Talk:Pahlavi scripts
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correct and academically accepted form
editDoes Sasanian Iran have anything to do with the Sassanids? If so, the word should be spelt with a double S.
No, it should not! Sasanian is the correct and academically accepted form. It is not pronounced with a double s and there is no reason for it!
In the article, what is the sentence "it is closely related to Sanskrit" refer to? Middle Persian? If that is the case, then the statement is wrong. Middle Persian is not closely related to Sanskrit! The relationship between Sanskrit and Middle Persian is like the relationship between Middle English and Old High German. Not that close!
I have removed a large chunk of the beginning of the second paragraph because of inaccuracies. What exactly is meant by the other Middle Iranian languages "falling into disuse"? While those languages may no longer survive, the descendants for some of them do. If, instead, it is meant that textual sources from these languages do not survive, this may be true for some (such as Bactrian, I believe), but not of others (for example Sogdian). Also, I don't believe that texts and knowledge about Pahlavi Middle Persian survived to the 20th century solely as a result of transmission by Parsi Zoroastrians in India.
I also cleared up the inaccuracies about whether Middle Persian is Iranian, Zoroastrian, or Sasanid. According to linguistic terminology, it is only the first. Zoroastrian and Sasanid do not possess any value as terms describing linguistic or genetic affiliation. Also, I made clear the contrast between Pahlavi as a writing system and as a language, and further contrasted it with Manichean Middle Persian.
What???
editThe word Pahlavi, refering to the script of Middle Persian, itself is a borrowing from Parthian (parthau "Parthian" --> pahlaw). The word originally refered to the script (and probably language) of Parthians which was also derived from Aramaic. Middle Persian Pahlavi script was derived from Aramaic independently, although Inscription MP Pahlvi is quite similar to Inscription Parthian Pahlavi.
- The Parthians spoke an Iranian language, not a Semitic language derived from Aramaic. I'm going to rewrite it to remove the ambiguity. --Jpbrenna 21:57, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Ok...
editI did some fixing and organizing and I added the alphabe template, since Pahlavi script is technically an Aramaic-derived alphabet. I need some help though. Can anyone:
- Clarify Psalter Pahlavi? Does "the Psalter" mean the Hebrew Psalms or the Zorroastrian Yashts that form part of the Avesta?
- Dig up a few good public domain images of Pahlavi script?
- Please smack me if I do anymore editing today instead of studying for my finals?
--Jpbrenna 22:39, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
- Per Daniels & Bright,
- A variant of the Persian script used for writing on paper is the so-called Psalter script, known from a fragmentary manuscript of the Psalms of David found in Chinese Turkestan.
- kwami 21:29, 2005 July 21 (UTC)
Hi! I am not an active contributor to the Wikipedia, but I would like to call your attention to the fact that the page omniglot.com which you give as a link for Pahlavi script is IMHO complete crap. I am only learning how to read Pahlavi but the letters on omniglot are only confusing. Please see ancientscripts.com under Pahlavi (which you also link to) for a much clearer table, which corresponds with the one we have at uni in McKenzie's text book.
For good (very good) images of Pahlavi script check http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/iran/mpers/mpersbsx.htm and http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/iran/mpers/mpersibx.htm
Best, oliver
examples
editany picrures of ancient writings written with pahlavi scripts can be uploaded if anyone has?
Computer representation
editIt would be good if someone could add a section to this article regarding use of the Pahlavi script on computers. Specifically, is the script available in Unicode or any other standardized character encoding? —Psychonaut 02:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
ISO 15924 code
editHi. The ISO 15924 standard has been updated with the Phlv (133) to represent "Book Pahlavi". I don't know anything about this language, but if I have understand the article correctly "Pahlavi" and "Book Pahlavi" are two different scripts, so this code shouldn't be added to the {{Infobox Writing system}}, isn't? Best regards, —surueña 14:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Book Pahlavi is the most common kind of Pahlavi. -- Fullstop 15:43, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Time period
editThe infobox says that the attested time period is approx. from 2 BC to 17 CE, however the hypothetical period is shorter! (approx from 3 BC to 10 CE). If this is not an error, I don't know what is it. Best regards —surueña 14:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
- The problem is that the time period is in centuries, not years, and of course it should be 7th century CE and not 17th century. I've modified the article. —surueña 14:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
- Thats your own fault. :) You changed "3rd c. BCE" etc to "c. 3 BC." What you overlooked was that 'c.' is a common abbreviation for "century." Yes, it *also* means circa, but it didn't here.
- And no, 7th century is not correct. The bulk of all Pahlavi literature is from the 9th-12th centuries, trailing out to the 14th. And yes, as late as the 17th century, people were evidently writing it, because at least one text (albeit presumably based on older sources) is from that period, and copyists continued making copies of older manuscripts until that time.
- When you encounter the word "Pahlavi" in academic sources (the Encyclopedia Iranica for instance), the texts being referred to are those from the 9th-14th centuries. The Middle Persian from the Sassanid Period is not called Pahlavi. Its called Middle Persian.
- -- Fullstop 15:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Pazend Movement? (in Sasanian Pahlavi)
editThis is the first time I've heard anything about a Pazend movement, as far as I've heard until now the Pazend are simply the MP commentaries explicating the Avesta, and were certainly not part of any political movement as described here. It would seem then that Iranians began efforts to clean their language of wicked Semitic influence way back in the Sasanian period and are still up to it 18 centuries later!
doesnt make sense
editMIddle Persian not Middle Iranian First of all, Pahlavi is the old Persian language, it is the mother of modern Persian, so stop calling it middle Iranian cause that doesnt make sense,So are you all trying to say that we spoke middle Iranian during Achemiand Persian,Parthian and sassanian empires and not Persian? Think before you write, please, am changing it to Middle Persian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.100.142.110 (talk) 21:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
- The fact that you say Pahlavi is Old Persian clearly shows your lack of knowledge about the Iranian languages. Pahlavi also spelled as Pahlevi is referred to two languages, both of them are Middle Iranian languages. One is to the Parthian and the other to the Sasanian Pahlevi. This second language is the Middle Persian, not the Old Persian. Again my advice, stop wasting your time with Tapesh TV, Pars TV, and other LA junk TV's, and read some books on Iranian languages.--Babakexorramdin (talk) 21:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
- Actually, it does make "sense"; it only didn't make sense to you because you didn't read.
- This article is not about what you think it is, and the articles for the languages you are thinking of are Old Persian, Parthian and Middle Persian.
- While there was a time when "Pahlavi" meant "old", that was in the 9th-11th century, when certain people continued to write in the "old" language and script even though both were antiquated. That language is not the "mother of modern Persian."
- So, yes, "think before you write, please, am changing it ... " back.
- -- Fullstop (talk) 00:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Pahlavi is middle Persian, I dont need a non Iranian to tell me sh1t about my own language, I am changing it back. Stop trying to change things and stop acting like a facist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.100.142.110 (talk) 00:48, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
To do: Inscriptional Parthian
editWe need a section on Inscriptional Parthian here. -- Evertype·✆ 09:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Ideograms?
editPahlavi including logograms I understand: certain fixed words from Imperial Aramaic are pronounced as Persian (i.e. huzvarishn). Ideograms, though? A logogram expresses a word, which is what the huzvarishn are. However, they do NOT directly represent an idea; they are instead linguistic fossils. They would only be ideograms if they clearly looked like or represented the idea of a dog, or king, or whathaveyou (like, for instance, the Chinese characters for a mountain, the Moon, and the Sun). I'm removing all references to ideograms until further notice. Lockesdonkey (talk) 21:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Claims about ambiguity and about responses to it
editThe text says:
Because of the convergence in form of many of the characters, there is a high degree of ambiguity in Pahlavi writing, which needs to be resolved by the context. For example, the name of God, Oharmazd, could equally be read (and, by Parsis, often was read) Anhoma. These difficulties were clearly felt by the Sassanian Persians themselves, as well as by modern scholars, as evidenced by the three methods used to reduce this ambiguity.
- Many common words were replaced by their Aramaic equivalents, which were used as logograms: because of their limited number, these were easily recognizable. For example, the word for "dog" was written KLB (Aramaic, kalbā) but pronounced sag. These words were known as huzvarishn.
- Important religious texts were sometimes transcribed into the Avestan alphabet, which was phonetically unambiguous: this system is called Pazend.
- After the Muslim conquest, the Pahlavi script was replaced by the Arabic script, except in Zoroastrian sacred literature.
- Re number 1: if the Aramaic equivalents were easily recognizable because of their limited number, why weren't the corresponding native words easily recognizable because of their limited number? I've never heard that the use of logograms in a language is evidence that the phonetic component of the script is felt to be difficult.
- Re number 2: specially developed orthographies for the accurate recitation of sacred texts are not uncommon, even though entire alphabets may be so. Again this doesn't prove that the usual orthography is inefficient: Hebrew without vowels is good enough for most purposes, although the sacred texts get their vowel dots.
- Re number 3: this is the most dubious of the three.
The Arabic script of the time was at least as bad, and probably worse, in terms of letter convergence as Book Pahlavi: it lacked all the iʿjam dots that distinguish between consonants in today's orthography! This kind of system is not easy to decipher at all, and it was certainly no improvement for practical purposes;the Arabic alphabet was adopted together with Islam as part of Arabic cultural domination (similarly in Turkey and other Islamic non-Arab nations), and not for its efficiency.
This brings me to another thing: looking at the script tables here (p.9, 10), the convergence of characters is really great only in Book Pahlavi, which only developed after the conquest and the imposing of Islamic government and Arabic script (BTW, Book Pahlavi tried to compensate the ambiguity with dots like Arabic, which also shows that it could have been just as efficient as it). But there is almost no convergence in Psalter Pahlavi and Inscriptional Pahlavi, both of which date from Sassanian times. Thus, it seems dubious that the Sassanians were suffering from the script's ambiguity.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:03, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, I've had this article on my to-do list for some time. If I remember right, it was Book Pahlavi that was so ambiguous as to be nearly indecipherable. kwami (talk) 23:09, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
- Correct. -- Evertype·✆ 23:28, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
- I must correct myself about Arabic: the first dotted text is from 643, one year before the fall of the Sassanids; so the dots were already available when the Arabic script was imposed in Iran. Still, the sources say that the dots were often treated as non-obligatory or left out completely in the first centuries after their invention. And in any case, the idea that the script was adopted because of its inherent superiority remains very unlikely, given that the Umayyads simply made Arabic the only official language, and there was a pause in Persian-language writing in general.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 03:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Orthography
editShouldn't the logograms for 'dog' and 'bread' be written as KLBA and LXMA because the Aramaic words end in long ā? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.213.104.124 (talk • contribs)
- You're right, McKenzie's Pahlavi dictionary has both of these words spelt with an aleph in the end. I've fixed this. Also replaced <x> with the <ḥ> of standard Semitological transcription. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:17, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Mackenzie's Pahlavi-English dictionary link appears to be for Sanskrit/Tamil dictionary
editThis appears to be irrelevant for two reasons. First, the Pahlavi scripts don't appear to have been used to write Sanskrit or Tamil (certainly not according to the article). Second, the dictionary doesn't contain any actual examples of Pahlavi scripts.
So yes, I'm removing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.254.31.36 (talk) 15:56, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
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Pahlavi Glossaries, texts, essays and dictionaries
edit
The word Eranšahr in Book Pahlavi
editHi, the image on the top left, has been used twice. With the caption: "The word Ērānšahr in Book Pahlavi' Here is the address to the image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eranshahr.svg It looks Avestan to me and not Pahlavi. You might want to check it with a specialist. Yazeh (talk) 19:29, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
- Not an expert, but this looks like Book Pahlavi 'yl'nštr (with a word-ending mark) to me. Avestan is a derivative of Book Pahlavi, so they look pretty similar.
- I'm also not sure what the letter taw is doing there (it should be he or heth), but this image still looks like valid Book Pahlavi. Spaceexplorerer ᐵ (talk) 17:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)