For those who are not familiar with Persian, it helps to understand that Persian went through Old -> Middle -> New transition long before English did. While a 10th century English text, e.g. Beowulf, is completely foreign to a modern English reader, a 10th century or newer Persian text is accessible to modern Persian readers. These are not ancient books only academics can understand and care about. You can find copies of Shahnameh and Hafez in many Iranian households, but some of the lesser-known ones are indeed rare.
During my Farsi studies we tried to read Hafez. It was excruciatingly hard for me, seemingly mostly since the structure of thought was not compatible with mine.
Our teacher interpreted some of the material and she explained that while most households have this book and read from it on occasion, most young people are no longer able to enjoy it on their own.
I don't know about the history of English. But for Persian, it's not that the language has not changed since 10th century, it is that the last revolution occurred between 7th and 10th century and all changes since then have been evolutionary. A modern reader equipped with a dictionary can read any text written in 10th century and later, but anything before that requires essentially learning a new language.
The reason for the revolutionary change in Persian language was the Muslim conquest of Persia in 633 CE and the introduction of Arabic language and culture to Iran. Anything before the conquest was in a language unlike the modern Persian. For two centuries following the conquest, there is little written Persian available, so we don't know how exactly the transformation occurred. What emerged after the two centuries of silence was a language based on Old Persian but with many Arabic loan words and written in a modified Arabic alphabet. This language is comprehensible by modern readers.
It should be noted that comprehensible does not mean easy. Reading old poems for modern Persian speakers is as difficult as reading Shakespeare is for modern anglophones, but it is a far cry from reading Beowulf.
The continuing popularity in Iran and the Persophone world of Classical poets such as Hafez and Rumi, and of poetry in general, has no equal that I know of in the West. I suspect that this tends to slow down language change to some extent. People continue to know the old texts because they are constantly exposed to them in vital, modern contexts. Perhaps it's something like the position that Shakespeare and the King James Bible held in Protestant English-speaking lands, though they were widely understood for a shorter length of time (maybe 350 years?) than the Persian classics (700-1000 years and counting, as far as I can tell). I'm afraid that Shakespeare and the Bible are now slipping beneath the waves of comprehension for non-specialists.
It may be worth adding that the adoption of the Arabic alphabet was a major part of the transition from Middle Persian to New Persian, beyond language change itself. People are often surprised by how little difficulty they have parsing a sentence in Middle Persian once it’s been transliterated.
Language development changes in speed with the linguistic landscape. Persian saw its fastest changing in the 8th century during the Ummayad conquest, when Arabic became the dominant language of the ruling class.
Similarly, English saw its fastest changing in the 12th century during the Norman conquest, when French became the dominant language of the ruling class.
In both cases, most of the core vocabulary and grammar survived, but with enough influence and new words that it is hard for speakers after the change to understand writings before the change.
My understanding from Persian friends is that Rumi is about as understandable to modern Persian speakers as his contemporary, Chaucer, is to modern English speakers.
Yes, but on the other hand, original lyrics by Hafez, Rumi, and others are commonly used, unchanged, as lyrics for contemporary Persian songs, even for full-on rock songs, dance music, love songs, etc. I haven't heard any songs in the Hot 100 using lyrics by Chaucer lately.
In part, this is probably because old Persian poetry/song traditions were more modern, compared to english poetry from the same period. They had a strong, very old literary tradition. The English didn't, until a bit later. Chaucer was part of building it.
The musical/poetic sensibilities of old/middle English are way too different to ours.
The Bible (especially in Hebrew) can also easily be plagiarized, and you'll find lots of lines/poems that work "as is" in a pop song.
As a cultural reference, poetry is such a big deal that the largest and most popular tv station in Kabul (Tolo TV), operating in the Dari dialect of Farsi, regularly hosts what could basically be described as poetry slams during prime time tv hours.
They have a fairly active youtube channel if anyone wants to take a look.
The difficulty of Chaucer for modern English speakers is exaggerated because of the unfamiliar spelling. The reason that modern editions don't modernise the spelling is that if you do this it becomes hard to figure out the rhythm. For example, in the Ellesmere manuscript [1], line 9 is "And smale foweles maken melodye", but if you modernise this to "And small fowls make melody" then you only have seven syllables and it is hard to figure out how this was ever scanned as iambic pentameter. Modern editions end up compromising between spelling and scansion, making the language more difficult-looking than it really is.
Languages change at vastly different rates. A new creole in its first generation of native speakers can evolve to almost unrecognisable by the second. Meanwhile, a language can be remain intelligible for millennia and many do.
Literacy, sacred texts and political stability are factors in language stability. So is the "one damned thing after another" path of history.
But to your question... I'd say English is the "outlier" or at least the example that needs explaining.
Old English isn't really English. A better name would be Saxon. It's far closer to other languages from the north sea mainland, and not at all similar to modern English. Frisian is still spoken, for example. It's basically a sister dialect to old English. Saxon was spoken by the "Anglo Saxons" who migrated to/colonized to Britain in the early mediaeval period. They barely wrote (Alfred's chronicles being a notable exception), and literacy was mostly Latin anyway. They were also a minority language for a long time.
Then the "English" (Anglo Saxons) lost political power to the normans. French came with the Norman Empire and Latin was the written & liturgical language. Various dialects of "Middle English" became "regional" languages alongside Irish/Scottish, Welsh/Cornish, some Danish, and possibly others. A lot of French got mixed in.
Eventually the Norman empire subsided or evolved into the British one, settled in England and "went native." They became the English nobility, and their posh dialect became early modern English (like Shakespeare).
Underlying a lot of this instability is the fact that Britain, Saxony and NW Europe generally was barbarian country. They (we) didn't live in cities, were borderline illiterate. Etc.
Old native traditions (ie, not Christianity) were remembered in epic songs and sagas, not books.
Languages evolve and get pushed up and down the pecking order much faster in barbarian country. Barbarian culture usually evolves much faster and more flexibly than conservative civic culture.
The parts of Europe colonized by Rome (the British outpost doesn't count) speak Latin today. None of the (more numerous) Roman conquests in "the east" speak Latin. The kept speaking Greek, Egyptian, Aramaic and such... languages that had been spoken and written in capital cities for thousands of years... even back then.
You forgot Old Norse/Danish. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!"
Couple that with that Saxon and Norse are Germanic. Modern English is an interesting mix in so many ways, I believe it is so pretty because it got all the rough edges polished off by this incredible meld of what made it up.
It's similar for Icelandic, 1000 year old books can be read if you know the modern language. It probably just has to do with which books are read in elementary school. I imagine that in Iran they read Rumi and Hafez a lot in elementary and high school.
The ease that modern Icelandic speakers have in understanding old texts is not due to Icelandic remaining unchanged all that time. Rather, Icelandic began to experience drastic Danish influence at a certain point, and then Iceland’s cultural elites chose to fight this by standardizing Icelandic on the basis of those old texts. It was a return to sources, not preserving those sources the whole time.
I think Persian and a handful of other languages are the outliers. The main difference between old, middle, and modern Persian is the writing system.
Old Persian is quite hard to read and understand for a modern Persian speaker, but if one spends a few weeks learning the writing system of middle Persian (called Pahlavi), they will be able to understand a lot of texts written before 500 AD.
Same with Armenian: I can read and understand 5th century texts simply as an educated native speaker. It probably has to do with how much the culture relies on its written texts (because there are spoken dialects of Armenian that I dom't understand at all, while having no trouble with the written dialect from 1500 years ago)
This also applies to Arabic. It has had a long lasting preservation movement that is motivated by religion. The Quran in its original form is mostly understandable with only some additional vocabulary. Most of Quran study for Arabic speakers is about context and interpretation.
wow, this is amazing. Reading Qazwini's Padshahnama.
Even though I am a full time engineer like most others here, I had an interest in history so I learned to read Nastaliq hand written script and basics of Persian grammar online (had no knowledge of Farsi when I started). A lot of collections are now online so the first-hand sources are much more accessible now.
I still have issues deciphering the full meaning or reading an old hand which is beyond my basic skills. Anyone willing to help or know a good book/site that will help me in deciphering these old manuscripts (Persian or Arabic)?
You should be able to use a site like ganjoor.net, which contains most classical Persian texts, in Persian only, but in modern type (as opposed to simply being a picture of an ancient or modern manuscript page). We've made heavy use of these sites over many years and been very happy. Errors seem to be extremely rare. Keep in mind though, that there will almost certainly be differences, often major, between whatever manuscript you are looking at and whatever modern edition is the one that's been typed into ganjoor.net (or another similar site).
For another approach, there are academic texts to help you learn to read old handwritten scripts. As for deciphering the full meaning (bearing in mind that there may be many layers of meaning and lots of puns and other wordplay), that just takes a whole lot of work. We (my partner in reading for 13 years and I) just start at the beginning of a work (say, Nezami's Khosrow and Shirin) and take it line by line, using dictionaries, grammars (though we pretty much have all the grammar down now), and translations. We use the footnotes, too, in the back of the contemporary editions in Persian. We get the Persian books from Persian on-line bookstores, most of which seem to be in LA. Congratulations for getting as far as you have on your own. Amazing!
For anyone who hasn't studied it, I highly recommend picking up a few history books on the Mughal empire. If you've ever wondered why there's so many Farsi words in modern Urdu and Hindi, there's your answer...
I love to watch history documentaries from reputable sources. granted, might not be as detailed as a book, but then, easier to learn (for me) and I am going to forget the details anyway ;)
"Rebel Sultans" by Manu Pillai is a great complement, focusing on the Deccan, with a lot of material on how Iranian culture and politics influenced Indian history.
Treasure. Shah Namah alone is essential literature.
Would be even interested also in digital collections of Persia circa 500 BC. During Achæmenian dynasty, Zorastrian priesthood, Kingdom of Bactria, the origins of Dualism ;)
Most current-day readers might prefer Davis, but the best in my eyes is that by the two brothers Warner: "Between 1905 and 1925, the brothers Arthur and Edmond Warner published a translation of the complete work in nine volumes, now out of print." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh I read classical Persian, I've read most of the Shahnameh in Persian and taught parts of it to English-speakers, and have been amazed by the art of the Warner's work and the depth of their understanding.
Digitization projects like this are such a boon to scholarship. I haven’t combed through the list of codices yet to see if there’s anything I might like to investigate—but hey, now I can whenever I find the time. I’ve had to plan international trips to visit manuscript libraries, without being sure what awaited me. (Don’t get me wrong, that’s a lot of fun in its own way. But what if I come across something unexpected, and I only have a week in town, and I’m not allowed to photograph any of the materials?)
If this kind of thing floats your boat, I can highly recommend Peter Hopkirk's "Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia".
One of the interesting historical tidbits about the greater Persian empire... Until it became a Russian/Soviet client state, the area that is now Tajikistan used Farsi script for all "educated" written word records, books, letters, etc. It was well within the boundaries of the greater historical Persian empire.
The spoken dialect of Persian in Dushanbe today is not extremely different from what they speak in Kabul. Mostly differences in accent, pronunciation, some casual slang.
But starting around 1920, the russians mandated an official government and school system switch over to the Cyrillic alphabet, along with teaching Russian language as the language of "math, science and higher learning". So now Farsi is written with Cyrillic there.
Music videos produced in Dushanbe remain highly popular in Afghanistan.
I wonder if this is a good faith effort on part of the current administration to find new common ground with the Iranian gov't. Nevertheless, an incredible contribution.
In addition, a project like this requires a fair bit of planning and curatorial work. So it's probably been in the works for a while. Probably no one at the high levels of the administration is even aware of it.
more interest in the Persian influence to Jews and their religion, as it is the Persia that allow them to go back home after Babylon occupation. Bible mostly dated back to this time at least the final editing. Wonder any good lead to this era culture.
A while ago I read that after the revolution the new Shiite run government found themselves in charge of a lot of 'non Islamic art'. The interesting thing is they stuffed it all away in a warehouse instead of destroying it. And now recently have been making it available.
For those who are not familiar with Persian, it helps to understand that Persian went through Old -> Middle -> New transition long before English did. While a 10th century English text, e.g. Beowulf, is completely foreign to a modern English reader, a 10th century or newer Persian text is accessible to modern Persian readers. These are not ancient books only academics can understand and care about. You can find copies of Shahnameh and Hafez in many Iranian households, but some of the lesser-known ones are indeed rare.