User:Shlomital/Persian

This is my page for all things about the Persian language (not carpets or cats, even though I love cats).

Transliteration
You can regard this section as a proposal if you wish; I’m just detailing my own way of transliterating Persian to Latin letters. This is what I use for new words I learn in Persian lessons at university: I write down the sounds in transliteration first, then the meaning in Hebrew, and finally, from the transliteration, the rendition in Arabic script. Since I know Arabic as well, I usually avoid the mistake of confusing letters that sound the same (so I write haqiqat (truth) as حقيقت and not something like هغيغت, knowing it comes from Arabic حقيقة).

This page will be added to as I think of more special cases.

Consonants
Notes:


 * My transliteration aims to be phonemic. I’m not into preserving historical remnants. That means I render the verb خواستن (“to want”) as xâstan, not xwâstan or (shivers) xvâstan. English would be much easier if we could write cassle instead of castle.
 * On the question of غ and ق, this is where I had a dilemma. Many transliterations unify them, because they’re pronounced the same in most cases (voiced velar fricative). However, I’ve heard on formal occasions (such as speeches by the leaders of Iran) a distinction, with ق pronounced more closely to the original Arabic unvoiced uvular plosive. If there’s a distinction, even if confined to a particular context, then there should be separate symbols. Perhaps one day even in formal occasions the two consonants will be unified, and then ğ should be used for both, but now is not that day.

Vowels
Notes:


 * Exceptions are transliterated as they sound: نه (“no”) as na, تو (“you”, singular, informal) as to, for example.
 * Final e and i have an accent according as they are stressed or not. That means the e of the ezâfé doesn’t get an accent, while the e that forms part of the noun (for example in the present participle) does: بنام خداوند بخشنده ومهربان (“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate”, in native Persian words as opens the Šâhnâmé) is rendered as benâme xodâvande baxšandé va mehrebân. The indeterminate i is without an accent, while the adjectival i is with an accent: قلمی (“a pen”) as qalami, versus بچگی (“childish”) as baççegí. Also سعی (“effort”, from the same Arabic word that refers to running between the hills of Ṣafa and Marwa at the Ḥajj) as saí, for clarity.

Other issues
These issues pertain to practices beyond the single phoneme:


 * I keep the short forms of the verb budan (“to be”) separate, even though they’re written together with the preceding word (except for است ast, the 3rd person singular) in Arabic script. So خرم is xaram if it means “my donkey”, but xar am if it means “I’m a donkey”.
 * Elisions are denoted with the apostrophe. For example نگاه کن (“Look!”, 2nd person singular informal imperative), shortened from نگاه بکن negâh bekon, is rendered as negâh ’kon.
 * Distinctions between formal and informal styles can be transliterated: “He doesn’t know”, written as نمی&#x200C;داند, is formally nemidânad, but informally nemiduné.