Talk:Persian

... it uses the arabic script.

seeing as there was no islamic conquest of persia and that they stayed zoroastrian, they might still be using the pahlavi script instead:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/pahlavi.html

Marc Pasquin

Personally, I think that's a good very idea. What do others think? IJzeren Jan 09:22, 9 Feb 2005 (PST).

I like the idea of Persian using a non arabic script. :) BoArthur

Perhaps they would be using a later variant of Pahlavi- the Avestan script: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/avestan.htm Deiniol 13:40, 25 May 2005 (PDT)

I second that. Cf. the Pazand:

That a word is written in an older form than that which is pronounced is a phenomenon common to many languages whose literature covers a long period. So in English we still write, though we do not pronounce, the guttural in through, and write laugh when we pronounce laf. Much graver difficulties arise from the cursive nature of the characters already alluded to. There are some groups which may theoretically be read in hundreds of ways; the same little sign may be ti, n', i n, 'n, Hu, nu, and the n too may be either h or kh. In older times there was still some little distinction between letters that are now quite identical in form, but even Egyptian fragments of Pahlavi writing of the 7th century show on the whole the same type as our MSS. The practical inconveniences to those who knew the language were not so great as they may seem; Arabs also long used an equally ambiguous character without availing themselves of the diacritical points which had been devised long before. Modern MSS., following Arabic models, introduce diacritical points from time to time, and often incorrectly. These give little help, however, in comparison with the so-called Pazand or transcription of Pahlavi texts, as they are to be spoken, in the character in which the Avesta itself is written, and which is quite clear and has all vowels as well as consonants. The transcription is not philologically accurate; the language is often modernized, but not uniformly so. Pazand MSS. present variations according to the taste or intelligence of authors and copyists, and all have many false readings. For us, however, they are of the greatest use. To get a conception of Pahlavi one cannot do better than read the Minai-Khiradh in the Pahlavi with constant reference to the Pazand.' Critical labour is still required to give an approximate reproduction of the author's own pronunciation of what he wrote.. BPJ 05:06, 28 November 2005 (PST)

QSS

what part is in violation of QSS ? there doesn't seem to be enough to be a violation.--Marc Pasquin 15:26, 20 November 2005 (PST)

No, I only used the "dispute" tag because, short as it is, the article contains to pieces of info that are mutually quite exclusive. For the rest I agree: we know so little about Persia and Persian that the only thing we can, I think, consider QSS is that Persia is Zoroastrian. FWIW, I still think the Pahlavi script (or any non-Arabic script, for that matter) would be preferable, but let's see what Deiniol's opinion is... --IJzeren Jan 23:11, 20 November 2005 (PST)

More on Pâzand

More on Pâzand from here:

The last enigma concerns the bizarre kind of written language called Pâzand. It is found in Zoroastrian manuscripts written in India. It is a mere transcription of literary Middle Persian in Avestic script. After the establishment of the Islamic rule, some of the Zoroastrian communities of Iran took refuge in India with their sacred writings. After some time, as literary Middle Persian is, unlike the Avestic, cryptographic, they found it convenient to transcribe their texts into the Avestic script, which is fully vocalized and perfectly clear. Thus, the language of those Pâzand texts is nothing else but literary Middle Persian. However there are in it some strange words that are found neither in Middle Persian nor in New Persian. For instance, from the verbs budan "to be" and shudan "to go", we have bahod "he is" and shahod "he goes", instead of classical Middle Persian bawed and shawed (corresponding to New Persian bovad and shaved).

Thus Persian written in Avestan script *there* and Pâzand *here* are hardly identical, though arising from the same needs. Perhaps the name of Neryosang, *here* a Parsi magus in India in the early 12th century is connected to the script reform *there* too? BPJ 12:44, 5 December 2005 (PST)

Benct's Proposal

I'd just like to note that I wholeheartedly endorse this proposal. Also, I'm going to clamour for examples too! Deiniol 07:23, 12 December 2005 (PST)

I agree that because Persia never became Muslim *there*, it would use some form of Pâzand. I, however, suggest that this alphabet would have evolved a considerable amount in being the practical writing system. I suggest that the alphabet used in Persia outside the avesta would be this one made by Lourenço Menezes D'Almeida: [1] Gwaell

Practical is pretty relative, spelling in english for example is far from phonetic and if you look at other european languages, those with a pretty straightforward ones like italian are often the result of an official reform to the orthography. Another thing to consider is that while d'Almeida's method may seen logical from a westerner point of view, it might not be something that a native persian reformer would consider if he was used to a flowing script.--Marc pasquin 04:49, 23 August 2017 (PDT)

I second what Marc said. (Also, hey y'all. Sorry for the long hiatus, summer classes come at you fast.) That being said, I think this script could be a good jumping-off point, but we'd have to be looking very closely at the original Pâzand too. The way this alphabet is set up reminds me of Armenian, and from what I've seen Pazand... does not work that way. Juanmartinvelezlinares 06:21, 24 August 2017 (PDT)