Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Persian (Latinised)

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Romanized Persian Wikipedia[edit]

submitted verification final decision
This proposal has been closed as part of a reform of the request process.
This request has not necessarily been rejected, and new requests are welcome. This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

This discussion was created before the implementation of the Language proposal policy, and it is incompatible with the policy. Please open a new proposal in the format this page has been converted to (see the instructions). Do not copy discussion wholesale, although you are free to link to it or summarise it (feel free to copy your own comments over). —{admin} Pathoschild 22:02:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Proposal summary
  • Language details: Romanized Persian (fa-latn [invented])
  • Editing community: Sorriz (NP)
    List your user name if you're interested in editing the wiki. Add "N" next to your
    name if you are a native speaker of this language.
  • Relevant pages: Test project
  • External links:
  • "UniPers" in the English Wikipedia
  • Unipers.com
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.
  • Number of speakers: around 110 million
  • Locations spoken: Iran, Tadjikistan, Afghanistan and big minorities in USA, Canada, Germany and Sweden

  • Relevant infos: The language is Romanized Persian. This would be a great idea because there are millions of iranians outside of Iran who grew up in a foregin country with no possibilities of learning how to read Persian with Perso-Arabic letters. Romanized persian is great, because then all the iranians from all over the world could read and understand the persian language, not only the migrated Iranians, but also the Tajiks in Tajikistan who only know the Cyrllic and Latin alphabet (not the Perso-Arabic one). This is a huge issue among us Persian-speakers, not only locally, but globally aswell. This is a way of reuniting these countries and the versions of languages to one whole. This is a way for the people who use the latin alphabet to learn Persian easier.

    In this stage, the Latinized Persian alphabet is introduced in schools as a phonemic standard alphabet for Persian transcription, as part of the regular curriculum. Such a simple and easy to use alphabet should be effortless and expeditious to learn for Persian speaking students. It will help them in learning the correct pronunciation of words they might have difficulty reading in the current alphabet. For non-Persian speaking students of the Persian language, it would lift the colossal barrier of having to learn the cumbersome Perso-Arabic script before starting to actually learn the language itself. The only books that would need to be transcribed in this phase are mainly language textbooks, and some of the major Persian literary works like the Shahnameh, Hafez's poetry, Balkhi's Masnavi, etc.

    A scientific, phonemically structured new script based on the Alphabetic Principle. Mastering reading and writing would become straightforward and simplified. Children and beginners would be able to read any Persian book after only a few months of practice. Educated people would be able to master reading and writing in a very short time. Therefore, a phonemic script like UniPers would help boost interest among Persian speakers in their own literature, culture, and history. On the other hand, the old Perso-Arabic writing system is an obsolete script that completely violates the Alphabetic Principle.

    Being based on the Latin alphabet would take advantage of its universality. It would make the Persian language much more accessible not only to our children and those who have obtained their secondary and higher education outside the Persian-speaking countries, but also to the non-Persian speaking people who have an interest in studying the Persian culture and history. Thus, Persian culture and language would become readily available to all without the hindrance of a complex, unfamiliar, and cumbersome writing system like Perso-Arabic.

    A new Latin-based alphabet for Persian can help the language and enrich it. The weak argument that the Persian literary heritage would be lost is completely false. One can print and read the great literary works of Hafez, Sa'di and Ferdowsi even more easily in a phonemic Latin-based alphabet than in the Perso-Arabic. The Perso-Arabic alphabet has turned many Iranians off from reading literary and historical books. This means that unlike what the proponents of the old alphabet say about UniPers severing our contacts with our culture, Perso-Arabic has done more to achieve this break.

    !pes is western Farsi, prs is easstern Farsi. Using pes.wikipedia.org for Farsi (fa/fas) in general is wrong. Tobias Conradi 02:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support[edit]

  1. Comment - If there is a 1:1 correspondence between romanised Farsi and normal Farsi, wouldn't it be a much better idea to implement some sort of transliteration program? See the Serbian wikipedia for an example. --IJzeren Jan 10:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support--Fratele lui Bonaparte, il cunosti? 05:44, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support It was always a great problem for me to learn persian because I can not fluently read arabic script, and need sufficient amount of time to begin read it fluently. Read text in new language with slow speed is a bad way to learn it. Even arabic has now latin script and there is Quran and Haddith in the Internet in arabic language and latin alfabet. But I know, many Muslims want to learn not only Arabic, but also Persian and Turk languages, because there are so many classic texts of our culture written in Persian and Turk. So I support this proposal and shall help to develop the wiki, if my basic Persian would be useful there:-) --Yaroslav Zolotaryov 22:03, 25 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the script causes you problem, why not learn Tajik then :) - FrancisTyers 13:51, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support --Maviulke12 00:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Antares 00:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support PenJou 16:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support It would be incredibly usefull to people learning the language. Marshall19 03:25, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support domain should be latn.fas.wikipedia.org or fas-latn.wikipedia.org rationale for fas-latn at en:ISO 15924 -- Tobias Conradi 02:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support - SaorhGumpaetx 15:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Baristarim 00:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support --Kojpiš Anton 12:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Don Alessandro 13:41, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
But what orthography do you want to use: UniPers or some other system of Romanization?

Oppose[edit]

  • Oppose. Persian is doing well with the Perso-Arabic script. A spelling reform would be useful to remove some anomalies, but that's another issue. --Rasulo
    • Comment. How do you know if Persian is doing well with the Perso-Arabic script? We see no motivation in your oppose. How could you possibly know anything about Persian when you are Finnish? That's the worst oppose I've ever heard. --Sorriz
      • Hundreds of years of history prove that Persian is doing well in the Perso-Arabic script. Also the level of literacy in Iran is not bad. As for expatriate Persians, well, wouldn't they have much more to win if they learned to read and write in real Persian instead of romanized Persian? I admit that I don't have anything in stake here personally, but I do know something about Persian. --Rasulo
        • You can't prove anything, therefore your argument is useless. --Sorriz
  • Strong Oppose This is the worse proposal I've ever seen. All the arguements for Romanized Persian are wrong. It won't enrich Persian culture, but would only do harm. Remember when Ataturk changed the alphabet? It only made it so that Turks could no longer read the old Ottoman era writings. It was bad for Turkish culture. few westerners learned Turkish before the Turkish language "reform", and few learn it now. It never helped Turkey. Arabic letters are a part of Perisan culture, and it became that way in history. Modern technology has made it just as easy to write in Arabic as it is in Latin. Romanized Persian isn't official, and Persian never uses the Roman alphabet, so this project should'nt exist. If we have this, though, can I get a Cyrillic English Wikipedia?--Fox Mccloud 13:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support - Answering to previous comment Persian is not doing well with the Perso-Arabic script outside Iran. People can't even read Persian. I'm not saying that this alphabet is going to replace the Perso-Arabic one. And this is not a reform, this is meant to be an optional script. You mentioned what Ataturk did.. well, this is not the same thing, we're only enriching the options here, we offer a shortcut to understand Persian, if the official, Perso-Arabic, won't work for people.

"Changing English alphabet to Cyrillic". It is certainly not the same thing. There are millions of Persians outside Iran and other Persian-speaking countries that understand much more Romanized than the Perso-Arabic script. We stand for an shortcut to read Persian, and we're not encouraging people to throw away their thoughts about learning the Perso-Arabic script. And when you mentioned Ataturk, I thought about the Turkish language he reformed. Persian is a indo-european language, Turkish is not. I believe that is also an argument against your oppose. --?--Sorriz

"There are millions of Persians outside Iran and other Persian-speaking countries that understand much more Romanized than the Perso-Arabic script."

There are tens of millions of Persians in Iran and Afghanistan that know Persian script. If there are some that live in the US, Europe or Canada where Persian is not officialy used anyway are comfortable in Latin script, they can wright in Latin script, but don't force the vast majority of Persians to change just because it is "easier" for a minority.

"We stand for an shortcut to read Persian, and we're not encouraging people to throw away their thoughts about learning the Perso-Arabic script."

Do you mean like a guide to help non Persians learn Persian easily and for Persian-English dictionaries and such? That's fine. But Persian shouldn't be changed in Iran just to help learners.

"And when you mentioned Ataturk, I thought about the Turkish language he reformed. Persian is a indo-european language, Turkish is not. I believe that is also an argument against your oppose"

????? How?

If you want to write Persian in Latin alphabet, and I want to wright English in Cyrillic alphabet, we should have to freedom to do so. Neither of us should try to change the nation's official script, nor do we deserve a Wikipedia.

btw, I once saw that a Pinyin wikipedia proposal was denied, and Pinyin is an official government transliteration. "Uni"pers is not, so why should we accept this and not Pinyin.--Fox Mccloud 17:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask why? Latin alphabet isn't official in Tajikstan. You would have more reason to have Turkmen and Uzbek wikipedias in Cyrillic alphabet because it is still widely used there.--Fox Mccloud 17:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For Tajik speakers in Uzbekistan. - FrancisTyers 13:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose --Vanka5 01:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • Oppose -- bad idea. It would be dead from birth as its test wiki is by now + persian is written with its own script, I do not support separatist tendencies, let the world stay different! -- Raghav 14:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral[edit]

*There already exist Tajik wiki in Cyrillic. In fact Tajik is essentially the same language. Why do we need the new latinized one?--Nxx 09:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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