above stances. As has been pointed out in the past, Urdu script is not Arabic script. It has come to its present form from Arabic to Persian to Urdu. An Urdu speaker would not find any of the letters of Persian and Arabic indecipherable but a Persian or an Arabic speaker would struggle with at least 14 sounds!

In the 19 century no-one was pushing towards Arabic for Hindi and the fact that Arabic didn't possess a number of sounds is irrelevant. The Urdu script, used from around 1300's had already have the letters for all those sounds. Yet this story can tell us something more what happens if the script is changed. Urdu, for that matter is less comparable with Persian, Turkish is also relevant but nothing is more vital for having a proper understanding what happens when a script is changed and how this process takes place than Tajiki. They have gone through three modified scripts...

Urdu speakers don't need to distinguish the difference between ذ، ز، ض، ظ ,  and ت، ط as well as ث، س، ص because there isn't *any* difference in *Urdu*! So, why should they? I am not aware of Urdu speakers "routinely" mispronouncing رمضان‎ , حديث‎, تہذیب . Perhaps tarkshya would be kind enough to spell out how he would wish Urdu (and Persian) speakers to enunciate these words.


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## Treaty

PersoLatin said:


> I am not after changing the script to Latin, just to be hip or current, there is a serious reason behind it. We have talked about the alternative, i.e. the natural gravitation of, mainly young Iranians towards a Latin based script, inside or outside Iran. It looks like, the proponent of Latin script, like myself, should carry on and push for it, hoping this will force the other camp to get off their seats and do something about it.
> 
> Treaty, can you please supply these 70 signs, I don't even know what they are (I thought there were only 3 or 4), or point me to a website. And are you aware of any organisation that's promoting this method, I'd like to know.



The reason that Finglish became popular was the technical issues of not having a handy Persian keyboard and proper orthography on electronic devices. I don't remember seeing someone writing Finglish on paper. This problem does not exist anymore (at least to the degree it did before), so I wonder why the solution should exist?

I meant all the letters. We have about 33 letters and 6 complementary signs (vowels, tashdid, tanvin, ...). Some letters (like د) only have one form, some (like س) have two and the rest (like هـ) have more. With all their forms, they are together around 70. English has 26 letters each with 2 forms. There are some fixed combinations (th, sh, ch, gh, ...) which amount it to around 60.



mundiya said:


> Question: Are "Arabic script" and "Persian script" both acceptable terms for the current script of the Persian language? I've noticed they're being using interchangeably on this thread.



Persian (or Perso-Arabic) script is a variant of Arabic script. In this context (modern Persian language) they are interchangeable as we know this is the only Arabic script Persians use.


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## tarkshya

CyrusSH said:


> I don't know why but it seems to be easier to read some long Persian words in Arabic than Latin, for example سخت‌گیرانه‌ترین تحریمها and saxtgiranehtarin tahrimha.



This is just an easy familiarity that comes with repeatedly seeing a word in a familiar script. When we read a word in a regular script multiple times, the brain develops the capacity of whole word reading as opposed to letter-by-letter reading. The same capacity will quickly develop when one reads these Persian words in Latin script a few times.

Scientific evidence it fact suggests that it is much more difficult to develop a word reading capacity in Arabic script instead of Latin script. Following article may shed some light on this topic.
Reading Arabic 'hard for brain' - BBC News



Treaty said:


> However, we deliberately don't use vowels because we correctly believe they are mostly unnecessary. This is of course true for someone who has already mastered Persian.



See, you have yourself noted a problem with the Perso-Arabic script here. A foreigner learning Persian language from the scratch via Persian script will have a really hard time, because of the absence of short vowels. In fact in will be easier for them to learn Persian through a non-Persian script. Arabic (and its variant scripts like Persian and Urdu scripts) presupposes a knowledge of the spoken language. So isn't it seriously jeopardizes the worth of a script if it can't be used to teach its own spoken language?



fdb said:


> Every time the script changed the entire population became illiterate and had to learn to read all over again.



Nice observation. . This is certainly a solid argument for not messing with scripts every now and then. 



Treaty said:


> The purpose of writing is not clarity of pronunciation but clarity of idea, unless it is a religious verse. If you can convey your idea without putting vowels, then there is no need for them.



This is something I completely disagree with, with all due respect of course. I strongly believe the purpose of writing is not just to clearly convey the idea, but also to accurately record the spoken word. In fact I will go as far as to say that when the pronunciation of words change over time, the  spellings should follow suit instead of remaining fixed. The script should be subservient to the oral language rather than the other way round.

By having a good phonetic script that accurately records the spoken language, we can reconstruct the entire history of the spoken language, and see how the pronunciations have moved across time and space. If a script just conveys the idea, then we end up in a situation like Egyptian hieroglyphs, where I believe the researchers have been able to read the full corpus of ancient Egyptian literature, but the pronunciation of the language of ancient Egyptians  is a matter of wild speculation.

And why do you think clarity of pronunciation is important just for religious texts. Personally I care two hoot for religion - any religion.  I fail to understand why the pronunciation a text of medical diagnosis, or an economic forecast, or a love poem should be any less important than a religious verse.


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## Treaty

tarkshya said:


> See, you have yourself noted a problem with the Perso-Arabic script here. A foreigner learning Persian language from the scratch via Persian script will have a really hard time, because of the absence of short vowels.



A foreigner learning Persian is not a priority. By the way, I don't think English texts are easy to read because of all pronunciation irregularities, but it doesn't stop people learning it. The short vowels are NOT absent in Persian _script_, they are absent in Persian _texts_.



tarkshya said:


> This is something I completely disagree with, with all due respect of course. I strongly believe the purpose of writing is not just to clearly convey the idea, but also to accurately record the spoken word. In fact I will go as far as to say that when the pronunciation of words change over time, the  spellings should follow suit instead of remaining fixed. The script should be subservient to the oral language rather than the other way round.



So, do you basically say that they should have two different spelling trend in London and Liverpool, or even South and North of London in order to pace up with pronunciation change? Should my mother teach me her own spelling before sending me a letter? How many scripts should I learn to be able to communicate with my house mates? In fact, I am able to understand a medieval Persian manuscript because their pronunciation is NOT clear. I'm not sure if the speakers of phonetically-scripted languages have this luxury. I am able to understand a Dari written article easily but I need to struggle to understand the audio material. 



tarkshya said:


> And why do you think clarity of pronunciation is important just for religious texts. Personally I care two hoot for religion - any religion.  I fail to understand why the pronunciation a text of medical diagnosis, or an economic forecast, or a love poem should be any less important than a religious verse.



Indo-Iranian religions and Islam care a lot because they think they would offend deities if they recited it wrong. That's why medieval Zoroastrians and Muslims bothered to introduce vowels to their respective scripts. If it wasn't because of Quran and Avesta, people wouldn't have even felt that such vowel signs were necessary.

Despite all my effort, I have a strong accent and sometimes basic pronunciation errors. In other words, my pronunciation is far from clear. But this has not stopped my papers and chapters from being accepted because my pronunciation is not reflected into my writing. This is simply why the pronunciation of a text is not as important as the other aspects of it. It doesn't matter if I read "sport" as /esport/, /spo:t/, /sport/ or /supouto/ in my mind because I know what the word means.

I think writing is the best medium to ensure intelligibility between dialects and accents because it is not phonetically accurate.


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## cherine

Dear all,

I understand this topic may be of interest to many, but it is -unfortunately- outside the scope of the forum. Actually, a previous try to discuss it was deleted it before it gathered reply. Now I'd feel sorry to delete a thread after it received more than 40 posts, so I'm just closing this. But please, everyone, make sure your threads follow the forum rules and scope (vocabulary, grammar and usage) so as to not see them closed or deleted.

Thanks,
Cherine
Moderator.


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