From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 09:25:52 EDT
From: "Roozbeh Pournader" <roozbeh@sharif.edu>
> > ...so it appears to me that 'Farsi' is a well-established alternative to
> > 'Persian' among English-speakers.
>
> It is an alternative, yes. But the real problem is: it creates lots of
> confusion. I have encountered many developers that thought these are two
> different languages. Also, you should look both in 'F' and 'P' each time
> you want to choose a software setting, for example. Unification has the
> benefit of simplification.
In France, my immigrated Iranian colleagues working in France call their language "Farsi", even if there's a legacy use of the term "Persan" in France, but which has a connotation with the old "Perse" (Persica) which was the old empire with a very different political system that has evolved after at least two major revolutions.
Generally, "Persan" (Persian in English) has a positive cultural meaning but it is related to people and tradition, but not to the language itself. It is possible that even Iranians today use another term to designate this old cultural tradition, and use the phonetic "Farsi" word for their modern language, even if Iranian authorities want to anchor the modern language to the tradition by using the same term to designate both usages, and a way to avoid separating historic and modern connotations.
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