We are not Arab!

It is a common mistake among non-Iranians that they think we are Arabs, speaking and writing in Arabic. I remember a few years ago that a Russian astronaut had sent a letter to an Iranian space magazine to thank them for sending him some issues of the magazine, and was sorry of not being able to read the articles accompanying “nice, new pictures” because his “Arabic” was not very good! (Most recently, a reader of this weblog asked me in the comment section of my previous post which language the street sign is in, and if we speak a dialect of Arabic or Old Persian).

I get angry when some people think of us as Arabs—we are not Arabs! I’m not a fundamental nationalist or against Arab people, but it is a matter of national identity. Our alphabet is much like Arabic, instead of having four more letters, and there are several single words common between Persian and Arabic. But the grammar is completely different, and some common words have not the same meaning in the both languages. Just like the relation English has with German, Spanish or French.

Here you can briefly find more about evolution of Persian language during time, from Old Persian up to now that we use Modern Persian. And by clicking here you can listen to pronunciation of 32 letters of Persian alphabet.

We might have become Arabic-speaking, but we had a savior called Ferdowsi—a poet living about 1000 years ago who saved the Persian language from Arabs invasions by writing a poem book consisting several thousand lines in pure Persian. His book is called “Shahnameh”, or Epic of the Kings, which took Ferdowsi about 30 years to complete it.

Well, we are not Arab. We are Iranian—reading, writing and speaking in Elegant Persian Language. Never make such a mistake again!