I think that this phenomenon is one of the effects of democratisation In the past one of the criteria of being in elite was education. It is still true, but contemporary education is different. In the past an educated person (in the West) knew sth about mathematics, nature, dance, and spoke classical languages - Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Persian. Nowadays an educated person knows sth about computers, economy, and speaks English (anyway, I do that poorly ). The knowledge about history is not recognised important any more. That's why we (people form the West) consider some ancient cultures as sth not very interesting. For many western people all non-European languages (except Chinese and Japanese) are just exotic "toy" for hobbyists. The "imporant", old languages usually have an adjective-like name (English, Spanish, German, Persian ), and the exotic ones have unchanged name (Urdu, Suahilli, Quechua, Farsi ). In that way it looks, that Farsi and Persian are different languages - one is old, classical, another is new, exotic
It is also due to some forms of the Political Correctness. One can never be sure, if traditional names like Gypsies, Eskimos,Indians (from America not India) etc. are already considered as offensive or not, so it's safer to use native names. So, when they realised, that immigrants from Iran called their language Farsi, it was assumed, that this would be the better name. (Especially if all they know about eg. Voltaire is that he was sceptical to the Roman Church, but not that he (among others) spoke Persian )
BTW. In the main Polish encyclopaedia there is a term "Perski (farsi)", what suggests, that the traditional form is more appropriate to use.
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Question for Vladimir Dubisskiy:
Your country always used to be known in English as "the Ukraine". Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, we are told it should be without the article - just "Ukraine". Why is this? The Dutch have never had any quarrel with "the Netherlands".
The general rule in English (at least as I understand it) is that a country name is used with an article only if the 'core' word in it is a common word and not a proper name. E.g., in 'the United States of America' the core is 'the States'.
There are exceptions to this rule which only appear to be exceptions. The names of both the Netherlands and Ukraine are derived from common words, though not English. In the case of the Netherlands, the original meaning is obviously something like 'the Lowlands'. As for Ukraine, its original meaning was 'periphery' or 'outskirts'. In the view of certain Ukrainians the use of their country's name with a "the" describes it as a peripheral part of Russia rather than an independent state, which they find offensive. Therefore, the Ukrainian government requested the governments and international organisations using English not to use the article with Ukraine.
One might think that they could not request the Russians to do the same, because there are no articles in the Russian language but... Russians always used a different prepposition when saying "in Ukraine" as opposed to, for example, "in England". In Russian it had always been "on Ukraine", and the reason was the same as with the articles. The original meaning of 'Ukraine' - though almost forgotten - required the use of a different preposition than with any other country name. Moreover, the Ukrainian language itself was not any different in this respect. When I studied Ukrainian at school 15-20 years ago, no one would say "v Ukrainie".
After independence, the Ukrainian government changed the rules for the Ukrainian language first, and then requested Russians and other CIS countries that, in official Russian texts, they use the preposition "v" (in) instead of "na" (on) with their country's name. This use has now become normal in Russian mas media, as not following it is deemed to be against Political Correctness.
I don't know whether in the Netherlands there people who consider the use of the article with their country's name offensive, but if there are they are certainly not in the government.
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One friend has written in this froum that "Persian" is old, classical, etc. and "Farsi" is modern..!!!!!
A NEW DISCOVER !
FARSI (Arabic forn of PARSI) is interal word of this language and PERSIAN is its international equivalent. There is no fiffrence between these languages.. They are same.
This piece show lack of knowledge of that friend. He shoud read Mr Pejman Akbarzadeh's article again carefuly.
Thanks
Sh. Peyrovani
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One friend has written in this froum that "Persian" is old, classical, etc. and "Farsi" is modern..!!!!!
A NEW DISCOVER !
I have. I do know that Persian and Farsi are synonyms. I meant that it looks like they were different languages because of the lack of education. If you read my post carefully (OK. My English is not perfect, I make many terrible mistakes, which probably makes my claims unclear), you would notice it was an ironical statement. I attacked the PC, which makes forget traditional names and replace them with new, "original" ones.
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DGK T-I United Kingdom Local time: 17:48 Member (2003) Georgian to English + ...
Aspects of lowness?
Jan 5, 2004
Rozbicki wrote:
I don't know whether in the Netherlands there people who consider the use of the article with their country's name offensive, but if there are they are certainly not in the government.
Of course, one of the old terms used in English for the Netherlands, or that part of the world, was 'The Low Countries' - taken from height above (or below!) sea level (rather than 'lowness' in any other way:-)).
Concerning the interesting discussion about 'in' and 'on'
I was also amused to remember
На Руси
still used sometimes by some speakers (with an old fashioned, colloquial, sweet but certainly not insulting flavour)
Best wishes
Giuli
~Russian Georgian English~
[Edited at 2004-01-06 08:55]
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Alaa Zeineldine Egypt Local time: 18:48 Member (2002) English to Arabic + ...
Misr not Al-Misr
Jan 6, 2004
Cristina M. Zali wrote:
he people of Egypt, for example, call their country "Al-Misr," but their international name is "Egypt" - two names which are in no way similar. But Egyptians have never forced other countries to say, "Al-Misr!" For they know that, with its ancient civilization, their country has become known to the world as Egypt.
[...]
[/quote]
The Arabic name for Egypt is Misr. The Eurpean form (Egypt, Agypten, Egipto, etc. from the Greek Agipto) and the Arabic name Misr (with other Semitic counterparts Mizraim, Musra, etc.) are both ancient.
[Edited at 2004-01-06 00:21]
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There could be a number of reasons, here is one I can think of:
Article "the" is used when the name of the country is made up of one/several common nouns. Examples: The United States of America. Both 'United' and 'States' are common nouns. Also because there are other "United States" of Mexico! Same with "THE United Kingdom of....". "The Netherlands" is a special case since, in Dutch, it means 'lower lands', hence the French "Pays-Bas".
Rachid
Jack Doughty wrote:
Thank you, Vladimir, I had never thought of it like that but it seems logical.
I suppose that is why Switzerland, which is also composed of cantons with a high degree of autonomy, is always know as "die Schweiz" in German, though we don't use the article in English.
And vive la France! which uses the article in its own language though it is not used in any other as far as I know!
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Moslehi Iran Local time: 21:18 English to Persian (Farsi) + ...
Persian Linguistics Association
Jul 31, 2004
International Persian Alphabet (IPA2) and other projects are among those you will be able to find more about on PLA's official Web site. http://www.persiandirect.com
All linguists with interest in Persian can also send their photos and a short CV to be included in the future section of the Web site called "Profiles".
Regards,
Moslehi
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Richard Benham France Local time: 18:48 German to English + ...
Ukraine, Argentine, etc.
Jan 16, 2005
I'll start by saying I was confused when I first heard the word "Farsi". There was a new boy from Iran in my daughter's class, and I assumed he spoke Persian, but my daughter insisted that the teacher had told her he spoke "Farsi". So I initially assumed that he belonged to some ethnic minority in Iran, until I got home and checked my dictionary.
Am I wrong in supposing that "Ukraine" started as an adjective? This is the reason that Argentina used to be called "the Argentine" (because of all the silver there).
In the case of the Netherlands, the word "nether" in English, although it has become rare, *still* means "lower", as in "nether limbs"=legs, "nether reaches of Hell", etc.
Maybe to avoid ignorant confusion between Iran and Iraq, we should call them Persia and Mesopotamia. Just a thought.
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L.R. Trask, in "Mind the Gaffe. The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English" (2002), writes that Farsi is getting more commonly used, and that Persian as an indication of the language is getting obselete...
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The translation workplace 
In the past one of the criteria of being in elite was education. It is still true, but contemporary education is different. In the past an educated person (in the West) knew sth about mathematics, nature, dance
, and spoke classical languages - Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Persian. Nowadays an educated person knows sth about computers, economy, and speaks English (anyway, I do that poorly
