Talk:Persian grammar
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Technical
We need to explain what SOV vs. SVO and some of the other abbreviations used mean - I know it seems self-explanatory, but not everyone will get it. As it stands, it looks like a mad linguist ran through certain sections of the article tossing jargon grenades.
Cleanup & Wikify
Some of the tables here look sloppy, and we are using specialized transliteration orthography that not everyone will understand (s with caron, etc.) We should probably use IPA, but not everyone will be able to read that either.--Jpbrenna 00:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
- Speaking of transliterations and jargon grenades, I'm taking out the case markings table because:
- a) It's not necessary to mention Persian prepositions as case markings unless you are a Latin speaker, etc. As this article is written in English, it's quite fitting to describe æz, dær, etc. as prepositions, for which there is a section already, and rā has already been treated.
- b) The transliterations are sloppy---eg. Bukhara and Bokharara, using <a> to denote both /æ/ and /ɒ/ . The examples came from an older text, which makes the table feel like it's written by William Jones.
- and besides,
- c) The examples of the declensions are not in parallel with each other.
- d) The glosses are unmarked
- e) The ACC entry fails to even mention the rā in the example
- Also, the International Phonetic Alphabet is great for discussing phonetics and even phonology, but it gets annoying to read when the subject is something unrelated, like syntax. The transliteration scheme used in this article is fairly normal for linguists working on Persian. --jonsafari 04:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
- Yes it is normal for linguists working on Persian - but Wikipdia isn't for linguists working on Persian, it's for general readers. Not every reader - probably not even most - will be a linguist familiar with Americanist phonetic notation. The only exceptions would be a Czech or a Greek: the former would know š stands for "sh" and the Greek would read x as "kh," but this is after all the English Wikipedia, as you point out. The article will be far more accesible if we write "khoda ro shokur" and not "xoda ro škr." The only reason I suggested IPA is that slightly more users are likely to be familiar with that system, although it would still make the article relatively inaccessible.
- Speaking of general readers, I have in my possession a simple 21st-century Persian phrasebook directed toward the broadest-possible English speaking audience which uses the terms "ablative" etc., with explanation of their meaning for the layman. The book was written by a native speaker, a published linguist who lectures in Iran. Although he may have modeled his grammar section on somewhat older English-language sources, I doubt very much that he went all the way back to Sir William. While I followed him in using the Latinate terms, the examples in the case table were entirely my own. I used Bukhara with unadorned a's because that is the transliteration most readers are likely to be familiar with; the -o- version was a mistake. I admit my Persian is so poor as to not even warrant an FA-1 tag, but I was writing out some pretty simple phrases. I asked a native speaker on Wikipedia to check the examples, but apparently he hasn't gotten around to it yet. --Jpbrenna 16:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
- I appreciate your input. My only suggestion is that you familiarize yourself more with Persian a little more before making big changes to the article, as Dehghani's Lonely Planet phrasebook and speaking with a few native speakers does not give a complete picture of what's going on in the language. I respectfully disagree with his overcomplication of describing to the general public be as the dative case, dar as locative, and az as ablative. Also, while using <a> for both /æ/ and /ɒ/ is fine for native speakers SMSing each other, it's painfully ambiguous for any description of the language. Also, using <ro> to describe the accusative marker is appropriate to mention in a more phonologically-oriented article, but a grammar-oriented article should try not to make use of allomorphs in examples, as this distracts from the main concept being illustrated. BTW, I like the template, but we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves to break up the grammar article into so many little articles at this point in time (although noun and verb articles are reasonable). --jonsafari 19:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
- Yes it is normal for linguists working on Persian - but Wikipdia isn't for linguists working on Persian, it's for general readers. Not every reader - probably not even most - will be a linguist familiar with Americanist phonetic notation. The only exceptions would be a Czech or a Greek: the former would know š stands for "sh" and the Greek would read x as "kh," but this is after all the English Wikipedia, as you point out. The article will be far more accesible if we write "khoda ro shokur" and not "xoda ro škr." The only reason I suggested IPA is that slightly more users are likely to be familiar with that system, although it would still make the article relatively inaccessible.