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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

(More of) my suggestions for expanding & improving the article - please comment

Actually, I think it should become more of an article series, with summaries here - just as it is with other languages on Wikipedia - but maybe we should discuss having just one big article for now (see below).

Other languages (say, German) probably need a separate article on adjectives, since declension can be an issue. As long as there's only a couple paragraphs talking about a given item, I see little need to separate it into a separate article. Of course there's alot to say about nouns and verbs, so that's understandable to spin these off into separate articles. But if we keep it a single article while we're resolving, eg. transliteration issues etc., the more consistency we'll have when we do spin them off. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Transliteration

I looked at the Bukhara article, and it transliterates the Persian as Bukhârâ. Maybe we could use marked vowels instead of the ligature, but dispense with the x and s-with-caron for the consonants and just use the expected English digraphs instead? My concern is that a non-specialist consulting this article will be put off by the transliteration system. People should be aware of the system, however - I have seen it used in Ann Lambton's grammar and in some other works on Persian, and your comments seem to suggest it is the de facto standard in Persian studies. Why don't we create an article on transliteration of Persian, or discuss it at the Persian alphabet article and link to the appropriate section from here?

I'm not sure why the Bukhara article would be seen as any sort of reference. While I have a Langenscheidt Persian-German German-Persian dictionary (aimed at regular German speakers) that uses <x>, <š>, and <č> in their transliteration, I'm ok with changing these three to <kh>, <sh>, and <ch>. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Content & Layout - Greek style?

I think Greek grammar does a pretty good job of describing the grammar of modern Greek, without resorting to separate articles for nouns, verbs, etc. - although most other language articles seem to do this. Everything is covered, examples are given, and the tables are neat and attractive. My only complaint is that the overall article is overly-long, in my opinon. Another problem is that the contributors assume one knows the Greek alphabet and the phonetic values in Modern Greek. I happen to be able to read Greek, but not every reader will; I think if we imitate their layout (where appropriate) we might want to have both the original Perso-Arabic and an easily readable transliteration.

In the inline text we could have a format like dær (در) 'door', and possibly for floats too. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing Greek currently lacks, but which I would like to see here, is pronunciation of each written example by a native speaker. The Polish language article used to have at least a few of these in .ogg format; personally, I think it's a great idea. Eventually, if we develop articles on the different dialects we could even have dialect speakers record themselves and maybe crosslink so people could compare & contrast the different sounds instead of just reading "close-front unrounded vowel in Standard Persian, but close-mid unrounded in Dari..." or looking at some symbol.

It seems more applicable to Persian phonology and the 2 persian alphabet articles, but if you'd like to spearhead that effort for this article, by all means. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And whether we keep the ligatured ae and Czech-looking characters or not, can we at least agree that the format of the ugly verb tables has to be changed? They are very cheap-looking and off-putting in their current form: the dotted lines make me feel like I should print them out, clip them, and take them to the grocery store for 75 cents off a liter of Persian! --Jpbrenna 07:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote a majority of this article one saturday afternoon, as you can see by viewing the first post of this article (id 11074942). The verb tables are in the format that they are because I just wanted to get the content up on the internet. I agree that the format of the verb tables is ugly, so if you'd like to change that, be my guest. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]