Turns out, I speak (some) Farsi!

I know many Farsi words. I just don’t know that I know them!

I’ve always known that the world is much more connected that we think it is. Being a linguist, I am always sensitive to languages around me. University campus is such an amazingly international environment that you can almost hear any language, if you listen carefully enough.

I know a guy from my gym. Iranian, impressive physique. I ran into him at the gym and we exchanged gaze for a few seconds. Asians do that a lot (yes, Iranians are Asians, too!), especially in a foreign country. We are constantly on the lookout for people from our community. He looks like a Tajik friend of mine. Tall nose, deep dark eyes and as Uyghur people say, broom eyebrows. I asked him where he was from and he wanted me to guess (yes, another annoying little thing we do). I was sure he was either from Afghanistan, Tajikistan or Iran. That’s how we became friends.

We have lots of conversations in between workouts. I am always curious about Farsi so I annoy him with all my language-related questions. I get excited about loan words in Uyghur that stem from Farsi.

I remember having coffee on campus many years ago. Two women were sat at the table next to mine and they were chatting in a beautiful language. This was the first time I heard Farsi. I was mesmerised. This was the most poetic language I’d ever heard (besides Uyghur, of course ;) ). All of a sudden, I started hearing familiar words - düshenbe (Monday), sheher (city) and epsus (regret)… I couldn’t help myself and asked them what language they were speaking, and I got my answer.

Back to my gym friend. I ran into him again today. He started speaking Farsi to me as if I already understood. He said ‘khodâ ghovat’. I recognised both words. ‘khoda’ means God and ‘ghovat’ means strength. Both words are used in Uyghur. I asked him, “does it mean something like ‘May God give you strength’?” He was pleasantly surprised and I was geekily proud.

The two cultures had many close contacts and cultural in history. Modern Uyghur evolved from Chagatai, a Turkic literary language used across Central Asia. Chagatai was heavily infused with Persian vocabulary. However, contacts with Persia were present long before that. The Uyghurs shared close ties with the Sogdians and even practised Manichaeism at one point because of their influence. After the arrival of Islam in Central Asia, Persian became the language of high culture, administration and scholarship, which facilitated its influence in many Turkic languages.

I had little contacts with the outside world while growing up. The first time I learnt of the similarities between Uyghur and Farsi was when I was travelling from Beijing to Singapore. I was on the phone with my parents at the airport right before boarding and I noticed that an elderly couple in front of me kept turning their head back to look at me. I wondered why. They asked what language I was speaking and told me they recognised many words I used. I was intrigued, because this was the first time that I realised that my community shared much more connections with the outside world than I’d realised.

Anyways, I have found the following loan words from Persian to Uyghur, and by extension, many Turkic languages:

peyda (appear), guman (doubt), miwe (fruit), qeghez (paper), shagirt (disciple), bahar (spring), berenge (potato), lale (tulip), gulzar (garden), pare (torn to pieces) and meydan (field).

Of course, there are many more words than the list above, and my search continues. Of course, maybe some of these words may not have been Persian by origin and there are many loan words from Turkic languages to Farsi. This made me think of all those people who show contempt against other cultures. I wonder if their language is so pure?

I have a Farsi textbook sitting on my bookshelf for years. Maybe it is time to open the book. Languages are fascinating and human life is too short to discover all its wonders. Too bad we have so many other commitments and distractions, but at least I can learn one word a day.

Khodahafez (Goodbye!)