Joint parliament of Persian-speaking states proposed by Tajik speaker
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Interesting article here:
"Iran has helped the Tajik people under different conditions, especially for establishment of peace in the country," he said, noting that in the absence of such assistance, the country's independence would have been harmed and it would have turned into a terrorism center.Looks like a good idea though I wouldn't like to see documents produced by such a parliament in only the Perso-Arabic script; instead they should be written in both Perso-Arabic and Cyrillic, and if they feel like it in a Latin-based script as well. I've seen a few pieces of news here and there about proposals by Iran for Tajikistan to switch to the Perso-Arabic script but I wouldn't like to see that happen as a script with short vowels is much more suited to a language like Persian (words like kêi for when and kî for who are written the same way for example - کی), and though Iran may have its reasons for sticking with the same script, it wouldn't be a good idea for a country like Tajikistan that has already gotten used to an alphabet that suits the language more. It wld be lik writng Englsh lik ths all of a suddn. Sur you can read it, bt it jst dsn't suit the languag as mch as writng it th usual way.
"We have special respect for Iran based on commonalties and Tajikistan will welcome further development of ties with Iran in different fields," he said.
Asgar-Oladi, for his part, elaborated on the objectives of the relief committee and said that Tajikistan is close to Iran in terms of culture, religion and language.
3 comments:
Doesn't your criticism stem from the fact that Persian/Arabic script tends to omit the accents which give short vowels?
I don't know Persian, but I think the script (when written textbook correctly, as opposed to everyday writing) could distinguish between those two words in your example using an accent.
As you point out, if you know the words it doesn't make much difference, although it makes things more difficult for those learning the language.
In the end it probably depends which countries Tajikistan plans to have closer ties with in the future. I guess the reasoning behing such a change would be similar to Turkey's decision to change script to face more towards Europe?
Yes, and the lack of accents for short vowels makes it a bit harder to automatically translate the language too. People are usually pretty good at understanding context but machines not so much.
It wouldn't be the end of the world of course if Tajikistan reverted to the Perso-Arabic script, but as an IAL advocate (languages like Ido, Interlingua etc.) I prefer to see strong regional languages that can challenge English dominance and I think a switch to a different alphabet would help strengthen the language in the long term.
Then again, if there's *absolutely no chance whatsoever* of Iran ever switching to a different alphabet, then everyone using the Perso-Arabic alphabet could be the least bad solution, I suppose.
Doesn't your criticism stem from the fact that Persian/Arabic script tends to omit the accents which give short vowels?
I don't know Persian, but I think the script (when written textbook correctly, as opposed to everyday writing) could distinguish between those two words in your example using an accent.
As you point out, if you know the words it doesn't make much difference, although it makes things more difficult for those learning the language.
In the end it probably depends which countries Tajikistan plans to have closer ties with in the future. I guess the reasoning behing such a change would be similar to Turkey's decision to change script to face more towards Europe?
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