It is not really the purpose of this blog to delve into the minefield that comprises linguistics, but I was struck by a couple of recent articles that I thought were worth a link. The first is a very interesting piece from the Tehran Times, discussing the relationship between Persian and the national identity of Iran.
The author accepts that Persian is a peripheral language as far as the rest of the world is concerned, with English being the international language of both politics and economics. He goes on to say that Persian was once the most important scientific language of the Islamic world, and the main objective of government policies for the development of Persian should be to restore it to its former status. The author is realistic in assessing the problems associated with that aim, and he also contends that the status of Persian is indicative of Iran's status in the world, rather than responsible for it.
The other piece is an interview with award-winning Kannada author U R Ananthamurthy in The Times of India (beware pop-ups, even in Firefox). Ananthamurthy has supported moves to rename Bangalore to Bengaluru, arguing that it is called that in usual conversation by the locals, which should be the real determiner of how places are named. He argues that this is not linguistic chauvinism, but a reflection of the local cultures. He also claims that Kannada is not a vernacular, but an identifiable language in its own right, but that in India both English and Hindi are necessary for dialogue across the regions.
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