Q
messyarkitekt asked:
The reason why persian sounds so beautiful specially to someone like me who is an Iranian himself, is that Ferdowsi wrote his "shahname" without using a single word of Arabic! and without his influence my language would sound horrible and full of arabic words! If you study the history of Persia, the ancient persian language sounded very different to what it does now, a few similar words but different, it kind of sounded like greek! If you're not Persian don't get yourself mixed up in this...
A
I am so amused.
By claiming that Ferdowsi wrote the Shahnameh without using a single word of Arabic, you’ve quickly proven to me that 1) you’ve never read the Shahnameh, or 2) you are so used to some Arabic words that you don’t recognize their origin.
I literally wrote the simplest post ever yesterday stating that Ferdowsi used Arabic in the Shahnameh. There are about 700 different Arabic words in it. Somehow this myth got started that there’s no Arabic in the Shahnameh. That’s simply not true.
What’s cool about the Shahnameh, though, is that it’s written in the masnavi form, a Persian pattern of poetry.
Also, just to make this clear, I do study Iranian history. And I’ve studied some Middle Persian too.
Q
messyarkitekt asked:
i was searching for tags about iran and came across you view on the persian language! i have studied all my life, specially persian poetry and i must say that arabic did ruin persian! we can talk about it all day and ill come with evidence.
A
You know that the poetry you read and love takes its form and patterns (qasideh, ghazal, and ruba’iy) from Arabic, right? It’s a combination of Pahlavi and Arabic that has made modern Persian so beautiful and conducive to writing poetry.
Poetry wouldn’t have been such a large part of Persian literature had it not been for the influence of Arabic poetic tradition and the vivid imagery of the Qur’an.
It’s true, though, that the best grammarians of Arabic were Persian. In fact, Arabic was preserved, codified, and systematized by Persians (you’re welcome!).
